The School of the Physical Universe · physics, chemistry, earth & sky
Classical & Modern Physics
Motion, force, energy, and fields — the laws that hold from a thrown stone to a satellite, and where they begin to bend.
Why things move the way they do — kinematics, Newton's laws, energy, and momentum, built from first principles.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~32 hours
Unit I — Describing Motion
Position, displacement, and the number line · Velocity and acceleration as rates · Motion graphs and what their slopes mean · Free fall and the constant g · Projectiles: two motions at once
Unit II — Explaining Motion
Newton's first law and the idea of inertia · Force, mass, and the second law · Action and reaction pairs · Friction, normal force, and tension · Free-body diagrams
Unit III — Energy and Momentum
Work and kinetic energy · Potential energy and conservation · Power · Momentum and impulse · Collisions, elastic and otherwise
Unit IV — Turning and Orbiting
Uniform circular motion · Torque and rotational balance · Newton's law of gravitation · Orbits and apparent weightlessness
From static charge to the electric motor — the fields that carry force across empty space, and the circuits that put them to work.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~36 hours
Unit I — Charge and Field
Charge and Coulomb's law · The electric field and field lines · Potential and voltage · Conductors, insulators, and capacitors
Unit II — Current and Circuits
Current and resistance · Ohm's law and its limits · Series and parallel combinations · Kirchhoff's rules · Power dissipation and safety
Unit III — Magnetism
Magnetic fields and their sources · Force on a moving charge · Force on a current-carrying wire · The motor principle
Unit IV — Induction and Light
Faraday's law of induction · Lenz's law and the direction of things · Generators and transformers · Maxwell's synthesis: light as an electromagnetic wave
One idea — the traveling disturbance — carried from a plucked string through concert halls to the color of the sky.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — What a Wave Is
Pulses and periodic waves · Wavelength, frequency, and speed · Transverse and longitudinal waves · Superposition and interference
Unit II — Sound
Pressure waves and pitch · Resonance and standing waves · Harmonics and why instruments sound different · The Doppler effect
Unit III — Light as a Wave
Reflection and mirrors · Refraction and lenses · Dispersion and color · Diffraction and interference fringes
Unit IV — Seeing Sharply
The eye as an optical instrument · Cameras and focal length · Polarization · Why the sky is blue and sunsets are red
Temperature, heat, and entropy — the laws that set the price of every energy conversion, from steam engine to refrigerator.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~28 hours
Unit I — Temperature and Heat
Thermal equilibrium and the zeroth law · Temperature scales and thermometry · Specific heat and calorimetry · Conduction, convection, and radiation
Unit II — The First Law
Internal energy · Work done by and on gases · The first law as bookkeeping · Heat engines, a first look
Unit III — The Second Law
Reversible and irreversible processes · Entropy defined · Carnot's limit on efficiency · Refrigerators and heat pumps
Unit IV — The Statistical View
Kinetic theory of gases · Microstates and the Boltzmann picture · Entropy as counting · The arrow of time
Einstein's 1905 argument, taken slowly — why simultaneity fails, why clocks disagree, and how E = mc² follows.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~20 hours
Unit I — The Trouble with Light
Galilean relativity and frames of reference · The Michelson-Morley null result · Einstein's two postulates
Unit II — Consequences
The relativity of simultaneity · Time dilation · Length contraction · The muon: evidence you can count
Unit III — Spacetime
The Lorentz transformation · Spacetime diagrams · The invariant interval · Adding velocities correctly
Unit IV — Mass and Energy
Relativistic momentum · Deriving E = mc² · Energy in particle collisions · Why nothing outruns light