This content is assembled from UC-approved college prep courses and is designed to acquaint students with topics in Newtonian mechanics, including: kinematics, laws of motion, work and energy, systems of particles, momentum, circular motion, oscillations, and gravitation. The course covers two semesters. The first semester includes fluid mechanics, thermal physics, and kinetic theory. The second semester discusses electricity and magnetism, waves and optics, and atomic and nuclear physics. The course emphasizes problem solving and there are numerous interactive examples throughout. Students will gain laboratory experience through interactive lab simulations and wet labs.

The rate of change of velocity with time is called acceleration. Most of the real time examples of motion are accelerated in variety of ways - despite the fact that the basic nature of the matter is to maintain its velocity in both direction and magnitude

Students learn how forces are used in the creation of art. They come to understand that it is not just bridge and airplane designers who are concerned about how forces interact with objects, but artists as well. As "paper engineers," students create their own mobiles and pop-up books, and identify and use the forces (air currents, gravity, hand movement) acting upon them.

Athletes often wear protective gear to keep themselves safe in contact sports. In this spirit, students follow the steps of engineering design process as they design, build and test protective padding for an egg drop. Many of the design considerations surrounding an egg drop are similar to sports equipment design. Watching the transformation of energy from potential to kinetic, observing the impact and working under material constraints gives students a chance to experience some of the challenges engineers face in designing equipment to protect athletes.

Students evaluate various everyday energy conversion devices and draw block flow diagrams to show the forms and states of energy into and out of the device. They also identify the forms of energy that are useful and the desired output of the device as well as the forms that are not useful for the intended use of the item. This can be used to lead into the law of conservation of energy and efficiency. The student activity is preceded by a demonstration of a more complicated system to convert chemical energy to heat energy to mechanical energy. Drawing the block energy conversion diagram for this system models the activity that the students then do themselves for other simpler systems.

The students participate in many demonstrations during the first day of this lesson to learn basic concepts related to the forms and states of energy. This knowledge is then applied the second day as they assess various everyday objects to determine what forms of energy are transformed to accomplish the object's intended task. The students use block diagrams to illustrate the form and state of energy flowing into and out of the process.

Demonstrations are used to explain the concepts of energy forms (sound, chemical, radiant (light), electrical, atomic (nuclear), mechanical, thermal (heat)) and states (potential, kinetic)

See potential energy convert to kinetic energy in this interactive activity from WGBH that shows a roller coaster in action.

Students learn about applied forces as they create pop-up-books the art of paper engineering. They also learn the basic steps of the engineering design process.

Imagining themselves arriving at the Olympic gold medal soccer game in Beijing, students begin to think about how engineering is involved in sports. After a discussion of kinetic and potential energy, an associated hands-on activity gives students an opportunity to explore energy absorbing materials as they try to protect an egg from being crushed.

Most students will have an intuitive sense that kinetic energy depends on how fast something is moving (speed) and how massive it is (mass). (We use speed instead of velocity, because energy is a scalar, and independent of direction.) They know that it hurts more in dodge ball when the ball is thrown with more speed than when it is thrown with less speed. They also know that is hurts more to drop a bowling ball on their foot than it does to drop a tennis ball. Exactly how mass, speed and kinetic energy are related is the purpose of this lab. Which is more important in determining kinetic energy? mass or speed? or are they of the same importance?

In this lesson, students are introduced to both potential energy and kinetic energy as forms of mechanical energy. A hands-on activity demonstrates how potential energy can change into kinetic energy by swinging a pendulum, illustrating the concept of conservation of energy. Students calculate the potential energy of the pendulum and predict how fast it will travel knowing that the potential energy will convert into kinetic energy. They verify their predictions by measuring the speed of the pendulum.

In this interactive simulation adapted from the University of Colorado's Physics Education Technology project, hang various masses from different springs and see the kinetic, potential, and thermal energy of each spring system. You can even slow time or move your demonstration to another planet.

The application of engineering principles is explored in the creation of mobiles. As students create their own mobiles, they take into consideration the forces of gravity and convection air currents. They learn how an understanding of balancing forces is important in both art and engineering design.

In NASA CONNECT Rocket to the Stars, students will learn the basic science concepts of work and energy and see how algebra can be used to help explain both concepts. NASA is working on new ways of powering spacecraft that will reduce the travel time to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Students will be introduced to two cutting edge innovative propulsion technology programs, Prometheus and VASIMR, that will allow crewed and uncrewed vehicles to explore the distant reaches of the solar system. Grades 6-8.

There are many different kinds of energy. Every kind of action needs energy to make it happen.

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, learn how the potential energy in a wound-up rubber band powers a spool racer.

Round robin of mini exercises illustrating gas laws

This activity demonstrates how potential energy (PE) can be converted to kinetic energy (KE) and back again. Given a pendulum height, students calculate and predict how fast the pendulum will swing by understanding conservation of energy and using the equations for PE and KE. The equations are justified as students experimentally measure the speed of the pendulum and compare theory with reality.