80% :d
80%.
I missed a couple about things exerting forces on other things and those things exerting forces back.
Haven’t had a physics or chem class in 15 years, though.
I also missed the one about grabbing the battery.
97.5%. Missed one. Voltage is not a force.
Although a * lot * of the questions seemed to be based on peevish quibbles of the form: “They taught you this in high school, but it’s not strictly accurate to think of it that way.” I’m not guessing that these guys are a lot of fun at cocktail parties.
97.5…I missed the one about voltage being the force yada yada yada. As soon as I read the answer, I remembered my crazy (in a good way) German Physics prof (the prof was German, not the Physics) jumping up and down and getting all excited about that too…I guess I don’t remember the 90’s as well as I thought I did.
87.5
I’m not feeling too bad about that, seeing as my last Physics class was in 1985 and I’ve never had a single Physics lesson in English. (I had no idea that velocity was considered a vector.)
Another engineer with 87.5% here.
I’m not sure I agree with the answer to 8. From a practical standpoint we don’t have anything even close to a machine that can transfer heat energy to mechanical energy with 100 percent efficiency, but if we did, I think you would be able to convert mechanical energy to heat energy then back to mechanical energy and maintain 1000 joules throughout. Maybe one of you 97 percenters can explain this one to me.
I got 16 and 29 wrong, both due to semantics, not a lack of understanding of the physics involved. I don’t like the way those questions were worded. I agree with NurseCarmen on 29. They are nitpicking over the term “water vapor” in common use vs. the strict scientific definition of the gaseous state of water.
I got 34 wrong (kinda embarassing for a EE to get one of the electrical questions wrong) but I still think the way it’s worded that you could interpret it either way. It’s nitpicking over the exact usage of the word “force” which again is semantics, not physics.
I got 31 wrong. I fell into the trap of thinking that the heat of fusion somehow made the two temperatures different. Ok, you got me on that one.
I understand the points they are trying to make, but there’s too much nitpicking over the common usage of terms vs. the exact scientific usage of those exact same terms. The only question in the quiz where I may not understand the physics behind the question is #8. Ok, I wiffed #31 too. If this was a test of my understanding of physics I should have gotten a 95 not an 87.
92.5%, no complaints here.
I missed numbers 2, 34, and 36.
My problem with 36 is that in NNPS they still teach positive charge flow. I know it’s wrong, but I forget which way is wrong, so I’m looking at two different answers, and know one is wrong, and it’s the one I should think is right. So I guessed wrong. Or, to take a crack from NNPS, again: 50-50-90-10. Which means give a Nuc a 50/50 proposition, and he’ll get it wrong 90% of the time.
82.5%, The fact that I remember all this stuff to this day reminds me of my misspent youth.
It’s the old Carnot Ideal Engine equation. All thermal engines have a basic ideal efficiency that’s related to the difference between the high temperature of the cycle and the cold temperature of the cycle. Since you can’t discharge waste heat to absolute zero you’re always going to have some losses in even an ideal heat engine.
I got a 90% - but that one wrong as well…
After reading the explanation, I agree that we’re wrong.
Water droplets floating in air is liquid water, not water vapor. Water vapor is an invisible gas.
Yowtch. 44%.
Comics books have warped my widdle brain.
That question is wrong in the test the physicists forgot the difference between vapor and gas. A clouds mas is almost 100% vapour, but not much gasseous water.
From dictionary
vapor 1 a) visible particles of moisture floating in the air
From my Webster’s New World College Dictionary.
75%. No physics education since freshman year in college so I’m okay with that. 
The funny thing is, I got this one right but for the wrong(?) reason. I figured that a cloud is composed of water vapor * and * oxygen and nitrogen. And without knowing the exact partial pressures, I just decided that an O2 molecule is going to weigh more than an H20 molecule.
97.5%
Fuckin’ clouds.
I was annoyed by the car battery question. If they wanted to test electrical knowledge, they could have drawn a simple circuit diagram and asked questions about it. Instead they asked a question that requires knowing the electrical resistance of an average person.
90%. One silly mistake in Newtonian physics, one I’m not comfortable with the explanation for (whether a solid rock consists mostly of empty space), and the ‘1000 joules’ one, which I’ll admit I just screwed up with.
I disagree with their explanation about the 1000 J of mechanical or heat energy. Their quibble about heat energy being difficult to effectively utilize but the same can be said about mechanical energy. I have more than 1000 J of mechanical energy compared to a piece of earth 400 meters below me but I’ll be damned if you are getting that. Plus most of the time heat energy is relative to some more or less arbitrary reference point.
That test seems to be a bunch of unclear questions designed to trip someone up on wording or a nitpick. For example:
Overall in this context is meaningless. Does it mean the entire object is at the same temperature or each molecule is at the exact same temperature? They apparently meant absolute temperature. For someone writing a test for basic Physics you think they would have a grasp of basic physics terminology.
95% - two wrong (haven’t taken physics in a LONG time but working on my website keeps me aware of this stuff).
Finagle
As you did, I got the cloud question correct by thinking about the air in a cloud’s composition. (And I don’t think the test makers thought of that either).
The two I got wrong:
voltage is the force, etc
and the one about joules of energy. That really steamed me - especially when they brought in the “inefficient conversion of heat energy to mechanical energy” shit. I thought that would have been taken into account.
Hell, if they want to be like that, then we can ask all kinds of questions with assinine answers.
Q) "A train leaves Chicago travelling non-stop at 50 mph. How long will it be before it reaches LosAngeles 1,500 miles away?
A) It doesn’t - it’s an Amtrak train and it derails.
OR the driver is drunk and gets in an accident.
OR it won’t reach LosAngeles because it is headed for New York.
oh … it’s time for my medication again.
95%.
Missed:
#23 - my own poor understanding of this area.
#29 - If I had read the question carefully and remembered that water vapor has a specific meaning in physics (which I actually do know), I would have gotten it. But I didn’t, so I’ll take the hit.
Under standard conditions, could we have a cloud where the droplets are small enough and/or spaced apart enough where it would still be a cloud visible to the naked eye and the vapor would be most of the mass? I kinda doubt it.
85% - I overthought the ones I missed. I knew I was doing it, too… sheesh.
Then again, I took my last physics class in 1977, so I don’t feel too bad.