Test of Knowledge Answers

 

Student/Faculty Social

September 19, 2000

 

Instructions:  Write down the answer to each question in the space provided.  The faculty member on your team can only work with you on the Fermi questions on the last page.  The team with the most correct answers is the winner.

 

1.  Physics comes from the Greek word "physiks" which means...                                        

nature

 

2.  Who said the following: “If I have seen further it is by standing on shoulders of Giants.”

Isaac Newton

 

3.  What does the area under an acceleration versus time graph represent?                                

speed

4.  What is the light travel time to the nearest star?                                                                    

about 8 minutes

 

5.  What are the four main types of bridges?

arch, beam, suspension, and cable-stayed

 

6.  What is an astronomical unit in miles?                                                                                     

about 93 million miles

 

7.  What are the five perfect solids of Pythagoras and Plato?  (List as many as you can.)

Cube (6), pyramid (4), octahedron (8), dodecahedron (12), icosahedron (20)

 

8.  On what day and year did Armstrong and Aldrin land on the Moon?

July 20, 1969

 

9.  A tomato is dropped from the 14th Floor of Garner Apartments. 

     It takes 3.5 seconds to hit the ground.  From how high was it dropped in meters?             

about 60 meters

 

10.  How far away in meters is a cliff wall if you hear echoes 2 seconds after you make a sound?

about 340 meters

 

11.  Write down one of Maxwell’s equations.                                                                               

See http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/maxeq.html

 

12.  What do the letters in RADAR, NASA, and SPS represent?

 

Radio Direction and Ranging

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

 

 

Fermi Questions

 

1.  How many spokes can be found on one wheel of a ten-speed bicycle?

32

 

 

 

2.  How many revolutions will a wheel on the bus make during a trip from Baton Rouge, LA to Washington, D.C.?

750000 times

 

 

3.  How many times can you cut a large pizza in half until the pieces are the size of an atom?

32

 

 

ENRICO FERMI (1901-1954) is an Italian physicist best known for his contributions to nuclear physics and the development of quantum theory. In addition to his contribution to theory, he is also noted as an experimentalist. Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize for his physics work on the nuclear process.   Throughout his work, Fermi was legendary for being able to figure out things in his head, using information that initially seems to meager for a quantitative result. He used a process of "zeroing in" on problems by saying that the value in question was certainly larger than one number and less than some other amount. He would proceed through a problem in that fashion and, in the end, have a quantified answer within identified limits.

 

In a Fermi question, the goal is to get an answer to an order of magnitude (typically a power of ten) by making reasonable assumptions about the situation, not necessarily relying upon definite knowledge for an "exact" answer.