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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 constant of proportionality in Newton's Law of Gravitation. It reflects the proportion of the gravitational force and - the product of two particles' masses divided by the square of the bodies' separation. N · m2/kg2.






2. 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






3. For a heat engine - the ratio of work done by the engine to heat intake. Efficiency is never 100%.






4. A form of radioactivity where an excited atom releases a photon of gamma radiation - thereby returning to a lower energy state. The atomic structure itself does not change in the course of gamma radiation.






5. 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.






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






7. 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.






8. 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






9. 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.






10. The time - T - required for a rigid body to complete one revolution.






11. 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.






12. The energy of a particle moving in space. It is defined in s of a particle's mass - m - and velocity - v - as (1/2)mv2.






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






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






15. F = ma. The net force - F - acting on an object causes the object to accelerate - a. The magnitude of the acceleration is directly proportional to the net force on the object and inversely proportional to the mass - m - of the object.

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






17. Kinematics is the study and description of the motion of objects.






18. 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






19. The state of a nonrotating object upon whom the net torque acting is zero.






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






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

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22. A vector quantity - commonly denoted by the vector s - which reflects an object's change in spatial position. The displacement vector points from the object's starting position to the object's current position in space. If an object is moved from poi






23. The separation of different color light via refraction.






24. The amount heat necessary to cause a substance to undergo a phase transition.






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






26. 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.






27. States that the current induced in a circuit by a change in magnetic flux is in the direction that will oppose that change in flux. Using the right-hand rule - point your thumb in the opposite direction of the change in magnetic flux. The direction y

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28. 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.






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






30. The distance between the focal point and the vertex of a mirror or lens. For concave mirrors and convex lenses - this number is positive. For convex mirrors and concave lenses - this number is negative.






31. 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.

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32. 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.






33. A conserved scalar quantity associated with the state or condition of an object or system of objects. We can roughly define energy as the capacity for an object or system to do work. There are many different types of energy - such as kinetic energy -






34. 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






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






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






37. 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.






38. In the graphical representation of vectors - the tip of the arrow is the pointy end.






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






40. 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 -






41. 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.






42. Linear momentum - p - commonly called "momentum" for short - is a vector quantity defined as the product of an object's mass - m - and its velocity - v.






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






44. A scalar quantity. If an object is moved from point A to point B in space along path AB - the distance that the object has traveled is the length of the path AB. Distance is to be contrasted with displacement - which is simply a measure of the distan






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






46. A force caused by the roughness of two materials in contact - deformations in the materials - and a molecular attraction between the materials. Frictional forces are always parallel to the plane of contact between two surfaces and opposite the direct






47. 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






48. 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






49. 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






50. 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.