All About Physics Quiz

Question: What is the rate of acceleration of gravity at the Earth’s surface?

Answer: Gravity, also called gravitation, is the universal force of attraction acting between all matter. Gravity is measured by the acceleration that it gives to freely falling objects. At Earth’s surface, the acceleration of gravity is about 9.8 meters (32 feet) per second per second. Thus, for every second, an object is in free fall, its speed increases by about 9.8 meters per second.

Question: Who discovered the rotating magnetic field?

Answer: Serbian American inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery.

Question: Who formulated the second law of thermodynamics?

Answer: German mathematical physicist Rudolf Clausius formulated the second law of thermodynamics, which can be stated as: “Heat cannot of itself pass from a colder to a hotter body.” Clausius is credited with making thermodynamics a science.

Question: Which law states that the magnetic fields are related to the electric current produced in them?

Answer: Ampère’s law is one of the basic relations between electricity and magnetism, stating quantitatively the relation of a magnetic field to the electric current or changing electric field that produces it. The law is named in honor of André-Marie Ampère, who by 1825 had laid the foundation of electromagnetic theory.

Question: Who is best known for the rediscovery of “fixed air”?

Answer: British chemist and physicist Joseph Black is best known for the rediscovery of fixed air (carbon dioxide), the concept of latent heat, and the discovery of the bicarbonates (such as bicarbonate of soda).

Question: A candela is the SI unit for what?

Answer: A candela is a S.I. unit of luminous intensity in the International System of Units (SI). It is defined as the luminous intensity in a given direction of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 1012 hertz. It has a radiant intensity in that same direction of 1/683 watt per steradian (unit solid angle). The candela has replaced the standard candle or lamp as a unit of luminous intensity in calculations involving artificial lighting and is sometimes called the “new candle.”

Question: For what was Carl David Anderson awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936?

Answer: American physicist Carl David Anderson won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936, with Victor Francis Hess of Austria, for his discovery of the positron, or positive electron, the first known particle of antimatter. A positron is a positively charged subatomic particle having the same mass and magnitude of charge as the electron and constituting the antiparticle of a negative electron.

Question: For which invention did Akasaki Isamu win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2014?

Answer: Japanese materials scientist Akasaki Isamu was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), paving the way for future innovation. He shared the prize with Japanese materials scientist Amano Hiroshi and Japanese-born American materials scientist Nakamura Shuji. In addition to the Nobel Prize, his other notable awards included the Kyoto Prize (2009) and the Draper Prize (2015).

Question: Which is the weakest force in nature?

Answer: The weakest, and yet the most pervasive, of the four basic forces is gravity. According to Newton''s law, all bodies are attracted to each other by a force that depends directly on the mass of each body and inversely on the square of the distance between them. On the scale of atoms, the effects of gravity are negligible compared with the other forces at work.

Question: Why was Ernest Orlando Lawrence awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939?

Answer: American physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence was the winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the cyclotron, the first particle accelerator to achieve high energies. A cyclotron is a class of devices that accelerates charged atomic or subatomic particles in a constant magnetic field.

Question: What phenomenon scatters a light beam by suspended particles in a gas or liquid?

Answer: The Tyndall effect, also called the Tyndall phenomenon, is the scattering of a beam of light by a medium containing small suspended particles—e.g., smoke or dust in a room, which makes visible a light beam entering a window. The effect is named for the 19th-century British physicist John Tyndall, who first studied it extensively.

Question: What is Newton''s first law of motion about?

Answer: The law of inertia, also called Newton’s first law, states that if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by force. The law of inertia was first formulated by Galileo Galilei for horizontal motion on Earth and was later generalized by René Descartes. It is also called the first of Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion.

Question: What is the unit of magnetic induction?

Answer: A tesla is the unit of magnetic induction or magnetic flux density in the metre–kilogram–second system (SI) of physical units. One tesla equals one weber per square meter, corresponding to 10,000 gauss. It is named for Nikola Tesla.

Question: Who discovered canal rays?

Answer: German physicist Eugen Goldstein was known for his work on electrical phenomena in gases and cathode rays. He is also credited with discovering canal rays. In 1886, he discovered what he termed Kanalstrahlen, or canal rays or positive rays. These are positively charged ions that are accelerated toward and through a perforated cathode in an evacuated tube.

Question: What is the formula for density?

Answer: Density is the mass of a unit volume of a material substance. The formula for density is d = M/V, where d is density, M is mass, and V is volume. Density is commonly expressed in units of grams per cubic centimeter. For example, the density of water is 1 gram per cubic centimeter, and Earth’s density is 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter.

Question: Who first discovered the neutron?

Answer: English physicist James Chadwick received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935 for the discovery of the neutron. A neutron is a neutral subatomic particle that is a constituent of every atomic nucleus except ordinary hydrogen. It has no electric charge and a rest mass equal to 1.67493 × 10−27 kg—marginally greater than that of the proton but nearly 1,839 times greater than that of the electron.

Question: What is the change in the direction of a wave with a change in the medium called?

Answer: In physics, refraction is the change in direction of a wave passing from one medium to another caused by its change in speed. For example, waves in deep water travel faster than in shallow. A ray of sunlight is composed of many wavelengths that, in combination, appear to be colorless. Upon entering a glass prism, the different refractions of the various wavelengths spread them apart as in a rainbow.

Question: For what discovery were Owen Chamberlain and Emilio Segrè awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959?

Answer: Owen Chamberlain shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Emilio Segrè in 1959 for their discovery of the antiproton. This previously postulated subatomic particle was the second antiparticle to be discovered and led directly to the discovery of many additional antiparticles.

Question: Who among these men was the first scientist to conduct a controlled nuclear chain reaction experiment?

Answer: During World War II Enrico Fermi and his fellow physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner saw the perils to world peace if Adolf Hitler''s scientists should apply the principle of the nuclear chain reaction to the production of an atomic bomb. Fermi was assigned the task of producing a controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He designed the necessary apparatus, and on December 2, 1942, he led a team of scientists at the University of Chicago who achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

Question: The thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s cat postulates that a cat can be in two states at the same time. What are those two states?

Answer: In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger created the thought experiment that later became known as Schrödinger’s cat. A cat is locked in a steel box with a small amount of a radioactive substance such that after one hour there is an equal probability of one atom either decaying or not decaying. If the atom decays, a device smashes a vial of poisonous gas, killing the cat. However, until the box is opened and the atom’s wave function collapses, the atom’s wave function is in a superposition of two states: decay and non-decay. Thus, the cat is in a superposition of two states: alive and dead. Schrödinger thought this outcome “quite ridiculous,” and when and how the fate of the cat is determined has been a subject of much debate among physicists.

Question: In the early 18th century, what startling conclusion did John Dalton reach regarding the “ultimate particles,” or atoms, of each of the chemical elements?

Answer: British chemist and physicist John Dalton claimed that atoms of different elements have their own size and mass; this claim is the cardinal feature of his atomic theory. His argument that each element had its own kind of atom was counterintuitive to those who believed that having so many different fundamental particles would destroy the simplicity of nature, but Dalton dismissed their objections as fanciful. His argument was necessary for subsequent advances in chemistry.

Question: What law applies to the working of hydraulic brakes in automobiles?

Answer: Pascal’s principle, also called Pascal’s law, is a statement that in a fluid at rest in a closed container, a pressure change in one part is transmitted without loss to every portion of the fluid and to the walls of the container. The effect is is used in such applications as hydraulic brakes. This principle was first articulated by the French scientist Blaise Pascal.

Question: What is vaporization of dry ice an example of?

Answer: Sublimation is the conversion of a substance from the solid to the gaseous state without its becoming liquid. An example of sublimation is the vaporization of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) at ordinary atmospheric pressure and temperature. The phenomenon is the result of vapor pressure and temperature relationships.

Question: With whom did Ferdinand Braun share the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for the development of wireless telegraphy?

Answer: German physicist Ferdinand Braun shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 with Guglielmo Marconi for the development of wireless telegraphy. Braun was recognized by the Nobel committee for his improvement of Marconi’s transmitting system. In early wireless transmission, the antenna was directly in the power circuit, and broadcasting was limited to a range of about 15 kilometers. Braun solved this problem by producing a sparkless antenna circuit (patented in 1899) that linked transmitter power to the antenna circuit inductively. This invention greatly increased the broadcasting range of a transmitter and has been applied to radar, radio, and television.

Question: What is the unit of measure for cycles per second?

Answer: The hertz (Hz) is a unit of frequency that measures the number of cycles per second.

Question: What reaction involving atomic nuclei is the source of the Sun’s energy?

Answer: The Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, a process by which nuclear reactions between light elements form heavier ones (up to iron). Substantial amounts of energy are released in cases where the interacting nuclei belong to elements with low atomic numbers. Fusion reactions constitute the fundamental energy source of stars.

Question: What is the escape velocity for a body from the surface of the Earth?

Answer: The escape velocity in astronomy and space exploration is the velocity that is sufficient for a body to escape from a gravitational center of attraction without undergoing any further acceleration. Escape velocity decreases with altitude and is equal to the square root of 2 (or about 1.414) times the velocity necessary to maintain a circular orbit at the same altitude. At the surface of the Earth, if atmospheric resistance could be ignored, the escape velocity would be about 11.2 km (6.96 miles) per second.

Question: What is tribology?

Answer: Tribology is the study of the interaction of sliding surfaces. It includes three subjects: friction, wear, and lubrication. There is a difficulty in that friction is generally characterized as a branch of physics or mechanical engineering, wear is part of the material science of metallurgy, while lubrication is a branch of chemistry.

Question: Which type of electromagnetic radiation has the shortest wavelength?

Answer: Gamma ray is a type of electromagnetic radiation, having the shortest wavelength and highest energy. The term gamma ray was coined by British physicist Ernest Rutherford in 1903, following early studies of the emissions of radioactive nuclei.

Question: Who discovered electromagnetic induction?

Answer: English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday''s many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism. Faraday’s work on electrochemistry provided him with an essential clue for the investigation of static electrical induction. Electromagnetic induction is the induction of an electromotive force in a circuit by varying the magnetic flux linked with the circuit. This phenomenon was first noticed and investigated by Faraday; the law of induction is its quantitative expression.

Question: What is used to measure wind speed?

Answer: The anemometer is used for measuring the speed of airflow in the atmosphere, in wind tunnels, and other gas-flow applications. Most widely used for wind-speed measurements is the revolving-cup electric anemometer, in which the revolving cups drive an electric generator. The output of the generator operates an electric meter that is calibrated in wind speed. The useful range of this device is approximately from 5 to 100 knots.

Question: Who invented the electron microscope?

Answer: German electrical engineer Ernst Ruska invented the electron microscope. He was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986 (the other half was divided between Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig).

Question: A transverse wave oscillates along paths at what angle to the direction of the wave''s propagation?

Answer: A transverse wave is a wave in which all points on a wave oscillate along paths at right angles to the direction of the wave''s advance. Surface ripples on water, seismic S (secondary) waves, and electromagnetic (e.g., radio and light) waves are examples of transverse waves.

Question: What term refers to the change of velocity with time?

Answer: Acceleration is the rate at which velocity changes with time, in terms of both speed and direction. A point or an object moving in a straight line is accelerated if it speeds up or slows down. Motion on a circle is accelerated even if the speed is constant because the direction is continually changing.

Question: What did physicist J.J. Thomson discover in the 1890s when he analyzed cathode rays and concluded that they were made up of charged “corpuscles”?

Answer: In 1897 physicist J.J. Thomson discovered the electron. He did so by concluding that all matter, whatever its source, contains particles of the same kind that are much less massive than the atoms of which they form a part. These particules are now called electrons; he originally called them corpuscles. His discovery was the result of an attempt to solve a long-standing controversy regarding the nature of cathode rays, which occur when an electric current is driven through a vessel from which most of the air or other gas has been pumped out.

Question: Arthur Eddington is known for investigating which type of celestial body?

Answer: Arthur Eddington was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics, investigating the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He also was the first expositor of the theory of relativity in the English language.

Question: Physicist J.J. Thomson''s atomic model, sometimes called the plum-pudding model, describes the atom as taking which configuration?

Answer: The Thomson atomic model is the earliest theoretical description of the inner structure of atoms, proposed about 1900 by Scottish physicist Lord Kelvin and strongly supported by English physicist Sir J.J. Thomson. Thomson held that atoms are uniform spheres of positively charged matter in which electrons are embedded. Popularly known as the plum-pudding model, it had to be abandoned (1911) on both theoretical and experimental grounds in favour of the Rutherford atomic model, in which the electrons describe orbits around a positive nucleus.

Question: What is the name of the theoretical explanation of the behaviour of subatomic particles offered by British physicist P.A.M. Dirac in the 1920s?

Answer: In 1927 P.A.M. Dirac provided the foundations for a theory that explained the phenomena of subatomic particles with his quantum theory of the electromagnetic field. Dirac''s theory treated the electromagnetic field as a “gas” of photons (the quanta of light), and it yielded a correct description of the absorption and emission of radiation by electrons in atoms. It was the first quantum field theory.

Question: What is the phenomenon of Raman scattering, named after Indian physicist C.V. Raman?

Answer: C.V. Raman was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the light that is deflected changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is known as Raman scattering.

Question: The first law of thermodynamics is also known by what name?

Answer: The conservation of energy, also known as the first law of thermodynamics or the law of constant energy, is the principle of physics according to which the energy of interacting bodies or particles in a closed system remains constant.

Question: What is the capacitance of a capacitor when one coulomb of electricity changes the potential between the plates by one volt?

Answer: Farad is the unit of electrical capacitance (ability to hold an electric charge) in the meter–kilogram–second system of physical units, named in honor of the English scientist Michael Faraday. The capacitance of a capacitor is one farad when one coulomb of electricity changes the potential between the plates by one volt.

Question: What is the flow of electric charge that periodically reverses direction?

Answer: Alternating current is the flow of electric charge that periodically reverses. It starts, say, from zero, grows to a maximum, decreases to zero, reverses, reaches a maximum in the opposite direction, returns to the original value, and repeats this cycle indefinitely.

Question: What instrument measures and records the relative humidity of air?

Answer: Hygrometer is an instrument used in meteorological science to measure the humidity or amount of water vapor in the air. Several major types of hygrometers are used to measure humidity.

Question: What term defines work done per unit of time?

Answer: Power defines the time rate of doing work or delivering energy. It is expressible as the amount of work done W, or energy transferred, divided by the time interval t—or W/t. In the International System of Units, power is measured in newton-meters per second.

Question: Who built the first fuel cell?

Answer: Sir William Robert Grove was a British physicist and a justice of Britain’s High Court (from 1880), who built the first fuel cell in 1842 and first offered proof of the thermal dissociation of atoms within a molecule. Fuel cells are any of a class of devices that convert the chemical energy of a fuel directly into electricity by electrochemical reactions. A fuel cell resembles a battery in many respects, but it can supply electrical energy over a much longer period.

Question: Ohm''s law describes the relationship between what?

Answer: Ohm’s law describes the relationship between current, voltage, and resistance. The amount of steady current through a large number of materials is directly proportional to the potential difference, or voltage, across the materials. Ohm’s law may be expressed mathematically as V/I = R.

Question: What is used to split white light into different colors?

Answer: A prism is a piece of glass or other transparent material cut with precise angles and plane faces, useful for analyzing and reflecting light. An ordinary triangular prism can separate white light into its constituent colors, called a spectrum.

Question: Which of the following is not a scalar quantity?

Answer: Scalar is a physical quantity that is completely described by its magnitude; examples of scalars are volume, density, speed, energy, mass, and time. Other quantities, such as force and velocity, have both magnitude and direction and are called vectors.

Question: What is the other name of strong force?

Answer: Strong force, or nuclear force, is a fundamental interaction of nature that acts between subatomic particles of matter. The strong force binds quarks together to make more-familiar subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. It also holds together the atomic nucleus and underlies interactions between all particles containing quarks.

Question: What is the internal force per unit area of a body that arises from externally applied forces?

Answer: Stress is a force per unit area within materials that arises from externally applied forces, uneven heating, or permanent deformation and that permits an accurate description and prediction of elastic, plastic, and fluid behavior. Stress is expressed as a quotient of a force divided by an area.

Question: Who discovered the principle of interference of light?

Answer: English physician and physicist Thomas Young established the principle of interference of light and thus resurrected the century-old wave theory of light. He was the first to give the word energy its scientific significance, and Young’s modulus, a constant in the mathematical equation describing elasticity, was named in his honor.

Question: What is the SI unit of an electric charge?

Answer: The coulomb is the unit of electric charge in the meter-kilogram-second-ampere system, the basis of the SI system of physical units. It is abbreviated as C. The coulomb is defined as the quantity of electricity transported in one second by a current of one ampere. Named for the 18th–19th-century French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, it is approximately equivalent to 6.24 × 10¹⁸ electrons.

Question: Who wrote the Principia?

Answer: Newton’s laws first appeared in his masterpiece, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), commonly known as the Principia. In the Principia, Newton described the universe as fixed, with Earth and other heavenly bodies moving harmoniously in accordance with mathematical laws. He developed his three laws to explain why the orbits of the planets are ellipses rather than circles, at which he succeeded, but it turned out that he explained much more.

Question: Decibel is the unit used for measuring what?

Answer: Decibel (dB) is the unit for expressing the ratio between two physical quantities, usually amounts of acoustic or electric power, or for measuring the relative loudness of sounds. One decibel (0.1 bel) equals 10 times the common logarithm of the power ratio. The intensity of a sound in decibels is 10 log10 (S1/S2), where S1 and S2 are the intensity of the two sounds.

Question: What causes the perceived pitch of the object to be higher when an object moves closer to the source?

Answer: The Doppler effect is the apparent difference between the frequency at which sound or light waves leave a source and that at which they reach an observer, caused by the relative motion of the observer and the wave source. This phenomenon is used in astronomical measurements, in Mössbauer effect studies, and radar and modern navigation. It was first described (1842) by Austrian physicist Christian Doppler.

Question: Who proposed the general theory of relativity?

Answer: General relativity is a part of the wide-ranging physical theory of relativity formed by the German-born physicist Albert Einstein. It was conceived by Einstein in 1916. General relativity follows from Einstein’s principle of equivalence: on a local scale, it is impossible to distinguish between physical effects due to gravity and those due to acceleration.

Question: Whose work in quantum physics was referred to by Albert Einstein as “the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought”?

Answer: In the 1920s Danish physicist Niels Bohr expressed the characteristic feature of quantum physics in his principle of complementarity, which “implies the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behaviour of atomic objects and the interaction with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena appear.” As a result, “evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single picture, but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomena exhausts the possible information about the objects.” This interpretation of the meaning of quantum physics, which implied an altered view of the meaning of physical explanation, gradually came to be accepted by the majority of physicists. The most famous and most outspoken dissenter, however, was Albert Einstein. Einstein greatly admired Bohr''s early work, referring to it as “the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought,” but he never accepted Bohr''s claim that quantum mechanics was the “rational generalization of classical physics” demanded for the understanding of atomic phenomena.

Question: Which wave phenomenon results from the interference or superimposition of waves moving in opposite directions?

Answer: A standing wave, or stationary wave, is a combination of two waves moving in opposite directions, each having the same amplitude and frequency. The phenomenon is the result of interference—that is, when waves are superimposed, their energies are either added together or cancelled out.

Question: Pierre Gassendi, a French philosopher-scientist, observed gunfire from a distance in order to measure which natural phenomenon?

Answer: In the 17th century the French scientist and philosopher Pierre Gassendi made the earliest known attempt at measuring the speed of sound in air. Assuming (correctly) that the speed of light is effectively infinite compared with the speed of sound, Gassendi measured the time difference between spotting the flash of a gun and hearing its report over a long distance on a still day.

Question: What material emits light when exposed to radiation?

Answer: Phosphor is any solid material that emits light or luminesces when exposed to radiation such as ultraviolet light or an electron beam. Hundreds of thousands of phosphors have been synthesized, each one having its characteristic color of emission and period during which light is emitted after excitation ceases.

Question: What is the unit of measurement of the electromotive force?

Answer: The electromotive force is the work done on a unit of electric charge, or the energy thereby gained per unit electric charge. Electromotive force is the characteristic of any energy source capable of driving electric charge around a circuit. It is abbreviated E in the international metric system but also, popularly, as emf. It is commonly measured in units of volts, equivalent in the meter–kilogram–second system to one joule per coulomb of electric charge. It is equal to the difference in potential between two points in a conductor carrying one-ampere current when the power dissipated between the points is one watt.

Question: What device can change diverging light into a parallel beam?

Answer: A collimator is a device for changing the diverging light or other radiation from a point source into a parallel beam. This collimation of the light is required to make specialized measurements in spectroscopy, geometric, and physical optics.