Physics Learning Path
High School (11–12) Physics
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Second Law, Heat Engines and Entropy
StemPy LabHeat flows from a hot body to a cold one by itself, and never the other way. A car engine wastes most of the energy of its fuel. In this course we state the second law of thermodynamics, we find the efficiency of heat engines and the coefficient of performance of refrigerators, we learn why the Carnot engine is the best possible, and we meet entropy, which tells us the direction in which changes happen.
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Specific Heats of Gases and Thermodynamic Processes
A gas has two specific heats, and the one at constant pressure is the larger. A gas that is compressed quickly gets hot, and a gas that is compressed slowly does not. In this course we find Mayer's relation, and we study the isobaric, isochoric, isothermal and adiabatic processes with the heat, work and change of internal energy of each.
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Heat, Work and the First Law
When you pump a bicycle tyre, the pump becomes warm, and nobody heated it. In this course we define the internal energy of a gas, we separate heat from work, and we find the work as the area under a pressure-volume graph. Then we write the first law of thermodynamics, which is the law of conservation of energy for heat and work.
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Heat Transfer
A steel spoon in hot tea becomes hot, a room heater warms the air above it, and the Sun warms the Earth across empty space. In this course we study conduction with the thermal conductivity, convection, and radiation with the laws of Stefan and Wien, and Newton's law of cooling, which tells us how fast a hot body cools.
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Specific Heat, Calorimetry and Change of State
Water in a pan takes minutes to heat, and a metal spoon in it becomes hot in seconds. Ice at 0 degrees cools a drink much more than water at 0 degrees. In this course we define the specific heat, we use the method of mixtures to find an unknown temperature or specific heat, and we find the heat that is needed to melt a solid and to boil a liquid, with the latent heat.
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Temperature, Gases and Thermal Expansion
A thermometer reads 37 degrees for a healthy person, and a gas at the same moment has a temperature of 310 kelvin. In this course we separate temperature from heat, we meet the Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin scales, we find the law of the ideal gas and the meaning of absolute zero, and we find how much solids, liquids and gases expand when they are heated, including the strange case of water near 4 degrees.
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Viscosity and Surface Tension
Honey flows slowly, a raindrop falls at a steady speed, an insect walks on water, and water climbs up in a thin tube. In this course we study the internal friction of a fluid, its viscosity, with Stokes' law and the terminal speed, and the surface tension of a liquid, with surface energy, the pressure inside drops and bubbles, the angle of contact and capillary rise.
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Fluids in Motion and Bernoulli's Principle
Water speeds up when it comes out of a narrow nozzle, and a plane is lifted by the air that moves over its wings. In this course we describe the steady flow of a fluid with streamlines, we write the equation of continuity and Bernoulli's equation, and we use them for a tank with a hole, a Venturi meter, a spray and the lift of a wing.
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Pressure and Fluids at Rest
Why do your ears hurt when you dive deep, and how can a small force lift a car in a garage? In this course we define pressure, we find how it grows with depth, we use Pascal's law for the hydraulic lift, we measure the pressure of the air and of a gas, and we use Archimedes' principle to find when a body floats or sinks.
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Stress, Strain and Hooke's Law
Why is a steel wire stretched only a little by a load that makes a rubber band much longer? In this course we define stress and strain, we find the law of Hooke, we read the stress-strain curve of a metal and see what happens when it yields and breaks, and we use Young's modulus to find how much a wire stretches.
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Shear Modulus, Bulk Modulus and Poisson's Ratio
A solid can be stretched, but it can also be sheared and squeezed, and a stretched wire also gets thinner. In this course we find the shear modulus and the bulk modulus, we see why a liquid has no shear modulus, we find how much water is compressed in the deep sea, and we use Poisson's ratio to connect the three moduli.
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Elastic Energy and Applications
A stretched wire stores energy, like a spring. A rope, a beam and a mountain all have a limit. In this course we find the elastic energy of a wire, we study wires in series and in parallel and the stress of a heated rod, and we use the safety factor to choose the rope of a crane, the shape of a beam and the greatest height of a mountain.
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