1. A mole of helium gas has exactly the same number of atoms as a mole of lead.

True
2. Two 90-decibel sound sources are turned on at the same time. Together they
create a 180-decibel sound level.
False. The sum of the two sounds will be 93 decibels. The decibel is based on the
base-ten logarithm of the sound pressure level. Multiplying the sound pressure by a
factor of two is mathematically equal to adding ten times the logarithm of 2, or in
other words roughly 3, decibels to the decibel rating of the original sound.
3. Light bulb is connected with a battery to form a simple circuit. A stream of
electrons flows through the light bulb from the positive terminal of the battery to
the negative terminal.

False. Conventions in electricity are typically set up for positive charges. Hence by
definition the current in a simple circuit does flow from the positive terminal of a battery
to the negative terminal. However, the positive charges in a piece of wire are protons
found in the nuclei of metal atoms. Unfortunately these can’t move since the wire is a
solid. Electrons are the only charged particles which can freely move in a metal. They
move in the opposite direction of the "current". In other words, electrons flow from the
negative terminal to the positive terminal of a battery.

This confusing terminology in electricity can be traced to Benjamin Franklin who

originally decided what would be called positive and negative. He knew that some types
of electrically charged fluid or particles could move from one object to another and, in
the process, create opposite charges on the objects. He reasoned that it would create a
positive charge on one object due to an excess of the charged fluid and a negative charge
on the other due to a shortage of the charged fluid. He got things backwards when he set
up the conventions. However, we can forgive him since no one in Franklin’s time knew
about the existence of electrons.

4. Jane reads that passing a current of 100 milliamps through a person’s body from
one hand to the other can be fatal. She accidentally grabs the positive terminal of
her car’s battery in one hand and the negative in the other. Her car has a 12-volt
battery rated for 100 amps. Jane would most likely be electrocuted by her careless
action.

False. The 100-amp rating of the battery is the maximum current the battery can produce.
A normal human being like Jane would have an electrical resistance of around 100,000
ohms when passing a current from one hand to the other, assuming dry hands. If a
100,000-ohm resistor is connected to a 12-volt source it will draw a current of 0.12
milliamps according to Ohm’s law. This is not enough to even produce a tingling
sensation. Wet hands could cause the resistance to drop to a value as low as 500 ohms.
Even with such a low resistance the current would only be 24 milliamps, enough to cause
a sensation but not enough to kill. In general, a 12-volt battery is not considered
dangerous from the standpoint of electrocution.
Misconceptions concerning the safety of batteries arise from the common saying it's not
the voltage but the current that kills. Indeed, tables showing the effects of electricity on
humans are generally stated in terms of current. However, there is no way to know how
much current a human will draw without knowing both his resistance and the voltage he
is subjected to. According to Ohm's law current is equal to voltage divided by resistance.
Furthermore, the tables assume that the electricity is from a source with constant voltage.
With a source of static electricity the starting voltage can be enormous as well as the
initial current. However, both voltage and current drop rapidly and contain very little
energy. An electrical shock from such a source is almost never fatal. The dangers of
electricity can’t be accurately summarized in a simplistic saying like the one above.

5. If lightning strikes a car, the people inside it will most likely be electrocuted,
assuming that the car’s tires are wet from rain and hence do not act as insulators.
False. A car will act like a continuous conductive surface surrounding its occupants. The
electric force field inside such a surface will be zero according to Gauss’s law. Hence no
current will flow inside the car. The occupants will be perfectly safe. If the tires are
conductive the situation in the car will not change although the conductive tires will
prevent a static charge from accumulating.
6. A solid object like a rock is almost entirely filled with empty space and only feels
solid due to electrical repulsion forces

True. The insides of atoms are almost entirely filled with empty space. Only around one
millionth of the space inside an atom contains any mass and this is almost entirely
concentrated in the nucleus.

The nucleus is surrounded by electrons moving rapidly in a cloud-like formation. When

two objects are brought together the electrostatic forces from the two sets of electron
clouds repel each other because they have the same charge. In reality, when a person
touches a solid object they feel the force field from the electron clouds. If this force field
could be turned off it’s conceivable that a person could push his or her hand through an
otherwise solid object like a wall.

Misconceptions about solid objects being filled with mass arise partly from obsolete
models of the atom. The Dalton model, originating in the early 1800's, represented atoms
as small solid spheres. Although later models have replaced our picture of what an atom
looks like, the common misconception that it is a solid object has not changed. It is
almost impossible for humans to comprehend emptiness and yet that is mostly what an
atom consists of.

7. Under typical conditions, ice melts and water freezes at the same temperature.

True. The melting and freezing temperatures of water are exactly the same. Temperature
alone does not dictate whether freezing or melting occurs. That is determined by the
direction and amount of heat transfer. If heat is flowing into a block of ice, 1 kg of it will
melt for every 3.34 × 105 joules of heat transferred into the ice. If heat is transferred out
of a container of water, 1 kg of it will freeze for every 3.34 × 105 joules of heat
transferred out. The 3.34 × 105 joules of heat is called the heat of fusion.

Misconceptions about melting and freezing are due to omission errors by science
teachers. Virtually everyone is taught that water freezes at 0° Celsius (32° Fahrenheit),
but we are not told about heat of fusion and are pretty much left on our own to figure out
the conditions which cause melting

8. An atom is just like a tiny solar system in which the nucleus is like the Sun and
electrons are like tiny planets orbiting the nucleus in elliptical paths.

True. The insides of atoms are almost entirely filled with empty space. Only around one
millionth of the space inside an atom contains any mass and this is almost entirely
concentrated in the nucleus.

The nucleus is surrounded by electrons moving rapidly in a cloud-like formation. When

two objects are brought together the electrostatic forces from the two sets of electron
clouds repel each other because they have the same charge. In reality, when a person
touches a solid object they feel the force field from the electron clouds. If this force field
could be turned off it’s conceivable that a person could push his or her hand through an
otherwise solid object like a wall.

Misconceptions about solid objects being filled with mass arise partly from obsolete
models of the atom. The Dalton model, originating in the early 1800's, represented atoms
as small solid spheres. Although later models have replaced our picture of what an atom
looks like, the common misconception that it is a solid object has not changed. It is
almost impossible for humans to comprehend emptiness and yet that is mostly what an
atom consists of.

9. A cloud's mass consists primarily of water vapor.

False. Water vapor is a clear colorless gas which is soluble in air. In a solution the parts
are so well mixed that properties are uniform throughout, including optical properties.
Water vapor dissolved in air cannot be visually detected. This is why it’s as easy to see
across the room in New Orleans with high humidity as in Phoenix with low humidity.
However, there are limits on the amount of water vapor that can be dissolved in air. This
is strongly influenced by temperature. Cool air enough and the water vapor in it will
eventually condense as tiny water droplets, or ice crystals if the temperature is low
enough. In either case the optical properties will no longer be uniform. The tiny water
droplets or ice crystals scatter light, which makes them visible.

When we look at a cloud we see tiny water droplets or ice crystals, not water vapor. If the
droplets become too large they fall as rain. There is generally also some dust present in
clouds. However, it's a minor amount compared to the liquid or frozen water.
In common usage the term vapor does not have a precise meaning. Common usage
dictionaries often give multiple definitions for the term, some of which are not correct in
a scientific context. The situation is similar for terms like force, acceleration, velocity,
speed, etc. This is often a major stumbling block for people learning physics.

Physics and engineering textbooks consistently refer to the gas state of a material which
is typically a liquid or solid at room temperature as a vapor. Materials which are gasses at
room temperature are simply referred to as gasses. Often times lower level science
classes do not use the term vapor in its proper scientific context..

10. Iron can exist as a gas.

True. Although iron is a solid at what we call normal temperatures, iron can also be a
liquid, gas, or plasma. This is true of any element

11. 1000 liters of water is more dense than 10 liters of water. (Ignore the container.
Assume water is incompressible and all conditions are equal except the ones
stated.)

False. Density is a material property. Since both materials are the same there can be no
difference in density. This assumes that temperature, water pressure, and purity are all the
same. We could also say that density is the ratio of mass to volume. This ration remains
constant even if the quantity of water is changed.

Density is often confused with weight. Obviously weight does increase if the quantity of
water is increased.

12. Ben travels to a distant planet. In outerspace, with essentially no gravity, he can
throw a baseball (mass = 0.5 kg) and a shot put (mass = 4 kg) at the same speed
with no discernable difference in effort.
False. According to Newton’s second law, force equals mass times acceleration. If the
objects are thrown at the same speed by the same person they must have the same
acceleration. For the same acceleration the force exerted by the person’s arm has to be
much higher for the more massive object. Gravity, or the lack of it, does not change the
fact that the shot put will always be harder to throw. It has more inertia.

13. A table resting on the floor pushes downward on the floor. The floor likewise
pushes upward on the table.
True. According to Newton’s third law, the two forces are an action/reaction pair. The
upward force from the floor is called a normal force. Normal forces always act
perpendicular to surfaces such as the floor. Many people are so used to associating force
with motion that it is difficult for them to accept that a floor can push upward. However,
if the floor did not push upward to counteract the weight of the table, the table would
have to be a falling object.
 14. If a car hits a tree, the car’s occupants (assume no seat belts or air bags) will be
violently thrown forward at the time of the accident due to a force created by the
car seats.

False. There is no force throwing the person forward. According to Newton’s first law
the occupants of the car will continue moving forward at the same velocity they had just
prior to the collision. They will not stop until a force acts on them. If this force is not
provided by a seatbelt or airbag, it will be provided by the windshield or some other
undesirable object.

The misconception that people are thrown through windshields probably comes from our
tendency as humans to blame someone or something when things go wrong. The verb
thrown doesn't tell us who or what did the throwing but satisfies us that someone or
something was responsible. If Bubba gets impaired and drives his car into a tree we
should not say he was thrown through the windshield. We should say he was stopped by
the windshield.

15. Friction provides the force which "pushes" a car forward as it accelerates down
the road. (Assume a flat road.)

True. To accelerate an object requires an external force. This is why a person can’t move
a car forward by sitting in the front seat pushing on the dashboard. The force is internal
with respect to the car. To move the vehicle forward the person must push from the
outside. The friction force between the pavement and the tire of an automobile is the
external force which pushes, or accelerates, a car forward. If we remove most of the
friction force by parking on a patch of ice, the car’s wheels will spin, and the car will
remain in place.

The misconception that friction cannot cause an object to move stems from the fact that
we are correctly taught in school that friction resists sliding motion between two surfaces
in contact. Textbooks then go on to give example after example where friction slows or
prevents motion. This makes it difficult for us to think of it in any other way. However, if
we consider friction in the light of Newton's third law it's clear that friction is not a single
force. It is an action/reaction pair. In other words, one surface is pushed backward and the
other surface forward. Each of the two forces has the same magnitude, or size, but
opposite directions.

For example, consider the act of walking. When a person's shoe is in contact with the
ground conditions are right for a friction action/reaction pair. To walk forward the person
has to push backwards against the ground. The ground obliges by pushing forward on the
person. Friction is the mechanism which enables this pair of forces.

When a person walks, the bottoms of his shoes and the surface of the ground typically do
not slide with respect to each other. Otherwise, the person slips and falls. Hence, the
definition that friction resists sliding motion between two surfaces in contact has to be
true for friction to push the person forward.

16. Susan throws a ball in the air. After the ball leaves her hand, the ball accelerates
in the upward direction as it is moving upward and accelerates in the downward
direction as it is moving downward.

False. After the ball leaves Susan's hand, the acceleration is always downward even when
the ball is moving upward.

Newton’s second law teaches that acceleration is caused by a net force and that
acceleration has to go in the same direction as the net force. After a thrown object leaves
the person's hand the only force on it will be the force of gravity. Since gravity always
points downward the acceleration has to be downward even when the object is moving
upward. The only way the acceleration could be upward is if the force of gravity
suddenly reversed itself. Fortunately, this doesn't happen or we'd be in big trouble.

17. The force between your feet and the floor is greater while standing on your tiptoes
than while standing flat on your feet.
False. The pressure between your feet and the floor increases significantly. Pressure
equals force divided by area. Since the area decreases the pressure has to increase, but the
force remains the same. The only way to increase the force is to gain weight.

18. The pressure at the bottom of a 10-meter-deep, 20-kilometer-wide lake is higher

than the pressure at the bottom of a 10-meter-deep well which is only 1 meter
across. (Assume all things are equal except the parameters mentioned.)
False. The pressure at the bottom of any body of water is only affected by its depth and
density.

19. If an object is placed in water and sinks, it is because it has no buoyancy force
acting on it.
False. It sinks because the buoyancy force pushing the object up is lower than the
gravitational force pulling the object down. According to Archimede’s principle, the
buoyancy force is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by an object. Fluids can be
liquids, gasses, or plasmas. Any time an object is placed in a fluid it will have a buoyancy
force regardless of whether it sinks or floats. People sitting in a room have a buoyancy
force on them because they displace air.

20. Shanda drives around a circular track exactly 12 times in 2 hours. Her
speedometer constantly reads exactly 15 miles per hour during this time. Her
average velocity is zero for the trip.

True. Average velocity is a vector quantity, which is equal to the difference between
starting and ending positions of an object divided by the time increment. Since Shanda
ended up in the same position she started from, her average velocity had to be zero.
Average speed is a scalar and unlike velocity is not strictly a function of starting and
ending positions. In this case the average speed is 15 miles per hour, since that was the
constant reading of the speedometer. The velocity was not constant. Since Shanda was
driving in a circle, the direction was constantly changing.

21. Juan drives around a corner at constant speed. His car accelerates
True. Acceleration is simply a change in velocity. Since velocity is a vector, changing
either the magnitude of the velocity or its direction will result in acceleration.

22. When an object has negative acceleration, the object has to be slowing down.

False. Acceleration is a vector quantity. This means it has a magnitude,or size, and a
direction, which matches the direction of the net force causing the acceleration. The
positive or negative sign on acceleration or for that matter any vector only indicates its
direction, such as forward/backward or upward/downward. A negative acceleration by
itself says nothing about whether an object is slowing down or speeding up.

To determine if an object is speeding up or slowing down we have to know the directions

of both its acceleration and velocity vectors. The object is speeding up when its
acceleration and velocity vectors point in the same direction. They can both be positive or
both be negative. The object will slow down when acceleration and velocity vectors point
in opposite directions. It makes no difference whether acceleration is positive or negative,
as long as the velocity has the opposite sign the object will slow down.

Misconceptions about the sign on acceleration are due to the difference between the
common definition of acceleration and the physics definition of acceleration. In common
usage, acceleration means speeding up. In physics, acceleration means a change in
velocity during a period of time. Velocity can be changed by speeding up or slowing
down. In the past many elementary physical science and physics books have reinforced
the misconception that an object with negative acceleration is slowing down.

23. When a person on Earth stands on a floor, of the two external forces acting on her,
her perception or sensation of weight directly depends on the upward force the
floor exerts on her feet, not the downward force of gravity.

True. When a person stands on the floor she has both a weight force acting on her in a
downward direction and a normal force which is the force the floor exerts on her in the
upward direction. If we remove the normal force by springing a trap door located over a
bottomless pit the person will fall. During the fall she will feel weightless even though
the weight force has not changed. Since the weight force is present both when the person
had a sensation of weight and when she didn’t, we have to conclude that the attractive
force of gravity is not directly responsible for its perception. The perception of weight
exists only when a normal force is present.
We might say that the sensation of weight requires both a normal force and a weight
force but it also turns out that the sensation, of weight can occur even when there is
virtually no weight, or gravitational attraction force. This is the basis of so-called
artificial gravity on space stations in science fiction movies. The spinning motion of the
space station creates a normal force on the space station dwellers’ feet. This normal force
acts as the centripetal force, which keeps the station inhabitants rotating in a circle along
with the space station. If the station rotates at the right speed, the normal force on the
inhabitants will be the same as on Earth, and they will feel like they have a gravitational
force acting on them even though they don’t. Hence, the perception of weight depends on
the normal force.

24. Susan jumps off a chair. As she is falling, the Earth’s gravitational force on her is
higher than her gravitational force on the Earth.
False. According to Newton’s second law gravitational forces are an action reaction pair.
This means that the downward force on Susan is exactly equal to the upward force on the
Earth. Susan, however, does most of the moving since she has a tiny amount of mass, or
in other words inertia, compared to the earth.

25. Mass and weight have essentially the same meaning. To increase the weight of an
object requires an increase in the mass of the object.

False. Mass and weight are distinctly different concepts. Weight is the gravitational
attraction force on an object from a nearby planet. Mass in chemistry is the amount of
matter present. In physics it’s inertia, or in other words the resistance to changes in
motion. Mass does not change when it is placed on a different planet with a different
gravity level. Weight, however, does change. An object’s weight can actually be
increased with no change in its mass by transporting the object to a planet with a larger
gravity level.

The tendency to confuse weight and mass frequently comes from science classes.
Students are often told that something weighs a certain number of kilograms. In SI units,
weights should be in newtons and masses in kilograms.

26. If a feather and hammer are dropped on the Moon at the same time from the same
height they will hit the Moon’s surface at virtually the same time.
True. On Earth, a feather will fall more slowly than a hammer due to the relatively high
air resistance of the feather compared with its relatively low weight. There's essentially
no air resistance on the Moon since the atmosphere1 is insignificant. Hence, a feather will
fall at virtually the same rate of acceleration as a hammer. Dave Scott dropped a feather
and hammer while standing on the moon on the Apollo 15 mission. Both hit the surface
at the same time

27. Running a ceiling fan in an enclosed room during the summer will slowly raise
the room’s temperature (assuming no heat transfer in or out).
True. Electric energy used for turning the fan will be converted into thermal energy
when the fan blades stir the air. This will slowly increase the temperature of the room.

The misconception that running a fan in a closed room lowers the temperature is directly
related to our perception of hot and cold. This is not a measurement of temperature but of
heat transfer rate. When people lose heat rapidly they feel cold. Conversely when gaining
heat they feel hot.

Moving air feels cooler than stationary air because it increases a person’s heat loss
through convective heat transfer. This works well when the air temperature is less than a
person’s body temperature (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Even when air temperature is
slightly above body temperature, moving air can still increase a person’s heat loss by
increasing the evaporation rate of sweat. This happens if the air is sufficiently dry.

28. Temperature is the same thing as heat.

False. Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of molecules. Heat is

thermal energy transferred from a hot to a cold region. If heat were the same thing as
temperature then adding heat to an object would always increase its temperature.
However, it’s possible to add large amounts of heat to an object and not change its
temperature at all. For instance, large amounts of heat can be added to a block of ice at its
melting point without increasing its temperature, that is until it completely melts.

28. The period of a pendulum is affected only by its length and by the acceleration of
gravity. The mass and size of the object have no effect whatsoever.
29. When the distance that light travels is doubled, its intensity is:The intensity of
light is quartered when the distance is doubled.
30. The speed of light is 300000000 meters/second, or about 670000000 mph. This is
the speed limit of the universe: NOTHING can go faster.
31. Of the three planets listed, Mars is the most distant from the Sun. The order of the
planets in our solar system is as follows: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. However, because of its eccentric orbit, Pluto is
sometimes closer than is Neptune.
32. Light, we believe, is neither a pure wave nor a pure particle, but a combination; it
is called a wavicle.
33. The eV, N-m, and ft-lb are ALL units in which energy can be expressed. Some
others are the calorie, BTU, and kilowatt-hour.
34. At the equator, the radius of the Earth is about 6380 km.
35.