My Physics Course Introduction

For the past few months I have been steadily working on the Physics course from the Ron Paul Curriculum as part as my grade 12 year. Each week I work through a topic and at the end complete a review and practice problems. Unlike my other two courses, English 4: American Literature and Economics, where I write a weekly essay, I do not have a weekly written assignment to do for Physics. So, I have decided to start writing a weekly report on what I am learning in my Physics course to help me document and keep track of my progress. I have no doubt that this will be a rather boring part of my homeschool blog, but I hope it might be useful for other students and potential students of the Ron Paul Curriculum to see.

Here is a quick look at what I have gone through for the past few months:

Week 8: Momentum and impulse

In this week I covered the topics of Momentum and it’s conservation, Impulse, Collisions, and Center of Mass.

Week 9: Introduction to circular motion

This week focused on Uniform Circular Motion, Non-uniform Circular Motion, Newton’s law of Gravitation and the 4 known forces; gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear, and Kepler’s Laws; law of orbits, law of areas, and the law of periods.

Week 10: Dynamics of circular motion

Week ten focused on Dynamics of Circular Motion & Curves, Kinematics of Rotational Motion, and additional problem solving. I greatly appreciate when the teacher works through additional problems during the lecture. It really helps you understand the concepts that you just covered and then apply them properly.

Week 11: Rotational motion

This week I covered Rotational energy and problem solving, and Angular Momentum and problem solving.

Week 12: Introduction to statics, stress and strain

During week 12 I learned about Statics and Static Equilibrium, as well as some problem solving, Stress & Strain, Strength of Materials, and some additional problem solving.

Week 13: Introduction to Fluid Mechanics

This week covered Fluid Mechanics, Buoyancy and Archimedes Principle, Continuity, and Bernoulli’s Principle.

Week 14: Simple harmonic motion

Week 14 covered the Introduction to Simple Harmonic Motion, Damping, Forced Vibrations, Waves, and Standing Waves.

Week 15: Sound

Week 15 was one of my favourite weeks because I like learning about waves of any kind as well as music, which is all about waves and beats. And I think my brain understands these concepts better than other Physics concepts for whatever reason. This week covered Introduction to Sound, Speed of Sound, Sound Production, Interference and Beats, and Doppler Effect.

Week 16: Temperature and Kinetic Theory

This week focused on Temperature, Gas Laws, Absolute Temperature, the Kinetic Theory, Critical points, Vapor Pressure, and Relative Humidity.

Week 17: Heat

And this last week I worked through the concepts of Heat, Conduction, Latent Heat, Convection, and Radiation Heat Transfer.