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SAT Subject Test: hysics

Subjects : sat, science, physics
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. Done when energy is transferred by a force. The work done by a force F in displacing an object by s is W = F · s.






2. The process by which unstable nuclei spontaneously release particles and/or energy so as to come to a more stable arrangement. The most common forms of radioactive decay are alpha decay - beta decay - and gamma decay.






3. A collision in which both kinetic energy and momentum are conserved.






4. The cancellation of one wave by another wave that is exactly out of phase with the first. Despite the dramatic name of this phenomenon - nothing is "destroyed" by this interference—the two waves emerge intact once they have passed each other.






5. A collision in which momentum is conserved but kinetic energy is not.






6. An image created by a mirror or lens in such a way that light does not actually come from where the image appears to be.






7. A neutrally charged particle that - along with protons - constitutes the nucleus of an atom.






8. The number of cycles executed by a system in one second. Frequency is the inverse of period - f = 1/T. Frequency is measured in hertz - Hz.






9. The temperature at which a material will change phase from solid to liquid or liquid to solid.






10. The point of a mirror or lens where all light that runs parallel to the principal axis will be focused. Concave mirrors and convex lenses are designed to focus light into the focal point. Convex mirrors and concave lenses focus light away from the fo






11. In an interference or diffraction pattern - the places where there is the least light.






12. A conserved scalar quantity associated with the state or condition of an object or system of objects. We can roughly define energy as the capacity for an object or system to do work. There are many different types of energy - such as kinetic energy -






13. Energy associated with the state of motion. The translational kinetic energy of an object is given by the equation .






14. For a reflected light ray - . In other words - a ray of light reflects of a surface in the same plane as the incident ray and the normal - and at an angle to the normal that is equal to the angle between the incident ray and the normal.






15. Heat transfer by molecular collisions.






16. A unit of measurement for energy on atomic levels. 1 eV = J.






17. The disorder of a system.






18. For a gas held at a constant temperature - pressure and volume are inversely proportional.

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19. The amount of energy that metal must absorb before it can release a photoelectron from the metal.






20. The force necessary to maintain a body in uniform circular motion. This force is always directed radially toward the center of the circle.






21. A pulley is a simple machine that consists of a rope that slides around a disk or block.






22. If two systems - A and B - are in thermal equilibrium and if B and C are also in thermal equilibrium - then systems A and C are necessarily in thermal equilibrium.






23. In an interference or diffraction pattern - the places where there is the most light.






24. When objects collide - each object feels a force for a short amount of time. This force imparts an impulse - or changes the momentum of each of the colliding objects. The momentum of a system is conserved in all kinds of collisions. Kinetic energy is






25. The ratio of the size of the image produced by a mirror or lens to the size of the original object. This number is negative if the image is upside-down.






26. Energy cannot be made or destroyed; energy can only be changed from one place to another or from one form to another.






27. The points midway between nodes on a standing wave - where the oscillations are largest.






28. A back-and-forth movement about an equilibrium position. Springs - pendulums - and other oscillators experience harmonic motion.






29. A form of vector multiplication - where two vectors are multiplied to produce a third vector. The cross product of two vectors - A and B - separated by an angle - - is - where is a unit vector perpendicular to both A and B. To deine which direction






30. A quantity that possesses a magnitude but not a direction. Mass and length are common examples.






31. The time - T - required for a rigid body to complete one revolution.






32. The net change - - in a point's angular position - . It is a scalar quantity.






33. Essentially a restatement of energy conservation - it states that the change in the internal energy of a system is equal to the heat added plus the work done on the system.






34. Two quantities are directly proportional if an increase in one results in a proportional increase in the other - and a decrease in one results in a proportional decrease in the other. In a formula defining a certain quantity - those quantities to whi






35. The state of a nonrotating object upon whom the net torque acting is zero.






36. The center of an atom - where the protons and neutrons reside. Electrons then orbit this nucleus.






37. The effect of force on rotational motion.






38. An object that retains its overall shape - meaning that the particles that make up the rigid body stay in the same position relative to one another.






39. Another word for the frequency of a sound wave.






40. The process by which a solid turns directly into gas - because it cannot exist as a liquid at a certain pressure.






41. The velocity at any given instant in time. To be contrasted with average velocity - which is a measure of the change in displacement over a given time interval.






42. An experiment in 1879 that showed that the speed of light is constant to all observers. Einstein used the results of this experiment as support for his theory of special relativity.






43. An area of high air pressure that acts as the wave trough for sound waves. The spacing between successive rarefactions is the wavelength of sound - and the number of successive areas of rarefaction that arrive at the ear per second is the frequency -






44. Two quantities are inversely proportional if an increase in one results in a proportional decrease in the other - and a decrease in one results in a proportional increase in the other. In a formula defining a certain quantity - those quantities to wh






45. Life- The amount of time it takes for one-half of a radioactive sample to decay.






46. The unit for measuring pressure. One Pascal is equal to one Newton per meter squared - 1 Pa = 1 N/m2.






47. A device that breaks incoming light down into spectral rays - so that one can see the exact wavelength constituents of the light.






48. A principle derived by Werner Heisenberg in 1927 that tells us that we can never know both the position and the momentum of a particle at any given time.






49. The coefficient of kinetic friction - - for two materials is the constant of proportionality between the normal force and the force of kinetic friction. It is always a number between zero and one.






50. The energy of a particle moving in space. It is defined in s of a particle's mass - m - and velocity - v - as (1/2)mv2.