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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. 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.






3. The net change - - in a point's angular position - . It is a scalar quantity.






4. 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).






5. 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.






6. The gravitational force exerted on a given mass.






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






8. Atoms of the same element may have different numbers of neutrons and therefore different masses. Atoms of the same element but with different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element.






9. 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






10. A transfer of thermal energy from one system to another.






11. A transfer of thermal energy. We don't speak about systems "having" heat - but about their "transferring" heat - much in the way that dynamical systems don't "have" work - but rather "do" work.






12. The phenomenon by which light traveling from a high n to a low n material will reflect from the optical interface if the incident angle is greater than the critical angle.






13. 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.






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






15. A nuclear reaction in which a high-energy neutron bombards a heavy - unstable atomic nucleus - causing it to split into two smaller nuclei - and releasing some neutrons and a vast amount of energy at the same time






16. 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 -






17. The center of a mirror or lens.






18. The path of each planet around the sun is an ellipse with the sun at one focus.

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19. 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.






20. A scalar quantity that tells us how fast an object is moving. It measures the rate of change in distance over time. Speed is to be contrasted with velocity in that there is no direction associated with speed.






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






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






23. An image created by a mirror or lens in such a way that light does not actually come from where the image appears to be.






24. 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.






25. A measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules in a system. Temperature is related to heat by the specific heat of a given substance.






26. Also called a diverging lens - a lens that is thinner in the middle than at the edges. Concave lenses refract light away from a focal point.






27. 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.






28. 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






29. 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.






30. 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






31. Light such that all of the associated waves have the same wavelength and are in phase.






32. 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






33. A coefficient that tells how much a material will expand or contract lengthwise when it is heated or cooled.






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






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






36. 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.






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






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






39. 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






40. 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






41. 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.






42. Heat transfer via the mass movement of molecules.






43. 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






44. Body diagram- Illustrates the forces acting on an object - drawn as vectors originating from the center of the object.






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






46. The principle stating that for any isolated system - linear momentum is constant with time.






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






48. The number of cycles executed by a system in one second. Frequency is the inverse of period - f = 1/T. Frequency is measured in hertz - Hz.






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






50. The current induced in a circuit by a change in magnetic flux.







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