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






2. 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.






3. If the net torque acting on a rigid body is zero - then the angular momentum of the body is constant or conserved.






4. 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






5. An object that retains its overall shape - meaning that the particles that make up the rigid body stay in the same position relative to one another.






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






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






8. States that the net work done on an object is equal to the object's change in kinetic energy.






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






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






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






12. 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.






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






14. The gravitational force exerted on a given mass.






15. Energy cannot be made or destroyed; energy can only be changed from one place to another or from one form to another.






16. 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.






17. The energy stored in a thermodynamic system.






18. A measure of force per unit area. Pressure is measured in N/m2 or Pa.






19. 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 .






20. 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.






21. The units of frequency - defined as inverse-seconds (1 Hz = 1 s-1). "Hertz" can be used interchangeably with "cycles per second."






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

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23. The distance between successive wave crests - or troughs. Wavelength is measured in meters and is related to frequency and wave speed by = v/f.






24. 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






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






26. 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






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






28. Waves carried by variations in air pressure. The speed of sound waves in air at room temperature and pressure is roughly 343 m/s.






29. 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.






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






31. The number of cycles executed by a system in one second. Frequency is the inverse of period - f = 1/T. Frequency is measured in hertz - Hz.






32. 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.






33. The two shorter sides of a right triangle that meet at the right angle.






34. 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.






35. A constant - J · s - which is useful in quantum physics. A second constant associated with Planck's constant is .

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36. 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.






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






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






39. Given the period - T - and semimajor axis - a - of a planet's orbit - the ratio is the same for every planet.

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40. Two oscillators that have the same frequency and amplitude - but reach their maximum displacements at different times - are said to have different phases. Similarly - two waves are in phase if their crests and troughs line up exactly - and they are o






41. A device that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy by rotating a coil in a magnetic field; sometimes called a "dynamo."






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






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






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






45. 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.






46. 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.






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






48. A process that aligns a wave of light to oscillate in one dimension rather than two.






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






50. 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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