Dr. Overy's KBase: Resources for Teaching and Learning - Glossary

• Hooke's Law
  The force needed to cause an extension/compression in a spring is directly proportional to its extension/compression.
• Upthrust
  It is the upward force acting on an object that is partially or fully immersed in a fluid.
• Moment of a Force
  The moment of a force about a point is the product of the force with the perpendicular distance of the force from that point.
• Angular Velocity
  The rate of change of angular displacement with respect to time.
• Gravitational Field
  A gravitational field due to a body is a region in space in which another body placed in the region experiences a force of attraction by the first body.
• Newton's Second Law
  The rate of change of momentum of a body is directly proportional to the resultant force acting on it and occurs in the direction of the force.  (or  F=ma ,where m = mass, a = acceleration and F=resultant force)
• Newton's Third Law
  If body A exerts a force on body B, then body B exerts an equal but opposite force on body A.
• Torque of a couple
  The torque of a couple is the product of one of the forces with the perpendicular separation between the couple.
• Simple Harmonic Motion (SHM)
  Simple Harmonic Motion (SHM) is defined as the oscillatory motion of a particle whose acceleration a is always directed towards a fixed point and is directly proportional to its displacement x from that fixed point but in the opposite direction to the displacement.
• Principle of Superposition
  The Principle Of Superposition states that when two waves of the same kind meet at a point in space, the resultant displacement at that point is the vector sum of the displacements that the two waves would separately produce at that point.
• Interference of Waves
  Interference refers to the superposing of two or more coherent waves to produce regions of maxima and minima in space, according to the principle of superposition.
• Desert Tortoise
  a large burrowing land tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) of arid regions of the southwestern United States and adjacent Mexico
• The Very Large Array
  The VLA is  a radio astronomy observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, some 50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro, New Mexico.
• Quiz
  questioning or a short test
• Physics
  the branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. The subject matter of physics includes mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, and the structure of atoms.
• Absolute temperature
  A temperature scale with its units in Kelvin
• Activation energy
  The energy required to initiate a chemical reaction or process, abbreviated Ea
• Active transport
  The opposite of passive transport, active transport involves the input of energy , the building of concentration gradients, and the action of a membrane pump to create high concentrations of molecules.
• Adiabatic
  A process where heat does not enter or leave a system
• Aerobic
  An organism or cell that requires oxygen to carry out its metabolic processes; a process that requires oxygen.
• Algae
   Mostly aquatic plantlike organisms that range in size from one cell to large multi-celled seaweed and are photosynthetic.
• Becquerel, Henri
  French physicist, born in Paris (1852-1908). Becquerel's most famous work is his study of uranium salts, which he discovered produced rays that caused gas to ionize. This type of radiation was termed Becquerel radiation.
• Big Bang
  The term "Big Bang" was coined by Fred Hoyle in 1949 to describe an event 13.7 million years ago involving the rapid expansion of matter and energy from a single hot, dense point
• Binary Stars
  A term coined by Sir William Herschel in 1802 to describe a pair of stars that revolve around a common mass and are unaffected by the mass of other stars, creating their own system.
• Calibrate
  To determine or check the accuracy of an instrument used for quantitative measurements, or to make corrections in or to adjust an aspect of a system
• Carbonic acid
  The weak acid formed when CO₂ dissolves in water.
• Carnot Cycle
  A theoretical formulation of the most efficient thermodynamic cycle capable of converting thermal energy into work, and work into thermal energy. A defining characteristic of the Carnot Cycle is that it does not consider a change in entropy, and thus cannot exist in real practice
• Cation
  A positively charged ion that migrates to the cathode in an electrical cell.
• Anion
  A negatively charged ion that migrates to the anode in an electrical cell.
• Zygote
  A cell that is the result of the combination of two gametes (e.g., a sperm and an egg) and which contains a full set of chromosomes.