Test your basic knowledge |

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 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






2. The movement of a rigid body's center of mass in space.






3. The units of frequency - defined as inverse-seconds (1 Hz = 1 s-1). "Hertz" can be used interchangeably with "cycles per second."






4. If a line is drawn from the sun to the planet - then the area swept out by this line in a given time interval is constant.

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /var/www/html/basicversity.com/show_quiz.php on line 183


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






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






7. The property by which a charge moving in a magnetic field creates an electric field.






8. 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.






9. 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






10. When a light ray strikes a surface - the angle of incidence is the angle between the incident ray and the normal.






11. 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






12. In radioactive substances - the number of nuclei that decay per second. Activity - A - will be larger in large samples of radioactive material - since there will be more nuclei.






13. A coefficient that tells how much a material will expand or contract lengthwise when it is heated or cooled.






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






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






16. 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.






17. 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.






18. A transfer of thermal energy. We don't speak about systems "having" heat - but about their "transferring" heat - much in the way that dynamical systems don't "have" work - but rather "do" work.






19. 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.






20. A body or set of bodies that we choose to analyze as a group.






21. The force involved in beta decay that changes a proton to a neutron and releases an electron and a neutrino.






22. 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.






23. A nuclear reaction that takes place only at very high temperatures. Two light atoms - often hydrogen - fuse together to form a larger single atom - releasing a vast amount of energy in the process.






24. Light such that all of the associated waves have the same wavelength and are in phase.






25. States that the current induced in a circuit by a change in magnetic flux is in the direction that will oppose that change in flux. Using the right-hand rule - point your thumb in the opposite direction of the change in magnetic flux. The direction y

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /var/www/html/basicversity.com/show_quiz.php on line 183


26. 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.






27. The sum of a system's potential and kinetic energy. In many systems - including projectiles - pulleys - pendulums - and motion on frictionless surfaces - mechanical energy is conserved. One important type of problem in which mechanical energy is not






28. The process by which a gas turns directly into a solid because it cannot exist as a liquid at certain pressures.






29. If the net torque acting on a rigid body is zero - then the angular momentum of the body is constant or conserved.






30. 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






31. A rigid body's resistance to being rotated. The moment of inertia for a single particle is MR2 - where M is the mass of the rigid body and R is the distance to the rotation axis. For rigid bodies - calculating the moment of inertia is more complicate






32. 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.






33. A scalar quantity that tells us how fast an object is moving. It measures the rate of change in distance over time. Speed is to be contrasted with velocity in that there is no direction associated with speed.






34. 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






35. The separation of different color light via refraction.






36. A vector quantity defined as the rate of change of the displacement vector with time. It is to be contrasted with speed - which is a scalar quantity for which no direction is specified.






37. The number of hydrogen atoms in one gram of hydrogen - equal to . When counting the number of molecules in a gas - it is often convenient to count them in moles.






38. The amount heat necessary to cause a substance to undergo a phase transition.






39. 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.






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






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






42. The longest side of a right triangle - opposite to the right angle.






43. 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.






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






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






46. In a right triangle - the tangent of a given angle is the length of the side opposite the angle divided by the length of the side adjacent to the triangle.






47. 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.






48. 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






49. A logorithmic unit for measuring the volume of sound - which is the square of the amplitude of sound waves.






50. 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.