• 1. 
    What law of physics was Hermann von Helmholtz among the first to articulate when he argued that force could never be destroyed?

  • general theory of relativity
  • conservation of momentum
  • conservation of energy
  • irreversibility of entropy
  • 2. 
    What did Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discover when he switched on a cathode-ray tube and noticed that some nearby materials were giving off light?

  • ionizing radiation
  • X-rays
  • the electron
  • the photon
  • 3. 
    Which subatomic particles make up protons and neutrons, come in various flavours and colours, and took their name from a passage in James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake?

  • gluons
  • leptons
  • quarks
  • hadrons
  • 4. 
    What is the term for the disappearance of electrical resistance in materials that have been cooled below their transition temperature?

  • cryogenics
  • cold fusion
  • superconductivity
  • absolute zero
  • 5. 
    Carl David Anderson won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936 for his discovery of the first known particle of antimatter. What was it?

  • positron
  • antineutron
  • quark
  • antiproton
  • 6. 
    Who won the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the cyclotron, the first particle accelerator to achieve high energy?

  • Ernest Orlando Lawrence
  • Niels Bohr
  • C.T.R. Wilson
  • Arthur Holly Compton
  • 7. 
    What relation between heat and gas is formally recognized in Charles’s law?

  • buoyancy of a gas rises with temperature
  • gas is a poor conductor of heat
  • compression of a gas raises its temperature
  • gases expand with rising temperature
  • 8. 
    In the human perception of sound, what musical interval is equal to a doubling of the sound wave’s frequency?

  • fourth
  • fifth
  • octave
  • fundamental
  • 9. 
    Who introduced the first successful detector of individual alpha particles and other ionizing radiations?

  • Pierre Curie
  • Arthur Holly Compton
  • Hans Geiger
  • Ernest Rutherford
  • 10. 
    In 1895 Aleksandr Popov of Russia demonstrated a receiver that detected lightning flashes. What name can be given to this device?

  • television receiver
  • radiation counter
  • radar
  • radio
  • 11. 
    What does the liquid-drop model attempt to describe?

  • superfluidity
  • the atomic nucleus
  • stretching of materials
  • a balloon design
  • 12. 
    In 1827, during a microscopic study of plant fertilization, what did Robert Brown see that is now called Brownian motion?

  • absorption of minerals
  • movement of sperm cells and ova
  • random motion of particles
  • nuclear fusion
  • 13. 
    What did Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli invent in the 17th century when he inverted a mercury-filled tube into a dish?

  • hydrometer
  • siphon
  • barometer
  • thermometer
  • 14. 
    What measuring device counts the transitions between two quantum states of certain atoms?

  • mass spectrometer
  • Magnetic resonance scanner
  • atomic clock
  • geiger counter
  • 15. 
    What does the candela measure?

  • luminous intensity
  • combustion rate
  • gravity
  • magnetism
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