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






2. A mirror that is curved such that its center is farther from the viewer than the edges - such as the front of a spoon. Concave mirrors reflect light through a focal point.






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






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






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






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






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






8. 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






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






10. The number of hydrogen atoms in one gram of hydrogen - equal to . When counting the number of molecules in a gas - it is often convenient to count them in moles.






11. 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.






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






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






14. 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.






15. 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.






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






17. 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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18. An experiment by Ernest Rutherford that proved for the first time that atoms have nuclei.






19. 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






20. 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.






21. 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.






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






23. The name of an electron released from the surface of a metal due to the photoelectric effect.






24. The tendency of an object to remain at a constant velocity - or its resistance to being accelerated. Newton's First Law is alternatively called the Law of Inertia because it describes this tendency.






25. 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.






26. 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.






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






28. 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.






29. The force involved in beta decay that changes a proton to a neutron and releases an electron and a neutrino.






30. 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.






31. Two quantities are inversely proportional if an increase in one results in a proportional decrease in the other - and a decrease in one results in a proportional increase in the other. In a formula defining a certain quantity - those quantities to wh






32. 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






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






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






36. 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.






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






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






39. An experiment in 1879 that showed that the speed of light is constant to all observers. Einstein used the results of this experiment as support for his theory of special relativity.






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






41. The reaction force of the ground - a table - etc. - when an object is placed upon it. The normal force is a direct consequence of Newton's Third Law: when an object is placed on the ground - the ground pushes back with the same force that it is pushe






42. The mass number - A - is the sum of the number of protons and neutrons in a nucleus. It is very close to the weight of that nucleus in atomic mass units.






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






44. 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.






45. 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.






46. The joule (J) is the unit of work and energy. A joule is 1 N · m or 1 kg · m2/s2.






47. Heat transfer via the mass movement of molecules.






48. The property by which a changing current in one coil of wire induces an emf in another.






49. 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.






50. 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.