Measurements, Units, Dimensions

and Vectors
QUESTIONS FOR AARUSHI

| Question List | April 23, 2016

01. The standard kilogram, a cylinder of platinum and __________ 0.039m in height and diameter, is
kept under carefully controlled conditions in Sevres, France.
02. One second is defined to be the time it takes for radiation from a _______ - 133 atom to complete
9,192,631, 770 cycles of oscillations.
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03. Show that = + 2 2 is dimensionally consistent.

04. How many significant figures are there in (a) 21.00, (b) 21, (c) 2.1 x 102, (d) 2.10 x 103
05. If a distance d has units of meters, and a time T has units of seconds, does the quantity T + d make
sense physically? What about the quantity d/T? Explain.
06. A human hair has a thickness of about 70 m. What is this in meters?
07. IBM has a computer it calls the Blue Gene/L that can do 136.8 teracalculations per second. How
many calculations can it do in a microsecond?
08. Which of the following quantities have dimensions of distance?
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(a) vt, (b) 2 2 ,

2 1/2

(c) ( )

(d) (2)1/2

09. Velocity is related to acceleration and distance by the following expression: 2 = 2 . Find the
power p which makes this equation dimensionally consistent.
10. Newtons second law states acceleration is proportional to the force acting on an object and is
inversely proportional to the objects mass. What are the dimensions of force?
11. The time T required for one complete oscillation of a mass m on a spring of force constant k is

= 2 Find the dimensions k must have for this equation to be dimensionally correct.
12. One way to write the speed of light is as 2.9979 x 108 m/s. What is the speed of light to three
significant figures?
13. How many significant figures are there in (a) 0.000054 and (b) 3.001 x 105 ?
14. The American physical chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875 1946) proposed a unit of time called
the jiffy. According to Lewis, 1 jiffy = the time it takes to travel one centimeter. (a) If you perform
a task in a jiffy, how long has it taken in seconds?, (b) How many jiffys are there in one minute? [Use
the fact that the speed of light is approximately 2.9979 x 108 /
15. Suppose 1.0 cubic meters of oil is spilled into the ocean. Find the area of the resulting slick, assuming
that it is one molecule thick, and that each molecule occupies a cube 0.50 m.
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16. Aspi walks 90m due east and then 50m due south. What is his displacement from his starting point?
17. A butterfly flies from the top of a tree in the center of a garden to rest on top of a red flower at the
gardens edge. The tree is 8.0 m taller than the flower and the garden is 12m wide. Determine the
magnitude of the butterflys displacement.
18. Motor neurons in mammals transmit signals from the brain to skeletal muscles at approximately 25
m/s. Estimate how much time in milliseconds it will take for a signal to get from your brain to your
hand.
19. The common Eastern mole, a mammal, typically has a mass of 75 g, which
corresponds to about 7.5 moles of atoms. (A mole of atoms is 6.02 x 1023
atoms) In atomic mass units (u), what is the average mass of the atoms of
the common Eastern mole?
20. Apart from [L], [M] and [T], which are the other three dimensions?
21. A famous relation in physics relates moving mass m to the rest mass mo in terms of its speed v and
the speed of light, c. A boy recalls the formula almost correctly but forgets where to put the constant
c. Can you tell him where and how he should bring in c into the equation?

=
(1 2 )
22. Hookes Law states that the force, F, in a spring extended by a length x is given by F = -kx.
According to Newtons Second Law F = ma, where m is the mass and a is the acceleration. Calculate
the dimension of the spring constant.
23. Compute the dimensions of electrical resistance.
24. Suppose we employ a system of units in which the unit of mass equals kg, the unit of length equals
m and the unit of time is seconds. Show that a calorie has a magnitude of 4.2 -1 -2 2 in terms of
the new units.
25. A student while doing an experiment finds that the velocity of an object varies with time and it can be
expressed as the equation:
26. An equation for potential energy states U = mgh. If U is in kg.m2.s-2, m is in kg, and g is in ms-2, what
are the units of h?
27. How many significant figures should be written in the sum 4.56g + 9.032g + 580.0078g + 540.439g?
28. The intensity of Suns radiation that reaches Earths atmosphere is 1.4 kW/m2 (kW = kilowatt, W =
watt). Convert this to w/cm2.
29. Mercury has a density of 1.36 x 104 kg/m3. What is the density of mercury in g/cm3?
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30. A student writes down the equation for the period T of a planet (the time to make one orbit around
the Sun) is 42r2/(GM), where T is in seconds, r is in meters, G is in m3/(kg.s2) and M is in kg.
Where did he go wrong?
31. An expression for buoyant force is FB = gV, where FB has dimensions [MLT-2],
(density) has dimensions [ML-3], and g, the gravitational field strength, has dimensions
[LT-2]. What must be the dimensions of V? Which could be correct interpretation of
V: velocity or volume?
32. Estimate the number of times a human heart beats during its lifetime.
33. Using the graphical method, find the resultant
of the following two displacements: 2m at 40
and 4m at 127
34. On a day when the wind is blowing towards the
south at 3m/s, a runner jogs west at 4m/s.
What is the velocity (magnitude and direction)
of the air relative to the runner?
35. Prove that two vectors must have equal
magnitude if their sum is perpendicular to their
difference.
36. A particle moving on a plane surface undergoes
a change in velocity from u to v over 2
seconds as shown in the figure. What is the
acceleration of the body over this time?

The End

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