Introduction to SAT II Physics

What does this all mean? Time is relative. There is no absolute clock to say whether I am right or you are right. All the observ ...

Length Contraction Not only would you observe time moving more slowly on a train moving relative to you at half the speed of lig ...

A spaceship flying toward the Earth at a speed of 0.5c fires a rocket at the Earth that moves at a speed of 0.8c relative to the ...

Einstein also derived his most famous equation from the principles of relativity. Mass and energy can be converted into one anot ...

Rutherford’s Gold Foil Experiment In a series of experiments from 1909 to 1911, Ernest Rutherford established that atoms have nu ...

electrons. The electromagnetic force pulls the electrons into orbit around the nucleus in just the way that the gravitational fo ...

The Wave Theory of Electromagnetic Radiation Young’s double-slit experiment, which we looked at in the previous chapter, would s ...

where h is a very small number, J · s to be precise, called Planck’s constant, and f is the frequency of the beam of light. Work ...

The Problem with Rutherford’s Model Light and other electromagnetic waves are emitted by accelerating charged particles. In part ...

Because the electron can only make certain jumps in its energy level, it can only emit photons of certain frequencies. Because i ...

Don’t worry: you don’t need to memorize this equation. What’s worth noting for the purposes of SAT II Physics is that there are ...

Frequency and Wavelength of Emitted Photons As we said earlier, an excited hydrogen atom emits photons when the electron jumps t ...

A hydrogen atom is energized so that its electron is excited to the n = 3 energy state. How many different frequencies of electr ...

completes four cycles in its orbit around the nucleus, and so represents an electron in the n = 4 energy state. The de Broglie w ...

where is the uncertainty in a particle’s position and is the uncertainty in its momentum. According to the uncertainty principle ...

Atomic Number, Neutron Number, and Mass Number You’re probably somewhat familiar with the periodic table and know that there are ...

electrons have mass, it is so negligible in comparison to that of protons and neutrons that it is given a mass number of 0. Some ...

number of the carbon is equal to the sum of the atomic number of the nitrogen and the electron: 6 = 7 – 1. Because the neutrino ...

chapters on mechanics are the result of electromagnetic repulsion between the atoms in the objects that collide with one another ...

Since there are two nucleons in a deuteron, the binding energy for the deuteron as a whole is MeV. That energy, converted into m ...