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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 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.






2. 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.






3. An object cannot be cooled to absolute zero.






4. 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.






5. An area of high air pressure that acts as the wave trough for sound waves. The spacing between successive rarefactions is the wavelength of sound - and the number of successive areas of rarefaction that arrive at the ear per second is the frequency -






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






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






8. 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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9. 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






10. 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.






11. 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.






12. The effect of force on rotational motion.






13. A positively charged particle that - along with the neutron - occupies the nucleus of the atom.






14. For a reflected light ray - . In other words - a ray of light reflects of a surface in the same plane as the incident ray and the normal - and at an angle to the normal that is equal to the angle between the incident ray and the normal.






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. 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.






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






18. 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






19. 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.






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






21. An object is called radioactive if it undergoes radioactive decay.






22. The unit of magnetic flux - equal to one T · m2.






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






24. 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.






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






26. The disorder of a system.






27. 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.






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






29. A collision in which both kinetic energy and momentum are conserved.






30. A form of vector multiplication - where two vectors are multiplied to produce a third vector. The cross product of two vectors - A and B - separated by an angle - - is - where is a unit vector perpendicular to both A and B. To deine which direction






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






32. The velocity at any given instant in time. To be contrasted with average velocity - which is a measure of the change in displacement over a given time interval.






33. A unit for measuring angles; also called a "rad." 2p rad = 360º.






34. The points midway between nodes on a standing wave - where the oscillations are largest.






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






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






37. A device that breaks incoming light down into spectral rays - so that one can see the exact wavelength constituents of the light.






38. 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






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






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






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






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






43. 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).






44. 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






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






46. 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






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






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






49. The index of refraction n = c/v of a substance characterizes the speed of light in that substance - v. It also characterizes - by way of Snell's Law - the angle at which light refracts in that substance.






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