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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. The angle between a refracted ray and the line normal to the surface.






2. In the graphical representation of vectors - the tail of the arrow is the blunt end (the end without a point).






3. A vector quantity defined as the product of the force acting on a body multiplied by the time interval over which the force is exerted.






4. A sheet - film - or screen with a pattern of equally spaced slits. Typically the width of the slits and space between them is chosen to generate a particular diffraction pattern.






5. The energy of a particle rotating around an axis.






6. A positively charged particle that - along with the neutron - occupies the nucleus of the atom.






7. A reference frame in which Newton's First Law is true. Two inertial reference frames move at a constant velocity relative to one another. According to the first postulate of Einstein's theory of special relativity - the laws of physics are the same i






8. Waves in which the medium moves in the direction perpendicular to the propagation of the wave. Waves on a stretched string - water waves - and electromagnetic waves are all examples of transverse waves.






9. The ray of light that is refracted through a surface into a different medium.






10. The amount of error that's possible in a given measurement.






11. A force caused by the roughness of two materials in contact - deformations in the materials - and a molecular attraction between the materials. Frictional forces are always parallel to the plane of contact between two surfaces and opposite the direct






12. 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.






13. 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






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






15. 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.






16. 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






17. A particle - identical to an electron. Beta particles are ejected from an atom in the process of beta decay.






18. A measurement of a body's inertia - or resistance to being accelerated.






19. The bending of light as it passes from one medium to another. Light refracts toward the normal when going from a less dense medium into a denser medium and away from the normal when going from a denser medium into a less dense medium.






20. The speed at which a wave crest or trough propagates. Note that this is not the speed at which the actual medium (like the stretched string or the air particles) moves.






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






22. 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.






23. There are a few versions of this law. One is that heat flows spontaneously from hot to cold - but not in the reverse direction. Another is that there is no such thing as a 100% efficient heat engine. A third states that the entropy - or disorder - of






24. A pendulum consists of a bob connected to a rod or rope. At small angles - a pendulum's motion approximates simple harmonic motion as it swings back and forth without friction.






25. 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.






26. A constant in the numerator of a formula.






27. The building blocks of all matter - atoms are made up of a nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons - and a number of electrons that orbit the nucleus. An electrically neutral atom has as many protons as it has electrons.






28. Heat transfer via the mass movement of molecules.






29. The five equations used to solve problems in kinematics in one dimension with uniform acceleration.






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






31. The number of digits that have been accurately measured. When combining several measurements in a formula - the resulting calculation can only have as many significant digits as the measurement that has the smallest number of significant digits.






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






33. Two materials are in thermal equilibrium if they are at the same temperature.






34. An object cannot be cooled to absolute zero.






35. The substance that is displaced as a wave propagates through it. Air is the medium for sound waves - the string is the medium of transverse waves on a string - and water is the medium for ocean waves. Note that even if the waves in a given medium tra






36. A vector quantity - or vector - is an object possessing - and fully described by - a magnitude and a direction. Graphically a vector is depicted as an arrow with its magnitude given by the length of the arrow and its direction given by where the arro






37. 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.






38. 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 -






39. In a right triangle - the sine of a given angle is the length of the side opposite the angle divided by the length of the hypotenuse.






40. Any vector can be expressed as the sum of two mutually perpendicular component vectors. Usually - but not always - these components are multiples of the basis vectors - and ; that is - vectors along the x-axis and y-axis. We define these two vectors






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






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






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. 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.






45. A mirror that is curved such that its center is farther from the viewer than the edges - such as the front of a spoon. Concave mirrors reflect light through a focal point.






46. The cosine of an angle in a right triangle is equal to the length of the side adjacent to the angle divided by the length of the hypotenuse.






47. 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.






48. 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.






49. 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.






50. A wave on a string that is tied to a pole at one end will reflect back toward its source - producing a wave that is the mirror-image of the original and which travels in the opposite direction.






Can you answer 50 questions in 15 minutes?



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