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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. Energy associated with an object's position in space - or configuration in relation to other objects. This is a latent form of energy - where the amount of potential energy reflects the amount of energy that potentially could be released as kinetic e






2. A back-and-forth movement about an equilibrium position. Springs - pendulums - and other oscillators experience harmonic motion.






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






4. A form of vector multiplication - where two vectors are multiplied to produce a scalar. The dot product of two vectors - A and B - is expressed by the equation A · B = AB cos .






5. 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.






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






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






8. 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.






9. 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.






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






11. A collision in which momentum is conserved but kinetic energy is not.






12. The study of the properties of visible light - i.e. - the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths between 360 and 780 nm (1 nm = m/s).






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






14. The five equations used to solve problems in kinematics in one dimension with uniform acceleration.






15. The dot product of the area and the magnetic field passing through it. Graphically - it is a measure of the number and length of magnetic field lines passing through that area. It is measured in Webers (Wb).






16. The square of the amplitude of a sound wave is called the sound's loudness - or volume.






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






18. The disorder of a system.






19. A vector quantity defined as the product of the force acting on a body multiplied by the time interval over which the force is exerted.






20. The center of an atom - where the protons and neutrons reside. Electrons then orbit this nucleus.






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






22. 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.






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






24. The units of frequency - defined as inverse-seconds (1 Hz = 1 s-1). "Hertz" can be used interchangeably with "cycles per second."






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

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26. A nuclear reaction that takes place only at very high temperatures. Two light atoms - often hydrogen - fuse together to form a larger single atom - releasing a vast amount of energy in the process.






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






28. A mirror that is curved such that its center is closer to the viewer than the edges - such as a doorknob. Convex mirrors reflect light away from a focal point.






29. 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.






30. 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






31. 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






32. A device that breaks incoming light down into spectral rays - so that one can see the exact wavelength constituents of the light.






33. 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






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






35. A device made of two coils - which converts current of one voltage into current of another voltage. In a step-up transformer - the primary coil has fewer turns than the secondary - thus increasing the voltage. In a step-down transformer - the seconda






36. 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.






37. 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.






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






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






40. A wave that interferes with its own reflection so as to produce oscillations which stand still - rather than traveling down the length of the medium. Standing waves on a string with both ends tied down make up the harmonic series.






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






42. A push or a pull that causes an object to accelerate.






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

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44. 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






45. The force of gravity - F - between two particles of mass and - separated by a distance r - has a magnitude of - where G is the gravitational constant. The force is directed along the line joining the two particles.

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46. The separation of different color light via refraction.






47. 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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48. The energy stored in a thermodynamic system.






49. 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 -






50. 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.