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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 that binds protons and neutrons together in the atomic nucleus.






2. An experiment by Ernest Rutherford that proved for the first time that atoms have nuclei.






3. 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.






4. The angle between a reflected ray and the normal.






5. With spherical mirrors - the radius of the sphere of which the mirror is a part.






6. 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.






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






8. The square of the amplitude of a sound wave is called the sound's loudness - or volume.






9. 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.






10. 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.






11. Energy associated with an object's position in space - or configuration in relation to other objects. This is a latent form of energy - where the amount of potential energy reflects the amount of energy that potentially could be released as kinetic e






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






13. Energy associated with the state of motion. The translational kinetic energy of an object is given by the equation .






14. Represented by R = 8.31 J/mol · K - the universal gas constant fits into the ideal gas law so as to relate temperature to the average kinetic energy of gas molecules.






15. 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






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






17. 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.






18. A vector quantity - L - that is the rotational analogue of linear momentum. For a single particle - the angular momentum is the cross product of the particle's displacement from the axis of rotation and the particle's linear momentum - . For a rigid






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






20. 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






21. The joule (J) is the unit of work and energy. A joule is 1 N · m or 1 kg · m2/s2.






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






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






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






25. The center of an atom - where the protons and neutrons reside. Electrons then orbit this nucleus.






26. 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.






27. The points of maximum negative displacement along a wave. They are the opposite of wave crests.






28. If two systems - A and B - are in thermal equilibrium and if B and C are also in thermal equilibrium - then systems A and C are necessarily in thermal equilibrium.






29. The gravitational force exerted on a given mass.






30. A wave that interferes with its own reflection so as to produce oscillations which stand still - rather than traveling down the length of the medium. Standing waves on a string with both ends tied down make up the harmonic series.






31. For two given media - the smallest angle of incidence at which total internal reflection occurs.






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






33. The stable position of a system where the net force acting on the object is zero.






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






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 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






37. 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 .






38. 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






39. The position - of an object according to a co-ordinate system measured in s of the angle of the object from a certain origin axis. Conventionally - this origin axis is the positive x-axis.






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






41. In an interference or diffraction pattern - the places where there is the least light.






42. 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.






43. 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.






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






45. An object that moves about a stable equilibrium point and experiences a restoring force that is directly proportional to the oscillator's displacement.






46. Also called a diverging lens - a lens that is thinner in the middle than at the edges. Concave lenses refract light away from a focal point.






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. 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.






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






50. 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.