Physics Flashcards
Which 17th century scientist discovered the laws of gravity and motion and was one of the inventors of calculus?
ISAAC NEWTON
What is the name of the phase transition from a liquid to a solid?
FREEZING
Which instrument used for measuring ionizing radiation was invented in 1928 by a German physicist?
GEIGER COUNTER
Giving its name to an English prog rock band, which mechanical device produces static electricity with lightning-like flashes?
VAN DE GRAAFF GENERATOR
Which phenomenon explains why a pencil appears to be bent when it is partly immersed in a glass of water?
REFRACTION
Schrödinger’s thought experiment imagines a scenario where what type of animal is put in a locked steel chamber and is considered both alive and dead until the chamber is opened?
CAT
In 1920 which physicist, born in New Zealand, first suggested the use of the word “proton” for the particle he discovered in 1917?
ERNEST RUTHERFORD
Measured in farads, what is the ability of a body to store an electrical charge?
CAPACITANCE
Who formulated the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, and published a set of four partial differential equations that can be combined to show that light is an electromagnetic wave?
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL
Commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn passes an observer, what name is given to the apparent change of frequency of light or sound because of the relative motion of the source and the observer?
DOPPLER EFFECT
What is the tendency of an object in motion to remain in motion, or an object at rest to remain at rest, unless acted upon by a force?
INERTIA
Which SI unit is named after an Italian nobleman who is credited as the inventor of the electrical battery?
VOLT
A rectifier is an electrical device that converts alternating current to what other type of current?
DIRECT CURRENT
In thermodynamics, what term (denoted S) is used as a measure of the disorder present in a system?
ENTROPY
In the mass-energy equivalence equation E=mc2, what does c represent?
SPEED OF LIGHT
Known as the “God particle” and postulated in 1964, the discovery of which elementary particle was announced at CERN in 2012?
HIGGS BOSON
The three fundamental modes of heat transfer are convection, radiation and which other mode?
CONDUCTION
What is the name of the device which generates microwaves in a microwave oven?
(CAVITY) MAGNETRON
In1942, who led the team that produced the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction with the Chicago Pile-1 experimental reactor?
ENRICO FERMI
What name is given to the temperature and pressure at which the three phases (gas, liquid, and solid) of a substance coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium?
TRIPLE POINT
In the electromagnetic spectrum, what type of radiation has wavelengths that are shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and typically longer than those of gamma rays?
X-RAYS
Which gas law states that for a given mass, at constant temperature, the pressure times the volume is a constant?
BOYLE’S LAW
The LHC at CERN is the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider. What do the initials LHC stand for?
LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
What is the apparent force, equal and opposite to the centripetal force, drawing a rotating body away from the centre of rotation?
CENTRIFUGAL FORCE
To the nearest degree, what is the value of absolute zero on the Celsius scale?
-273O
Named after a British physicist, what type of scattering causes the blue hue of the daytime sky and the reddening of the sun at sunset?
RAYLEIGH SCATTERING
What name is given to a process in which heat does not enter or leave a system?
ADIABATIC
In classical mechanics, what is the product of mass and velocity?
MOMENTUM
What is the ability of some materials (notably crystals and certain ceramics) to generate an electric potential in response to applied mechanical stress?
PIEZOELECTRICITY
Which law of thermodynamics states that “if two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other”?
ZEROTH LAW
Largely devised by Bohr and Heisenberg, which interpretation of quantum mechanics is named after the city where the Niels Bohr Institute was founded?
COPENHAGEN
Which isotope of plutonium is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons?
PLUTONIUM-239
Experiments carried out by the Opera collaboration in 2011 indicated (incorrectly) that what type of particle may travel faster than the speed of light?
NEUTRINO
Named after a 19th century German physicist, what is the SI unit of magnetic flux?
WEBER
Which theory was introduced in Einstein’s 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies? (two-word answer required)
SPECIAL RELATIVITY
In the acronym ‘maser’, what does the ‘m’ stand for?
MICROWAVE
Invented by Donald Glaser in 1952, which vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) is used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it?
BUBBLE CHAMBER
Which physical constant (denoted h), reflecting the sizes of quanta in quantum mechanics, is equal to 6.626 × 10-34 m2 kg / s?
PLANCK CONSTANT
What name is given to the flow of an ideal fluid that is assumed to have no viscosity?
INVISCID FLOW
The characteristic “blue glow” of nuclear reactors is due to what type of electromagnetic radiation, which is emitted when a charged particle passes through an insulator at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium?
CHERENKOV RADIATION
Which gas law is a combination of other gas laws (including Avogadro’s law), and is a good approximation of the behaviour of many gases under many conditions?
IDEAL GAS LAW
A pycnometer is a device used to determine what property of a liquid?
DENSITY
Which state of matter is a collection of charged particles that respond strongly to electromagnetic fields, taking the form of gas-like clouds or ion beams?
PLASMA
What type of wave creates oscillations that are perpendicular to the propagation of energy transfer?
TRANSVERSE
On which temperature scale are the freezing and boiling points of water set to 0 and 80 degrees respectively?
REAUMER SCALE
S= k log W is inscribed above a bust on whose grave in Vienna?
LUDWIG BOLTZMANN
What is the maximum number of electrons that can be put into an s subshell?
TWO
In Feynman Diagrams, what group of particles are depicted moving backward along the time axis?
ANTIPARTICLES
In what type of radioactive decay does a neutron change into a proton by emitting an electron and an antineutrino via an intermediate W- boson? (two-word answer required)
BETA MINUS
Named after the Tanzanian schoolboy who discovered it, what name is given to the assertion that warmer water can sometimes freeze faster than colder water?
MPEMBA EFFECT
