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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. 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.






2. The force that binds protons and neutrons together in the atomic nucleus.






3. The force transmitted along a rope or cable.






4. 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.






5. 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






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






7. 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






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

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9. 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.






10. 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.






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






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






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






14. A pendulum consists of a bob connected to a rod or rope. At small angles - a pendulum's motion approximates simple harmonic motion as it swings back and forth without friction.






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






16. 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.






17. 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.






18. 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






19. A system that no external net force acts upon. Objects within the system may exert forces upon one another - but they cannot receive any impulse from outside forces. Momentum is conserved in isolated systems.






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






21. If two systems - A and B - are in thermal equilibrium and if B and C are also in thermal equilibrium - then systems A and C are necessarily in thermal equilibrium.






22. Heat transfer by molecular collisions.






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






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






25. An object cannot be cooled to absolute zero.






26. The disorder of a system.






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






28. The gravitational force exerted on a given mass.






29. Also called a converging lens - a lens that is thicker in the middle than at the edges. Convex lenses refract light through a focal point.






30. 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






31. The points on a standing wave where total destructive interference causes the medium to remain fixed at its equilibrium position.






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






33. Heat transfer via electromagnetic waves.






34. 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.






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






36. The number - N - of neutrons in an atomic nucleus.






37. A model for the atom developed in 1913 by Niels Bohr. According to this model - the electrons orbiting a nucleus can only orbit at certain particular radii. Excited electrons may jump to a more distant radii and then return to their ground state - em






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






39. An almost massless particle of neutral charge that is released along with a beta particle in beta decay.






40. 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.






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






42. In reference to oscillation - amplitude is the maximum displacement of the oscillator from its equilibrium position. Amplitude tells how far an oscillator is swinging back and forth. In periodic motion - amplitude is the maximum displacement in each






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






44. Done when energy is transferred by a force. The work done by a force F in displacing an object by s is W = F · s.






45. 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






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






47. The speed at which a wave crest or trough propagates. Note that this is not the speed at which the actual medium (like the stretched string or the air particles) moves.






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






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






50. Defined as the rate at which work is done - or the rate at which energy is transformed. P is measured in joules per second (J/s) - or watts (W).