The outline of the material of the course is, at this point, still relatively standard for a course of this type and is divided into five units:
- Mathematical Tools and Foundational Concepts – including “Fermi-style” estimation problems, mean and standard deviation, understanding position/velocity/acceleration, as well as vector manipulations
- Forces – Includes Newton’s Three Laws of Motion as well a survey of different types of forces used in the course such as gravity, normal forces, tension, friction, drag, etc.
- Force and – Combines the idea of force with an additional quantity resulting in a survey of pressure, work, impulse, and torque
- Conservation Laws – Includes the ideas of conservation of energy and of momentum
- Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics – Focused on developing a conceptual understanding of entropy in terms of microstates and macrostates.
Given the limited time-frame of only two semesters, however, care must be given to both the content knowledge and the skills that we want our students to achieve. Using the principles of backward design, we have established the following goals for our course. The goals are broken down into three categories: Physics Goals, Skills Goals, and Team Goals. More on each goal and the associate objectives can be found in What are we going to learn in this class?
Physics Goals
- Physics is a list of principles and the fundamental ideas that relate them, NOT a list of equations
- These principles can be expressed in multiple different ways
- Appreciate the value of the problem solving method used by the discipline of physics
- Learn how to use fundamental principles to generalize from one specific situation to a class of similar ones
- Understand that the physics we study is connected to your everyday experience and the
material in your other courses
Skills Goals
- Understanding measurement
- Become proficient with a set of mathematical tools to model the world and solve problems
- Learn how to learn technical subjects independently
Team Goals
- Appreciate that the “solitary genius” image of a scientist which is so pervasive in our
culture no longer exists (if they ever did) - Appreciate that the work done by a team is usually better than the product of even its
strongest member