Physics Quiz

The psiandme Everyday Science: Physics quiz was created by psiandme.

The word physics comes from the ancient Greek term physike, which translates to the science of nature. Although it was only formally recognized as a distinct scientific discipline in the nineteenth century, its roots stretch back thousands of years. Early civilizations engaged in astronomy, mathematics, and natural philosophy to understand the world around them. Thinkers like Archimedes discovered principles of buoyancy long before the scientific method was formalized, famously shouting Eureka when he realized that an object in fluid experiences an upward force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. Today, physics continues to build on these ancient foundations to explain the mechanics of reality.

A major part of understanding physics is knowing how to measure the world, which is where the International System of Units comes in. This system defines seven base units and numerous derived units that we use daily. For instance, the newton is the standard unit of force, named after Isaac Newton, while the joule measures energy and the watt measures power. Interestingly, since 2019, all of these units have been defined by fixed fundamental constants of nature, such as the speed of light, rather than physical objects kept in a vault. This means that a kilogram or a second can theoretically be reproduced with absolute precision anywhere in the universe.

One of the most common mix-ups in everyday science is the difference between mass and weight. In physics, mass is the amount of matter in an object, while weight is the gravitational force acting upon that mass. This means that an average adult weighing roughly 608 newtons on Earth would weigh significantly less on Mars due to its weaker gravitational pull, even though their mass remains exactly the same. The standard acceleration due to gravity on Earth is about 9.8 meters per second squared, a constant that dictates how fast objects fall. Galileo famously demonstrated that, ignoring air resistance, all objects fall at the same rate regardless of how heavy they are.

You might not realize it, but you carry advanced physics in your pocket every day. Human bodies are electrically active, and modern capacitive touchscreens exploit this by sensing changes in their electrostatic field when a finger touches the glass. The screen continuously monitors small variations in its stored charge pattern, allowing the device to map these tiny changes to specific positions on the screen. Furthermore, the global positioning system that helps you navigate relies on both special and general relativity. Satellites orbiting thousands of miles above Earth experience time at a slightly different rate than clocks on the ground due to their high speeds and weaker gravity, requiring constant relativistic corrections to keep your maps accurate.

Light and energy are also fundamental to our daily existence, behaving in ways that often defy common sense. Light travels at an incredible speed in a vacuum, but it actually slows down when passing through materials like water or glass. This slowing and bending of light, known as refraction, is the underlying physics that makes magnifying glasses, eyeglasses, and cameras work. On a larger scale, the energy we receive from the sun is immense, with one square meter of Earths surface in full sunlight receiving about 1.4 kilojoules of solar energy every second. It is fascinating to think that a photon can take over a hundred thousand years to randomly bounce from the suns core to its surface, but only about eight minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth.

At the extreme ends of the scale, physics reveals a universe that is both bizarre and awe-inspiring. Ordinary matter is mostly empty space; if all the empty space in human atoms were removed, the entire human race could fit into the volume of a sugar cube. Furthermore, quantum physics tells us that everything has both wave-like and particle-like properties, though this is only noticeable at microscopic scales. On a cosmic level, around eighty percent of the matter in the universe is thought to be dark matter, which does not interact with light and is completely invisible to us. Meanwhile, trillions of ghostly particles called neutrinos pass through your body every single second without you ever noticing.

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