Practice Paper 1 (DP IB Physics: SL)

The units of all physical quantities can be expressed in terms of SI base units.

 Which pair contains quantities with different base units?

A stone is released from a hot air balloon moving upwards with a uniform velocity of 25 m s^–1. 

If the hot air balloon is 30 m high when the stone was dropped, what is its height when the stone hits the ground?

A ball starts from rest and moves horizontally. Five positions of the ball are shown at time intervals of 0.50 ms. The horizontal distance between X, the initial position, and Y, the final position, is 0.060 m.

What is the average acceleration of the ball between X and Y?

An object is released from a stationary hot air balloon at height s above the ground. Air resistance is negligible. 

An identical object is released at the same height above the ground from another balloon that is rising at a constant speed.

Which of the following does not increase for the object released from the rising balloon? 

A frictionless spring-operated latched is fitted to a door. 

When the latch is pushed in, the spring compresses.

When the latch is released, which of the following best represents how acceleration a of the latch varies with the distance x it moves before stopping? 

What is the definition of an external force?

Which of the following is true for momentum and impulse?

A child whirls a conker on a string around their head. The conker moves with uniform circular motion. The linear speed of the conker is 5 m s⁻¹ and the radius of the circle is 0.5 m. 

Calculate the angular speed of the conker.

Liquid iron solidifies without a change in temperature.

Which of the following is correct for the molecules in the solid phase compared with molecules in the liquid phase?

The strength of intermolecular forces varies between in the different states of matter.

What is the order from highest to lowest strength of intermolecular forces?

A sealed cylinder contains water at 10 °C and ice at 0 °C. The system has been thermally isolated from the surroundings. The ice and the water reach thermal equilibrium.

What happens to the total internal energy of the system in order for equilibrium to be reached?

A spring in a ball point pen has a mass of 0.10 g and a specific heat capacity of             400 J kg⁻¹ K⁻¹ and a spring constant k = 200 N m⁻¹. To open or close the nib of the pen the spring is compressed by 8 mm. Upon release 5% of the elastic potential energy stored is converted into heat energy in the spring.

How many times must the spring be compressed and released to cause the temperature of the pen to increase by 2 °C?

Assume that no heat is lost from the pen. 

Which of the following graphs shows the variation with displacement x of the speed v of a particle performing simple harmonic motion?

A mass is attached to a spring from above and the spring is secured to a clamp. The mass is pulled down and released resulting in a simple harmonic oscillation. 

Which one of the following statements is true?

When a light ray enters a denser medium and refracts, some of the characteristics of the wave will change. Which of the following options is correct about this change?

An unpolarised electromagnetic wave passes through 2 polarisers. The second polariser is at a clockwise angle a to the vertical.

When a = 225 ° what percentage of the unpolarised light is transmitted through both filters?

Two microwave transmitters are set up to emit microwaves so that a stationary wave is created between them. The microwaves have a frequency of 300 MHz.

Which line correctly gives both the formula which represents the the distance between two adjacent nodes in the standing wave and the value for the distance?

	Formula	Distance
A.		50 cm
B.		2.0 m
C.		5.0 m
D.		20 cm

The double-slit equation describes the relationship between the separation distance of the fringes on the screen, s, the distance between the screen and the slits, D, the separation of the slits, d, and the wavelength, λ, of the light. 

s = 

Which line gives the correct units for the quantities?

The Tolman-Stewart experiment sought to find evidence that mobile charge carriers inside conducting metals are negatively charged.

It involved exploiting the inertia of ‘free’ charge carriers in the conductor. If the conductor was suddenly accelerated, a potential difference would be set up.

Assuming positive charges are fixed in place and mobile charge carriers are negative, which of the following statements about the Tolman-Stewart experiment is incorrect?

Five resistors of equal resistance are connected to a cell as shown. 

Which of the following is correct about the power dissipated P_X, P_Y and P_Z in resistors X, Y and Z respectively? 

	PX	PY	PZ
A.
B.
C.
D.

Which of the following correctly describes the electromotive force of a cell? 

A current of 3.0 mA flows in a wire of length 2.0 m. It is placed in a magnetic field of flux density 4 T such that the angle between the current and the field is 90^­º.

What is the magnitude of the magnetic force on the wire?

A photo hangs from two strings. It has a weight W and the two strings have equal tension T.

What is the free–body diagram for this situation?

A body moves in a circle with increasing angular velocity. At times t, the angles θ swept out by the body added cumulatively from the same reference point and its angular velocities ω are as follows:

The angular acceleration of the body:

Unstable nuclei make up 10% of a sample’s mass. The count rate of the sample is measured over a time period of 8 hours.

After some time has passed, the percentage of the sample which is unstable reduces to 2.5%. What is the count rate of the source at this time?

A stationary uranium-238 nucleus decays by alpha-emission, as shown in the equation below:

This decay generates a total energy E. 

Which of the following statements is correct regarding the kinetic energy of the alpha particle?

The diagram shows the decay chain for a particular isotope.

What are the isotopes labelled 1, 2 and 3?

	1	2	3
A
B
C
D

A liquid is initially at its boiling point. Energy is continuously supplied to the liquid at a uniform rate until it has completely evaporated.

Which graph shows how the temperature of the liquid, T, varies with the energy, Q, supplied to the liquid?

The Sankey diagram shows the energy transformations in a laptop computer while a person is watching a film.

What is the efficiency of the laptop?