Classical Mechanics
F = ma is a statement of this famous law.
What is Newton's Second Law of Motion?
This German physicist introduced the concept of energy quanta in 1900.
Who is Max Planck?
This scientist supposedly discovered gravity after watching an apple fall near him.
Who is Isaac Newton?
IAPS stands for these four words.
What is International Association of Physics Students?
This phenomenon — the scattering of short wavelengths by atmospheric molecules — is why the sky appears blue.
What is Rayleigh scattering?
The energy stored in a spring compressed by distance x is given by this formula.
What is ½kx² (elastic potential energy)?
Schrödinger's cat illustrates this quantum phenomenon where a particle exists in multiple states at once.
What is superposition?
She is the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences — Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911.
Who is Marie Curie?
IAPS was formally established in this European capital city on September 12, 1987.
What is Budapest?
A microwave oven heats food primarily by exciting these polar molecules in your food.
What are water molecules (H₂O)?
In a perfectly elastic collision, both this quantity and momentum are conserved.
What is kinetic energy?
This principle states you cannot simultaneously know a particle's exact position and exact momentum.
What is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
This Indian physicist explained why the sky is blue, winning the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Who is C.V. Raman?
This flagship annual IAPS conference, abbreviated ICPS, brings together physics students from around the world.
What is the International Conference of Physics Students?
GPS satellites must account for this Einsteinian effect — time running slower in stronger gravity — to stay accurate to within meters.
What is gravitational time dilation (from General Relativity)?
This dimensionless number determines whether fluid flow is laminar or turbulent.
What is the Reynolds Number?
This equation describes how a quantum wave function evolves over time.
What is the Schrödinger equation?
This physicist developed the theory of General Relativity and the famous equation E = mc².
Who is Albert Einstein?
INPS serves as this type of committee for India within the IAPS structure.
What is a Territorial Committee (TC)?
This is why you can hear sound around a corner, but cannot see light around the same corner under everyday conditions.
What is diffraction? (sound wavelengths >> light wavelengths relative to obstacles)
This theorem states that the net work done on an object equals the change in its kinetic energy.
What is the Work–Energy Theorem?
In this interpretation of quantum mechanics, every measurement spawns a new parallel branch of reality.
What is the Many-Worlds (Everett) Interpretation?
This Indian-American astrophysicist calculated the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star, now called by his name.
Who is Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar?
This prestigious international theoretical physics competition run by IAPS is named after the founder of quantum theory.
What is PLANCKS? (named after Max Planck)
This constant, approximately 70 km/s per Megaparsec, quantifies how fast the universe is expanding.
What is the Hubble Constant (H₀)?