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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 3, Experimental Physics.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In Chapter 2, what was the name of the shape of a chain suspended between two fixed points?
(a) Catenary.
(b) Involute.
(c) Isoperimeters.
(d) Tractrix.

2. In Chapter 1, who claimed that his "principle of least action" proved the existence of God?
(a) Malebranche.
(b) Pierre-Louis-Moreau de Maupertuis.
(c) Newton.
(d) Leibniz.

3. Who coined the expression "Scientific Revolution," according to the narrator in Chapter 1?
(a) Jean Lerond d'Alembert.
(b) Descartes.
(c) Malebranche.
(d) Newton.

4. In Chapter 2, what was the name of the path of a body that is dragged over a resisting horizontal surface by a cord of which one end moves along a straight line found?
(a) Isoperimeters.
(b) Brachistachrone.
(c) Tractrix.
(d) Cycloid.

5. Madame du Chatelet supported the Leibnizian theory of ________ because it gave a better account of free will.
(a) Christianity.
(b) Mechanics.
(c) Physics.
(d) Religion.

Short Answer Questions

1. In 1729, ________, a dedicated amateur experimenter and occasional contributor to the "Philosophical Transactions" of the Royal Society, discovered that electricity could be communicated over rather long distances by contact.

2. Chapter 2 states that ________ had been created to deal with the problem of motion and that the new mathematical techniques discovered in the eighteenth century were all responses to the challenges of mechanics.

3. In Chapter 3, what was the name of the experimental tradition began in Western Europe during the Renaissance?

4. Leibniz, in his differential calculus, broke up the curve into many little straight lines, creating a ________, in Chapter 2 of "Science and the Enlightenment."

5. Who was the extraordinary philosopher whose life and career exemplified many aspects of the Enlightenment, although he was not especially prominent as a natural philosopher nor was he the main protagonist in the vis viva controversy?

(see the answer key)

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