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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 quantity that possesses a magnitude but not a direction. Mass and length are common examples.






2. When an object is held in circular motion about a massive body - like a planet or a sun - due to the force of gravity - that object is said to be in orbit. Objects in orbit are in perpetual free fall - and so are therefore weightless.






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






4. 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.






5. The dot product of the area and the magnetic field passing through it. Graphically - it is a measure of the number and length of magnetic field lines passing through that area. It is measured in Webers (Wb).






6. A vector of magnitude 1 along one of the coordinate axes. Generally - we take the basis vectors to be and - the vectors of length 1 along the x- and y-axes - respectively.






7. The number - N - of neutrons in an atomic nucleus.






8. The principle by which the displacements from different waves traveling in the same medium add up. Superposition is the basis for interference.






9. Heat transfer via the mass movement of molecules.






10. 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.






11. A vector quantity - - that reflects the change of angular displacement with time - and is typically given in units of rad/s. To find the direction of the angular velocity vector - take your right hand and curl your fingers along the particle or body






12. 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.






13. The force that binds protons and neutrons together in the atomic nucleus.






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






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






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






17. 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.






18. The building blocks of all matter - quarks are the constituent parts of protons - neutrons - and mesons.






19. 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.






20. 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.






21. A system with many parts in periodic - or repetitive - motion. The oscillations in one part cause vibrations in nearby parts.






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






23. Relates the angle of incidence to the angle of refraction: .


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






25. A constant in the numerator of a formula.






26. The amount of heat necessary for a material undergoing sublimation to make a phase change from gas to solid or solid to gas - without a change in temperature.






27. The amount of energy that metal must absorb before it can release a photoelectron from the metal.






28. 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.






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






30. 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.






31. A property common to both vectors and scalars. In the graphical representation of a vector - the vector's magnitude is equal to the length of the arrow.






32. The acceleration of a body experiencing uniform circular motion. This acceleration is always directed toward the center of the circle.






33. 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.






34. 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.






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






36. The force between two surfaces moving relative to one another. The frictional force is parallel to the plane of contact between the two objects and in the opposite direction of the sliding object's motion.






37. 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






38. The current induced in a circuit by a change in magnetic flux.






39. The gravitational force exerted on a given mass.






40. The energy of the molecules that make up an object. It is related to heat - which is the amount of energy transferred from one object to another object that is a different temperature.






41. Life- The amount of time it takes for one-half of a radioactive sample to decay.






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






43. An equation - PV = nRT - that relates the pressure - volume - temperature - and quantity of an ideal gas. An ideal gas is one that obeys the approximations laid out in the kinetic theory of gases.






44. A small particle-like bundle of electromagnetic radiation.






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






46. When two waves of slightly different frequencies interfere with one another - they produce a "beating" interference pattern that alternates between constructive (in-phase) and destructive (out-of-phase). In the case of sound waves - this sort of inte






47. A nuclear reaction in which a high-energy neutron bombards a heavy - unstable atomic nucleus - causing it to split into two smaller nuclei - and releasing some neutrons and a vast amount of energy at the same time






48. In the Bohr model of the atom - the state in which an electron has the least energy and orbits closest to the nucleus.






49. A vector quantity - equal to the rate of change of the angular velocity vector with time. It is typically given in units of rad/s2.






50. 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.