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 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.






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






3. 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.






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






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






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






7. 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






8. The series of standing waves supported by a string with both ends tied down. The first member of the series - called the fundamental - has two nodes at the ends and one anti-node in the middle. The higher harmonics are generated by placing an integra






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






10. A neutrally charged particle that - along with protons - constitutes the nucleus of an atom.






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






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






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






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






15. 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.






16. 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.






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






18. A transfer of thermal energy from one system to another.






19. The cosine of an angle in a right triangle is equal to the length of the side adjacent to the angle divided by the length of the hypotenuse.






20. 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






21. 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.






22. When a solid - liquid - or gas changes into another phase of matter.






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






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






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






26. 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.






27. 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


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






29. 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.






30. The gravitational force exerted on a given mass.






31. 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.






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






33. A constant in the numerator of a formula.






34. 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.






35. Indicates how "bouncy" or "stiff" a spring is. More specifically - the spring constant - k - is the constant of proportionality between the restoring force exerted by the spring - and the spring's displacement from equilibrium. The greater the value






36. 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.






37. 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.






38. 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.






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






40. 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.






41. The application of kinematics to understand why objects move the way they do. More precisely - dynamics is the study of how forces cause motion.






42. 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.






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. Body diagram- Illustrates the forces acting on an object - drawn as vectors originating from the center of the object.






45. 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.






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






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






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






49. 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.






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