Exam 1: Physics and the Life Sciences

Exploring proportions in the human body, you can notice that the span of your arms is equal to your body height. If a child has height of 1.3 m, and an adult 1.74 m, by approximately what factor is the adult's arm length longer than that of the child?

Which of the following relationships is dimensionally consistent? In these equations, a is acceleration, v is velocity, t is time, and x is distance.

The principle of Occam's razor is a principle of reasoning; what does it say we should generally do?

Which of the following relationships is dimensionally consistent? In these equations, a is acceleration, v is velocity, t is time, and x is distance.

How many significant figures are in 0.0235?

When choosing between two models that explain a physical principle with equal success, but differ in complexity of the explanation, how do we choose the more plausible model?

Total lung capacity of a male, on average, is about 6 L of air. What would this be when expressed in cubic metres?

A cylindrical water tank holds 650 L of water. The volume of a cylinder is given by V = ðr²h (r is radius, h is height). How much water (in litres) could the tank hold if the radius was doubled and the height reduced to half?

Earth's equator, with a circumference of around 40000 km, is longer than the total length of capillaries in the human body (6 × 10⁹ cm).

To convert a quantity from m/s² to km/hr/s, what must you do?

Nerve fibres conduct impulses with a speed of 72 m/s in rats, which is faster than the 72 km/h speed of conduction in squids.

Any of the following numbers is a correct way to write 96300000 in scientific notation: 963 × 10⁵, 96.3 × 10⁶, or 9.63 × 10⁷.

The smallest power of 10 quoted in a result is a good indicator of the precision of the measurement.

Estimate the number of hairs on your head, if you counted 50 hairs on a 5 mm × 5 mm area. State your assumptions.

Which of the following numbers is the value for (536.0 + 0.7341), with the correct number of significant figures?

Numbers 20 and 20.0 have the same number of significant figures.

If an adult has 3 times the weight of a child, the adult's foot will be twice as long and twice as wide as the child's foot. What is the ratio of force per unit area (pressure P) exerted on the feet of the child compared to the force exerted on the adult's feet?

Radioactive decay is described with the following law: N = N₀ × 2^-ët, where N is the number of nuclei, N₀ is the original number of nuclei at the start of the process, t is time needed for N0 to decay to N, and ë is a radioactive constant of a particular element. What are the units of ë? If the radioactive constant of another element is larger, does that element require a shorter or longer time to perform the same decay?

When adding or subtracting numbers, the result has the same precision as the least precise number used in the calculation.

The thickness of human hair is around 100 micrometres (ìm). If a width of a DNA molecule is around 10 nanometres (nm), how many DNA molecules can fit across a hair strand?