SUBJECTS
|
BROWSE
|
CAREER CENTER
|
POPULAR
|
JOIN
|
LOGIN
Business Skills
|
Soft Skills
|
Basic Literacy
|
Certifications
About
|
Help
|
Privacy
|
Terms
|
Email
Search
Test your basic knowledge |
SAT Subject Test: hysics
Start Test
Study First
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 force necessary to maintain a body in uniform circular motion. This force is always directed radially toward the center of the circle.
Rotational motion
Orbit
Transverse waves
Centripetal force
2. The line perpendicular to a surface. There is only one normal for any given surface.
Coefficient of kinetic friction
Power
Minima
Normal
3. 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.
Frictional force
Dispersion
Magnification
Radioactive decay
4. 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.
Speed
Activity
Momentum
Conduction
5. 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.
6. 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.
Heat transfer
Michelson-Morley experiment
Neutron
Angle of incidence
7. The movement of a rigid body's center of mass in space.
Focal point
Inversely proportional
Translational motion
Mole
8. The longest side of a right triangle - opposite to the right angle.
Boiling point
Concave mirror
Tension force
Hypotenuse
9. A unit vector is a vector with length 1.
Convex lens
Kinetic energy
Unit vector
Optics
10. The model of the atom according to which negatively charged electrons orbit a positively charged nucleus. This model was developed by Ernest Rutherford in light of the results from his gold foil experiment.
Rutherford nuclear model
Rotational motion
Polarization
Uniform circular motion
11. The amount of heat necessary to transform a liquid at a given temperature into a gas of the same temperature - or the amount of heat needed to be taken away from a gas of a given temperature to transform it into a liquid of the same temperature.
Transformer
Latent heat of vaporization
Moment of inertia
Cross product
12. The temperature at which a material will change phase from liquid to gas or gas to liquid.
Force
Radioactive decay
Decibel
Boiling point
13. A measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules in a system. Temperature is related to heat by the specific heat of a given substance.
Calorie
Induced current
Velocity
Temperature
14. Objects that experience oscillatory or simple harmonic motion when distorted. Their motion is described by Hooke's Law.
Spring
Principal axis
Dynamics
Latent heat of sublimation
15. Defined as the rate at which work is done - or the rate at which energy is transformed. P is measured in joules per second (J/s) - or watts (W).
Superposition
Faraday's Law
Power
Quark
16. In oscillation - a cycle occurs when an object undergoing oscillatory motion completes a "round-trip." For instance - a pendulum bob released at angle has completed one cycle when it swings to and then back to again. In period motion - a cycle is the
Force
Cycle
Power
Work function
17. A vector quantity defined as the rate of change of the velocity vector with time.
Acceleration
Reflect
Gamma decay
Decay constant
18. A measurement of a body's inertia - or resistance to being accelerated.
Mass number
Principal axis
Vector
Mass
19. 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.
Uncertainty principle
Velocity
Refracted ray
Atom
20. A logorithmic unit for measuring the volume of sound - which is the square of the amplitude of sound waves.
Cross product
Energy
Faraday's Law
Decibel
21. An object cannot be cooled to absolute zero.
Rarefaction
Third Law of Thermodynamics
Acceleration
Center of mass
22. 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
Alpha particle
Longitudinal waves
Kinetic energy
Inertial reference frame
23. The amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. 1 cal = 4.19 J.
Calorie
Node
Orbit
Kepler's Second Law
24. The path of each planet around the sun is an ellipse with the sun at one focus.
25. A device that breaks incoming light down into spectral rays - so that one can see the exact wavelength constituents of the light.
First Law of Thermodynamics
Newton's Third Law
Threshold frequency
Spectroscope
26. The emf created by the motion of a charge through a magnetic field.
Restoring force
Motional emf
Conservation of momentum
Newton
27. A mirror that is curved such that its center is closer to the viewer than the edges - such as a doorknob. Convex mirrors reflect light away from a focal point.
First Law of Thermodynamics
Margin of error
Convex mirror
Elastic collision
28. The application of kinematics to understand why objects move the way they do. More precisely - dynamics is the study of how forces cause motion.
Conservation of Angular Momentum
Oscillation
Dynamics
Entropy
29. The force of gravity - F - between two particles of mass and - separated by a distance r - has a magnitude of - where G is the gravitational constant. The force is directed along the line joining the two particles.
30. A device made of two coils - which converts current of one voltage into current of another voltage. In a step-up transformer - the primary coil has fewer turns than the secondary - thus increasing the voltage. In a step-down transformer - the seconda
Axis of rotation
Transformer
Moment of inertia
Planck's constant
31. The particles and energy released by the fission or fusion of one atom may trigger the fission or fusion of further atoms. In a chain reaction - fission or fusion is rapidly transferred to a large number of atoms - releasing tremendous amounts of ene
Chain reaction
Focal length
Strong nuclear force
Period
32. A form of vector multiplication - where two vectors are multiplied to produce a scalar. The dot product of two vectors - A and B - is expressed by the equation A · B = AB cos .
Inertia
Oscillation
Concave lens
Dot product
33. The bending of light at the corners of objects or as it passes through narrow slits or apertures.
Critical angle
Tip
Atomic number
Diffraction
34. An area of high air pressure that acts as the wave crest for sound waves. The spacing between successive compressions is the wavelength of sound - and the number of successive areas of compression that arrive at the ear per second is the frequency -
Angular displacement
Compression
Michelson-Morley experiment
Hypotenuse
35. 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
Wavelength
Dispersion
Component
Maxima
36. For a heat engine - the ratio of work done by the engine to heat intake. Efficiency is never 100%.
Momentum
Tail
Rotational motion
Efficiency
37. 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.
Uncertainty principle
Period
Directly proportional
Mechanical energy
38. 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.
Distance
Kelvin
First Law of Thermodynamics
Lenz's Law
39. A system that no external net force acts upon. Objects within the system may exert forces upon one another - but they cannot receive any impulse from outside forces. Momentum is conserved in isolated systems.
Fundamental
Rigid body
First Law of Thermodynamics
Isolated system
40. 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
Frictional force
Equilibrium position
Mechanical energy
Angular velocity
41. 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.
Concave mirror
Reflect
Heat engine
Radioactive decay
42. A wedge or a slide. The dynamics of objects sliding down inclined planes is a popular topic on SAT II Physics.
Cosine
Inclined plane
Legs
Maxima
43. A means of defining the direction of the cross product vector. To define the direction of the vector - position your right hand so that your fingers point in the direction of A - and then curl them around so that they point in the direction of B. Th
Ground state
Instantaneous velocity
Phase change
Right-hand rule
44. 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.
Electric generator
Destructive interference
Beta decay
Alpha decay
45. 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.
Diffraction grating
Latent heat of transformation
Efficiency
Neutron
46. 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.
Neutrino
Index of refraction
Right-hand rule
Sine
47. The net change - - in a point's angular position - . It is a scalar quantity.
Angular displacement
Dispersion
Sine
Bohr atomic model
48. A collision in which the colliding particles stick together.
Antinode
Elastic collision
Coefficient of volume expansion
Completely inelastic collision
49. When dealing with reflection or refraction - the incident ray is the ray of light before it strikes the reflecting or refracting surface.
Equilibrium
Torque
Incident ray
Photoelectron
50. A constant - - not to be confused with wavelength - that defines the speed at which a radioactive element undergoes decay. The greater is - the faster the element decays.
Hypotenuse
Vector
Mechanical energy
Decay constant