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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. For a gas held at constant pressure - temperature and volume are directly proportional.

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2. A push or a pull that causes an object to accelerate.






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






4. The coefficient of static friction - for two materials is the constant of proportionality between the normal force and the maximum force of static friction. It is always a number between zero and one.






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






6. The points of maximum displacement along a wave. In traveling waves - the crests move in the direction of propagation of the wave. The crests of standing waves - also called anti-nodes - remain in one place.






7. 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.






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






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






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






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






12. 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.






13. 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.






14. The path of each planet around the sun is an ellipse with the sun at one focus.

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15. The line that every particle in the rotating rigid body circles about.






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






17. A wavelength - given by = h/mv - which is associated with matter. Louis de Broglie proposed the idea that matter could be treated as waves in 1923 and applied this theory successfully to small particles like electrons.






18. 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.






19. 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.

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20. 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






21. 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.






22. 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






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






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

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25. 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.






26. 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 -






27. The mass difference between a nucleus and the sum of the masses of the constituent protons and neutrons.






28. 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.






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






30. Atoms of the same element may have different numbers of neutrons and therefore different masses. Atoms of the same element but with different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element.






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






32. The reaction force of the ground - a table - etc. - when an object is placed upon it. The normal force is a direct consequence of Newton's Third Law: when an object is placed on the ground - the ground pushes back with the same force that it is pushe






33. The experience of being in free fall. If you are in a satellite - elevator - or other free-falling object - then you have a weight of zero Newtons relative to that object.






34. 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.






35. An object at rest remains at rest - unless acted upon by a net force. An object in motion remains in motion - unless acted upon by a net force.

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36. A number - Z - associated with the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom. Every element can be defined in s of its atomic number - since every atom of a given element has the same number of protons.






37. The force that causes simple harmonic motion. The restoring force is always directed toward an object's equilibrium position.






38. The energy associated with the configuration of bodies attracted to each other by the gravitational force. It is a measure of the amount of work necessary to get the two bodies from a chosen point of reference to their present position. This point of






39. The amount of heat necessary to transform a solid at a given temperature into a liquid of the same temperature - or the amount of heat needed to be removed from a liquid of a given temperature to transform it into a solid of the same temperature.






40. A scale for measuring temperature - defined such that water freezes at 0ºC and boils at 100ºC. 0ºC = 273 K.






41. A frequency - f - defined as the number of revolutions a rigid body makes in a given time interval. It is a scalar quantity commonly denoted in units of Hertz (Hz) or s-1.






42. The phenomenon of light bouncing off a surface - such as a mirror.






43. 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.






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






45. The ray of light that is refracted through a surface into a different medium.






46. The study of the properties of visible light - i.e. - the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths between 360 and 780 nm (1 nm = m/s).






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






48. There are a few versions of this law. One is that heat flows spontaneously from hot to cold - but not in the reverse direction. Another is that there is no such thing as a 100% efficient heat engine. A third states that the entropy - or disorder - of






49. 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.






50. A collision in which momentum is conserved but kinetic energy is not.