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






2. The line perpendicular to a surface. There is only one normal for any given surface.






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.






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.






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.






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






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






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






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.






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.






12. The temperature at which a material will change phase from liquid to gas or gas to liquid.






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.






14. Objects that experience oscillatory or simple harmonic motion when distorted. Their motion is described by Hooke's Law.






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).






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






17. A vector quantity defined as the rate of change of the velocity vector with time.






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






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.






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






21. An object cannot be cooled to absolute zero.






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






23. The amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. 1 cal = 4.19 J.






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.






26. The emf created by the motion of a charge through a magnetic field.






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.






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.






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






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






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 .






33. The bending of light at the corners of objects or as it passes through narrow slits or apertures.






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 -






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






36. For a heat engine - the ratio of work done by the engine to heat intake. Efficiency is never 100%.






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.






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.






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.






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






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.






42. A wedge or a slide. The dynamics of objects sliding down inclined planes is a popular topic on SAT II Physics.






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






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.






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.






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.






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






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






49. When dealing with reflection or refraction - the incident ray is the ray of light before it strikes the reflecting or refracting surface.






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.