Unit testing & assertions example (newbie)

If I get this right, Unit Testing is all about testing if our app handles our data the way it should. In other words it’s all about testing the model? (ex. does our app rejects product titles with fewer than 10 chars as it should?)

So the way to do unit tests are always to use assertions? Or there are other ways too?

I’m playing with the code from “Agile Development with Rails” where we create an online store, and this is a test for my product title that I wrote. Can you tell me if it’s the best way to do it or maybe there’s a quicker and better solution?