Personalities of Physics Trivia Quiz

Answer: Motion

These laws are 1; A body will remain at rest or travelling at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force (i.e. unless they are hit by something). 2; If something is hit by another object, the change in its velocity will be proportional to the size of the force with which it was hit, and will move in the direction of the force. And 3; For every force (or action) there is an equal or opposite force (or reaction). Newton also did important work in the area of gravity (his incident with the apple is very famous), but it is a little known fact that he actually wrote more on religion than he did on natural science!

Answer: Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg

The prize was awarded for different studies conducted by both men into the phenomenon known as Giant Magnetoresistance (or GMR for short). This is an entirely new physical effect in which very weak magnetic changes are the cause of very significant changes in electrical resistance in one of these GMR circuits.

This technology is now used as standard in many computers to read information from hard disks.

Answer: Van der Waals forces

Van der Waals hypothesised that as electrons move in random paths, there would come a time when they would all coincidentally orbit on one side of the molecule. This would happen at the same time as electrons in another molecule went to one side of their molecule.

This would result in both the ends of both molecules developing a charge. The plus end of one molecule would be temporarily attracted to the minus end of the other molecule. The attraction would end once the electrons distributed themselves more evenly again.

This attraction happening on a large scale would bind a substance together, and these temporary forces became known as Van der Waals forces. As for the other answers, dipole-dipole bonds are a permanent form of Van der Waals forces, while intramolecular and intermolecular are both ways of classifying bonds, where intramolecular means 'within a molecule' and intermolecular means 'between molecules'.

Answer: Displacement

Hooke was the assistant to Irish physicist Robert Boyle, and it is possible that he was the one who formally stated Boyle's law, as Boyle himself was not a mathematician.

Answer: Static Charge

The Van de Graaff generator generates huge amounts of static electric charge by running a belt at high speeds round a circuit. At various points on the circuit, small sets of spikes are set up so that they touch the belt on its way round. The friction between the belt and these spikes causes a large amount of static charge to collect on the outside of a hollow metal globe which is placed on top of the belt. Charge collected on a Van de Graaff generator can be either positive or negative, depending on the direction the belt is running in.

The efficiency of the generator can be affected by such things as the shape of the metal on top and the atmospheric conditions.

Answer: Archimedes

It is of course, Archimedes principle. The principle accompanies the famous story of Archimedes realising in his bath how the purity of gold could be measured using this principle, and then running naked through the streets crying 'Eureka!'. Plato and Socrates were important philosophers and scholars of their time, and Democritus is credited (alongside Empedocles) with the concept of the atom.

Answer: At a constant temperature, the volume of a fixed mass of gas is inversely proportional to its pressure.

Robert Boyle was the seventh son and the fourteenth child of the Earl of Cork. He had a privileged upbringing, with a private tutor who encouraged original thought. With considerable resources at his beck and call, Boyle carried out many experiments, and made some very important contributions to science, the law concerning the relationship between the mass and pressure of a gas being just one of them. Boyle's Law is also known as Mariette's Law or the Boyle-Mariette Law, as a French scientist named Mariette was working on a similar principle at around the same time.

Answer: Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday was originally a bookbinder, but he had a huge interest in electronics. As he was self taught, his grasp of mathematics was not brilliant, but he was able to grasp and articulate difficult concepts very well. He is credited with the second law of electrolysis and with the discovery and definition of an electromagnetic field.

He published many of his findings in the important work 'Experimental Researches in Electricity'.

Answer: André-Marie Ampere

The unit of electric current is of course, the amp (A) named after André-Maire Ampere. Ampere contributed very important work on the field of electromagnetics.

Answer: Electric Potential Difference

Alessandro Volta was a famous Italian physicist. He used the principle of voltage (or potential difference between two nodes) to create the world's first battery cell. As for the other answers, the unit of resistance is the ohm (named after Georg Ohm), the unit of electric charge is the coloumb (named after Charles Augustin de Coulomb), and the unit of electric current is the amp.
Hope you enjoyed the quiz and found it both interesting and educational! : )