Course · Physics
Physics.
From a falling ball to a burning star: motion, forces, energy, waves and electricity, to high-school level.
The course, unit by unit
Units
30 units · 140 lessons · about 61 hours
Jump to a unit 30
Motion, forces and energy
10 units · 44 lessons
Unit 1 · 6 lessons
Measurement
SI units and prefixes, reading a scale, significant figures, directed quantities, and errors in repeated readings.
Unit 2 · 4 lessons
Motion in a line
A cart on a straight track: position, velocity and acceleration, motion graphs, and the equations of motion.
Unit 3 · 5 lessons
Projectile motion
A ball launched through the air: two motions at once, the angle that flies farthest, and what the air changes.
Unit 4 · 5 lessons
Forces
What changes how a body moves: Newton's three laws, weight and the normal force, friction, and force diagrams.
Unit 5 · 4 lessons
Energy
Work, kinetic and potential energy on a roller coaster, the heat friction makes, power, and simple machines.
Unit 6 · 3 lessons
Heat and temperature
What temperature measures: jiggling particles, conduction, specific heat, convection, radiation and engines.
Unit 7 · 4 lessons
Pressure and fluids
Force over an area: gas pressure, pressure with depth, floating, flow in a narrow pipe, and surface tension.
Unit 8 · 4 lessons
Momentum
Mass times velocity: impulse, the total no collision can change, and where the energy goes when carts collide.
Unit 9 · 5 lessons
Circular motion and gravity
From a ball on a string to the Moon: centripetal force, universal gravitation, orbits and angular momentum.
Unit 10 · 4 lessons
Oscillations
A spring, a pendulum and a swing: what sets the rhythm, where the energy goes, and how resonance builds.
Waves, fields and the atom
6 units · 34 lessons
Unit 11 · 5 lessons
Waves and sound
What a wave carries: wavelength and frequency, sound, interference, standing waves, and the Doppler effect.
Unit 12 · 6 lessons
Electricity
From rubbed charge to a capacitor: fields and potential, current and resistance, circuits, and semiconductors.
Unit 13 · 6 lessons
Magnetism and induction
Magnetic fields, the force on a current, charges circling in a field, induction, and the transformer.
Unit 14 · 6 lessons
Light and optics
Refraction and total reflection, prisms and rainbows, lenses, diffraction, polarisers, and the spectrum.
Unit 15 · 7 lessons
Modern physics
What classical physics could not explain: the atom, radioactivity, photons, matter waves and relativity.
Unit 16 · 4 lessons
The nucleus
The energy inside the nucleus: fission and chain reactions, fusion, radioactive dating, and quarks.
The sky from the Earth
3 units · 13 lessons
Unit 17 · 4 lessons
The Earth, the Moon and the Sun
Day and night, the seasons from the Earth's tilt, the Moon's phases, eclipses, and two tides a day.
Unit 18 · 4 lessons
Orbits and spaceflight
Real spaceflight: Kepler's laws, escape speed, the Lagrange points, and what a rocket gets from its fuel.
Unit 19 · 5 lessons
Stars and the universe
How we know stars we can never touch: their colour, spectra, lives and distances, and Hubble's law.
Our planet
5 units · 20 lessons
Unit 20 · 4 lessons
The dynamic Earth
Inside the Earth: seismic waves and a liquid core, drifting plates, and a magnetic field that flips.
Unit 21 · 5 lessons
Atmosphere and weather
The air above us: its layers, thunderstorms, the Coriolis effect, the ozone hole, and the auroras.
Unit 22 · 5 lessons
Water and oceans
The Earth's water on the move: the water cycle, groundwater, ocean currents, El Niño, and tsunamis.
Unit 23 · 3 lessons
Ice and climate
Ice sheets that flow and lower the sea, the orbital beat of the ice ages, and the greenhouse effect.
Unit 24 · 3 lessons
Rocks and the surface
How the surface is built and worn away: the rock cycle, rivers that carve and build, and volcanoes.
The Solar System and beyond
3 units · 12 lessons
Unit 25 · 4 lessons
The Solar System
Our neighbourhood: the Sun and its sunspots, the planets, comets and asteroids, and planets of other stars.
Unit 26 · 5 lessons
The extreme universe
Gravity and light at the limit: nebulae, neutron stars, black holes, gravitational waves and lensing.
Unit 27 · 3 lessons
Galaxies and cosmology
The largest scale: galaxies and their arms, the dark matter in their spin, and the oldest light there is.
In the real world
3 units · 17 lessons
Unit 28 · 6 lessons
Machines at work
Energy, pressure and forces at work in an engine, a fridge, a hydraulic lift, a wing, a turbine and a bridge.
Unit 29 · 5 lessons
Seeing and sensing
Waves, sound and light at work in a laser, a telescope, a camera, a CT scanner and a sonar.
Unit 30 · 6 lessons
In the real world: power and signals
Ideas from earlier Units in a solar cell, a transistor, a radio and GPS, an accelerator and a fusion reactor.