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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. Heat transfer via electromagnetic waves.






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






3. A quantity that possesses a magnitude but not a direction. Mass and length are common examples.






4. A wave with wave crests that propagate down the length of the medium - in contrast to stationary standing waves. The velocity at which a crest propagates is called the wave speed.






5. A transverse traveling wave created by the oscillations of an electric field and a magnetic field. Electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light - m/s. Examples include microwaves - X rays - and visible light.






6. 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






7. A body or set of bodies that we choose to analyze as a group.






8. 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.






9. 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.






10. 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.






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






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






13. When an object is held in circular motion about a massive body - like a planet or a sun - due to the force of gravity - that object is said to be in orbit. Objects in orbit are in perpetual free fall - and so are therefore weightless.






14. A pulley is a simple machine that consists of a rope that slides around a disk or block.






15. 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.






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






17. The spectrum containing all the different kinds of electromagnetic waves - ranging in wavelength and frequency.






18. The energy of a particle rotating around an axis.






19. 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.






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






22. An electromagnetic wave of very high frequency.






23. The temperature at which a material will change phase from solid to liquid or liquid to solid.






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






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






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






27. An object cannot be cooled to absolute zero.






28. 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.






29. A means of defining the direction of the cross product vector. To define the direction of the vector - position your right hand so that your fingers point in the direction of A - and then curl them around so that they point in the direction of B. Th






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






31. An image created by a mirror or lens in such a way that light does actually come from where the image appears to be. If you place a screen in front of a real image - the image will be projected onto the screen.






32. The ray of light that is reflected from a mirror or other reflecting surface.






33. The process by which unstable nuclei spontaneously release particles and/or energy so as to come to a more stable arrangement. The most common forms of radioactive decay are alpha decay - beta decay - and gamma decay.






34. 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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35. Occurs when every point in the rigid body moves in a circular path around a line called the axis of rotation.






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






38. The sum of a system's potential and kinetic energy. In many systems - including projectiles - pulleys - pendulums - and motion on frictionless surfaces - mechanical energy is conserved. One important type of problem in which mechanical energy is not






39. The property of a vector that distinguishes it from a scalar: while scalars have only a magnitude - vectors have both a magnitude and a direction. When graphing vectors in the xy-coordinate space - direction is usually given by the angle measured cou






40. A property common to both vectors and scalars. In the graphical representation of a vector - the vector's magnitude is equal to the length of the arrow.






41. The standing wave with the lowest frequency that is supported by a string with both ends tied down is called the fundamental - or resonance - of the string. The wavelength of the fundamental is twice the length of the string - .






42. The longest side of a right triangle - opposite to the right angle.






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






44. 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






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






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






47. In radioactive substances - the number of nuclei that decay per second. Activity - A - will be larger in large samples of radioactive material - since there will be more nuclei.






48. 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.






49. 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.






50. A unit of measurement for energy on atomic levels. 1 eV = J.