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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. A particle - which consists of two protons and two neutrons. It is identical to the nucleus of a helium atom and is ejected by heavy particles undergoing alpha decay.






2. A coefficient that tells how much the volume of a solid will change when it is heated or cooled.






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






4. A unit of force: 1 N is equivalent to a 1 kg · m/s2.






5. A unit vector is a vector with length 1.






6. A class of elementary particle whose mass is between that of a proton and that of an electron. A common kind of meson is the pion.






7. 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






8. A device that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy by rotating a coil in a magnetic field; sometimes called a "dynamo."






9. The stable position of a system where the net force acting on the object is zero.






10. 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.






11. Heat transfer by molecular collisions.






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






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






14. A scale for measuring temperature - defined such that 0K is the lowest theoretical temperature a material can have. 273K = 0ºC.






15. Represented by R = 8.31 J/mol · K - the universal gas constant fits into the ideal gas law so as to relate temperature to the average kinetic energy of gas molecules.






16. The phenomenon of light bouncing off a surface - such as a mirror.






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






18. The amount of heat necessary to transform a solid at a given temperature into a liquid of the same temperature - or the amount of heat needed to be removed from a liquid of a given temperature to transform it into a solid of the same temperature.






19. 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.






20. A scale for measuring temperature - defined such that water freezes at 0ºC and boils at 100ºC. 0ºC = 273 K.






21. A collision in which the colliding particles stick together.






22. The mass number - A - is the sum of the number of protons and neutrons in a nucleus. It is very close to the weight of that nucleus in atomic mass units.






23. The amplification of one wave by another - identical wave of the same sign. Two constructively interfering waves are said to be "in phase."






24. A form of radioactivity where an excited atom releases a photon of gamma radiation - thereby returning to a lower energy state. The atomic structure itself does not change in the course of gamma radiation.






25. An almost massless particle of neutral charge that is released along with a beta particle in beta decay.






26. F = ma. The net force - F - acting on an object causes the object to accelerate - a. The magnitude of the acceleration is directly proportional to the net force on the object and inversely proportional to the mass - m - of the object.


27. The time it takes a system to pass through one cycle of its repetitive motion. The period - T - is the inverse of the motion's frequency - f = 1/T.






28. Linear momentum - p - commonly called "momentum" for short - is a vector quantity defined as the product of an object's mass - m - and its velocity - v.






29. The distance between successive wave crests - or troughs. Wavelength is measured in meters and is related to frequency and wave speed by = v/f.






30. A machine that operates by taking heat from a hot place - doing some work with that heat - and then exhausting the rest of the heat into a cool place. The internal combustion engine of a car is an example of a heat engine.






31. 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 -






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






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






34. The phenomenon by which light traveling from a high n to a low n material will reflect from the optical interface if the incident angle is greater than the critical angle.






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






36. A wavelength - given by = h/mv - which is associated with matter. Louis de Broglie proposed the idea that matter could be treated as waves in 1923 and applied this theory successfully to small particles like electrons.






37. Two oscillators that have the same frequency and amplitude - but reach their maximum displacements at different times - are said to have different phases. Similarly - two waves are in phase if their crests and troughs line up exactly - and they are o






38. A process that aligns a wave of light to oscillate in one dimension rather than two.






39. A scalar quantity. If an object is moved from point A to point B in space along path AB - the distance that the object has traveled is the length of the path AB. Distance is to be contrasted with displacement - which is simply a measure of the distan






40. The energy associated with the configuration of bodies attracted to each other by the gravitational force. It is a measure of the amount of work necessary to get the two bodies from a chosen point of reference to their present position. This point of






41. The points of maximum displacement along a wave. In traveling waves - the crests move in the direction of propagation of the wave. The crests of standing waves - also called anti-nodes - remain in one place.






42. With spherical mirrors - the center of the sphere of which the mirror is a part. All of the normals pass through it.






43. Atoms of the same element may have different numbers of neutrons and therefore different masses. Atoms of the same element but with different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element.






44. A measure of force per unit area. Pressure is measured in N/m2 or Pa.






45. A vector quantity - commonly denoted by the vector s - which reflects an object's change in spatial position. The displacement vector points from the object's starting position to the object's current position in space. If an object is moved from poi






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


47. Waves produced by a source that is moving with respect to the observer will seem to have a higher frequency and smaller wavelength if the motion is towards the observer - and a lower frequency and longer wavelength if the motion is away from the obse






48. A law - || = - which states that the induced emf is the change in magnetic flux in a certain time.


49. The energy stored in a thermodynamic system.






50. The application of kinematics to understand why objects move the way they do. More precisely - dynamics is the study of how forces cause motion.