New York State Regents Examination Physical Science: Physics

1.Workers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard push a 5-kilogram cart on a level floor. The forward forces and the backward forces leave a net force of 20 newtons forward. What is the cart's acceleration?

2.A 2-kilogram curling stone slides at 4 meters per second across the outdoor ice in Lake Placid. What is its kinetic energy?

3.An inline skater on the Hudson River Greenway does not change mass, but her speed becomes three times as large. What happens to her kinetic energy?

4.In a wave tank at the New York Aquarium, crests pass a marked post 4 times each second, and neighboring crests are 3 meters apart. How fast is the wave moving?

5.Air resistance is ignored in a closed stairwell at a school in Massena. A student lets go of a steel bolt and a cork together from one landing. Which statement is correct?

6.A 3-kilogram flowerpot sits on a windowsill 2 meters above a Brooklyn courtyard. Use 10 newtons per kilogram for g. What is the pot's gravitational potential energy relative to the courtyard?

7.In a Queens classroom, a resistor marked 3 ohms is connected across a 9-volt battery. How much current passes through that resistor?

8.In a Fredonia lab, a flashlight shines through a glass jar after the air is pumped out, and a bell inside the jar is rung. Which statement is correct?

9.The propellers of the Staten Island Ferry push harbor water backward. What is the paired force from Newton's third law?

10.A 0.40-kilogram rubber puck slides east at 5 meters per second on an indoor rink in Watertown. What is the puck's momentum?

11.At Jamaica Station, a traveler drags a suitcase 7 meters along the platform. The handle pulls forward with 40 newtons, in the same direction the suitcase moves. How much work does the handle do?

12.A pallet-jack motor at the Hunts Point market runs for 6 seconds and transfers 900 joules to a crate. What is the average power of that motor?

13.A sled slides east across a snowy hill in Old Forge and slows down. What is the direction of the kinetic friction on the sled?

14.A Metro-North train travels at constant velocity, and a coffee cup on a level tray stays at rest relative to the train. Why does the cup keep that constant velocity?

15.An astronaut has a mass of 70 kilograms while training in Rome, New York. On the Moon, g is about one-sixth of its value near Earth. What is the astronaut's mass on the Moon?

16.A 4-kilogram bag of apples sits on a scale at a farm stand near Penn Yan. Use 9.8 newtons per kilogram for g. What is the bag's weight?

17.A jogger runs 400 meters due north along the path at Onondaga Lake Park in a straight line and takes 80 seconds. What is the jogger's average velocity?

18.A delivery van in Mount Vernon starts from rest and reaches 15 meters per second forward in 5 seconds. What is the magnitude of its average acceleration?

19.A bus on the New York State Thruway travels 90 kilometers at a steady 60 kilometers per hour. How much time does that part of the trip take?

20.On a distance-time graph for a bicycle on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, the plotted line is straight and slopes upward. What does the slope represent?

21.A physics class graphs the velocity of a taxi driving along Broadway. What does the area under that velocity-time graph represent?

22.A barge moves north on the Hudson River at constant velocity. What is true of the forces acting on the barge?

23.In a Geneseo classroom, the desktop pushes upward on a textbook that is lying still. Which other force completes the Newton's third-law pair with that upward push?

24.At a ballfield in Elmira, a bat exerts an average force of 40 newtons on a baseball for 0.30 seconds. What is the magnitude of the impulse on the ball?

25.In a Cortland hallway, students roll a 3-kilogram cart at 4 meters per second to the right into a 1-kilogram cart that is standing still. The carts latch on a level floor, and friction is small enough to ignore. How fast do they move together just after they latch?

26.Two bumper cars at Rye Playland collide and stick together. What happens to the kinetic energy of the cars in this collision?

27.A rider on a swing ride at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg moves in a horizontal circle at constant speed. What is the direction of the net centripetal force on the rider?

28.A go-kart on a circular track in Liverpool, New York, moves at 8 meters per second. The radius of the path is 16 meters. What is the magnitude of the centripetal acceleration?

29.In a lab at Stony Brook, a spring stretches 0.12 meters when a 6-newton force pulls it, and the spring is still in its elastic range. What is the spring constant?

30.A launcher spring in a diner in Endicott has a spring constant of 120 newtons per meter. A student squeezes it inward by 0.20 meters. How much elastic energy is stored?

31.A 1-kilogram toy car sits at rest at the top of a 0.50-meter ramp in a Utica classroom. Use 10 newtons per kilogram for g, and ignore friction. What is the car's kinetic energy at the bottom?

32.An elevator motor in a building on 42nd Street runs at 8000 watts for 10 seconds. How much energy does the motor transfer in that time?

33.A heavy crate on the floor of a Chelsea gallery does not move when someone gives it a small horizontal push. Which description of the friction is correct?

34.A traveler sets a 7-kilogram suitcase on the level platform at Croton-Harmon, and the suitcase stays at rest. Use 10 newtons per kilogram for g. What is the upward force from the platform?

35.A wagon is parked at rest on a ramp at the Union Square farmers market, held by its brake. What is true of the weight component parallel to the ramp?

36.From a pier in Port Jefferson, a student throws one ball sideways and, at the same moment, drops a second ball from the same hand height. Air resistance is ignored. Which ball hits the water first?

37.A soccer ball is kicked horizontally off a dock in Oyster Bay. Air resistance is ignored. What happens to the horizontal component of its velocity during the flight?

38.Near Earth's surface in New York, about how large is the acceleration due to gravity?

39.On a dock in Montauk, a 12-kilogram cooler and a 2-kilogram cooler are both at rest. Which cooler has more inertia?

40.In a lab in Potsdam, a net force of 18 newtons gives a cart an acceleration of 3 meters per second squared. What is the mass of the cart?

41.A student in Geneva pushes a book with 11 newtons across a library table. Friction pushes back with 4 newtons. What is the net force on the book?

42.A lamp hangs motionless from a cord in a shop in Cooperstown. How do the upward tension and the lamp's weight compare?

43.A coffee filter dropped in a classroom in Plattsburgh speeds up and then falls at a constant speed. What is true at that constant speed?

44.Two skaters at an indoor rink in Newburgh push off from each other from rest. Friction is ignored. The 50-kilogram skater moves west at 2 meters per second. What is the velocity of the 40-kilogram skater?

45.A waiter in the West Village carries a tray horizontally at constant speed and constant height. How much work does the upward force of his hand do on the tray during that walk?

46.A skateboarder in Flushing Meadows Corona Park multiplies the speed by 5. The mass stays the same. By what factor does the kinetic energy change?

47.A clerk lifts a 5-kilogram bag of rice 1.5 meters onto a shelf in a bodega. Use 10 newtons per kilogram for g. How much gravitational potential energy does the bag gain?

48.Of every 240 joules a drill press in Yonkers takes in, 180 joules become useful work on the metal. What is the efficiency of the press?

49.Three identical bulbs are wired in one series loop in a storefront in Jamestown. How does the current through the third bulb compare with the current through the first bulb?

50.Two lamps in a Park Slope kitchen are connected in parallel to the same 120-volt outlet. What is the voltage across each lamp?

51.In a lab circuit at SUNY Brockport, a 5-ohm resistor and a 7-ohm resistor are connected in series. What is the equivalent resistance?

52.A repair shop in Newburgh wires a 12-ohm speaker and a 6-ohm speaker as two parallel branches. What is the combined resistance of those branches?

53.A baseboard heater in a cabin near Slide Mountain runs at 120 volts, and the current through it is 8 amperes. What is the heater's electric power?

54.At a birthday party in Buffalo, two balloons hang so that each has a negative charge. What do the balloons do?

55.In a Binghamton classroom, a positively charged rod is brought near a negatively charged pith ball without touching it. What happens to the ball?

56.A crew is choosing a material for a wire in a Manhattan building. Which material lets charge move through it easily?

57.A guide at a substation in Astoria describes the current in a power line. Which statement defines electric current?

58.A flashlight cell sold in a hardware store in Herkimer is labeled 1.5 volts. What does that label mean?

59.A model-train circuit in Schenectady uses a 12-volt supply and has a resistance of 6 ohms. What is the current?

60.A student in Delhi adds another resistor in series with a lamp that is already connected to a battery. What happens to the circuit?

61.On a desk in Plattsburgh, the north pole of a bar magnet is brought near the north pole of a compass needle. What does the compass needle do?

62.A straight wire in a physics lab in Harlem carries a steady electric current. Which statement is correct?

63.A student in Oswego wraps a coil of wire around an iron nail and connects the coil to a battery. How can the student make this electromagnet stronger?

64.At the Maple Ridge wind farm in Lewis County, moving blades turn a generator. What energy change is that generator built to make?

65.In a Canton lab, a student pushes a bar magnet into a coil connected to a galvanometer, and the needle moves. Why does a current appear?

66.An ideal step-up transformer in a classroom model of a power station increases the voltage. How does the secondary current compare with the primary current?

67.The wall outlets in a house in Garden City supply alternating current at 60 hertz. What does that mean for the charges in the circuit?

68.A circuit breaker in a Bronx apartment trips and opens. What is the breaker's job?

69.A toaster in a Queens kitchen has a plug with a third, round prong. What is that prong for?

70.On a dry January day in Corning, a student walks across a synthetic carpet in a hotel lobby and then touches a metal doorknob. A spark jumps. Why?

71.By the usual convention, what is the direction of the electric field near a positive charge?

72.Two charged balloons in a gym in New Rochelle are moved farther apart. What happens to the electric force between them?

73.A sound wave travels through the air from the stage to a seat in Carnegie Hall. What kind of wave is it?

74.A French horn player in a theater in Amsterdam, New York, holds one pitch and then plays that same pitch more loudly. What changes in the sound wave?

75.In a band room in Hornell, a trombone player slides from a low note to a higher note. The air in the room stays the same. What is true of the higher note's sound wave?

76.The same musical tone passes from the air into the steel of a bridge railing. How does the speed of the sound compare?

77.A rower on Chautauqua Lake sees bright sunlight bounce off the water and into her eyes. Which wave behavior is that glare?

78.At a bait shop in Sodus Point, a ruler stands in a tank of water and looks offset at the waterline. Why does the straight ruler look that way?

79.A listener in Brooklyn cannot see a park band, but the sound bends around the corner of a building and reaches the listener. What is that bending called?

80.Two speakers in a school auditorium in Middletown play the same steady tone. At one seat the sound is very quiet. What is a likely cause?

81.A ferry on the Hudson sounds its foghorn as it approaches a dock in Piermont, then passes the dock and moves away. Why does the pitch heard at the dock change?

82.A satellite dish in Horseheads receives radio waves, and a dental office nearby uses X-rays. Which comparison is correct?

83.All electromagnetic waves travel through empty space above New York at about what speed?

84.Blue light and red light both travel through the air over the Hudson. How do they compare?

85.In a photography studio in Wellsville, a lamp shines on a flat mirror. The angle between the incoming ray and the normal is 48 degrees. What is the angle between the reflected ray and the normal?

86.In a Watertown library, a reader holds a convex lens over a map, with the map closer to the lens than the focal length. What image can the reader see?

87.A fiber-optic cable under New York Harbor carries messages as pulses of light. How does the light stay inside the fiber?

88.In a quiet room in Woodstock, a singer holds one note and a nearby glass vibrates strongly. What is happening?

89.A porch swing in Rhinebeck completes one full back-and-forth cycle every 5 seconds. What is the frequency of the swing?

90.A tone in a band room in Oneida travels through the air at 320 meters per second. Its frequency is 80 hertz. What is its wavelength?

91.A gardener in Babylon shakes one end of a garden hose lying across a lawn. A pulse travels toward the nozzle while each bit of hose moves sideways. Which description fits the pulse?

92.A parade band in Batavia plays louder, and a stage lamp nearby is switched to a brighter setting of the same color. Which comparison is correct?

93.A guitar string in a shop in Williamsburg vibrates in a standing-wave pattern. What is a node on the string?

94.A metal spoon sits in hot cocoa at a cafe in Glens Falls, and the handle becomes warm. How does thermal energy mainly reach the handle?

95.A skateboarder in Tompkins Square Park starts with 400 joules of mechanical energy. Because of friction, 250 joules of mechanical energy remain at the bottom of the ramp. How much energy was transferred to thermal energy?

96.Which unit is a unit of energy?

97.A spring scale pulling a wagon in Flushing Meadows Corona Park reads in newtons. A newton is the unit of which quantity?

98.A student says a textbook weighs 2 kilograms. Which statement uses the physics meanings of mass and weight?

99.Which quantity is a vector?

100.A runner on a track in Van Cortlandt Park runs 100 meters east and then 100 meters west, ending at the starting point. What are the distance and the displacement?

101.A runner travels 200 meters along a path in 40 seconds and finishes exactly where the run started. What are the average speed and the average velocity?

102.A coin is dropped from rest at an overlook above Ausable Chasm. Use 10 meters per second squared for g, and ignore air resistance. What is the coin's speed after 4 seconds?

103.A bolt is dropped from rest from a fire-tower landing near Phoenicia. Use 10 meters per second squared for g, and ignore air resistance. How far does the bolt fall in 3 seconds?

104.A fielder in Prospect Park catches a 0.50-kilogram ball moving at 4 meters per second and brings it to rest. What is the magnitude of the ball's change in momentum?

105.A winch on a dock in Cape Vincent pulls a line with a steady force of 250 newtons. The line moves in the direction of that force at 0.80 meters per second. What is the power of the pull?

106.A cedar block floats at rest in Oneida Lake. Which statement about the forces on the block is correct?

107.A nurse in a Bronx clinic presses on skin with the same force, first with a fingertip and then with an open palm. Why is the pressure greater for the fingertip?

108.A wool cloth and a plastic rod in a dry lab in Oneonta start neutral. After the cloth rubs the rod, the rod is negative and the cloth is positive. What happened?