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We started this podcast to provide useful information about how some of the best physics teachers we know teach the subject. Nearly always the answer will be ‘do some practical work’, which we know is essential to grounding understanding as well as being fun to do and making lessons easier to manage.
STEP UP is a national community of physics teachers, researchers, and professional societies. We design high school physics lessons to empower teachers, create cultural change, and inspire young women to pursue physics in college.
You can find more great teaching resources for physics at: Science: Physics
Our host Dr. Shini Somara introduces us to the ideas of motion in a straight line. She talks about displacement, acceleration, time, velocity, and the definition of acceleration.
I'm sure you've heard of Isaac Newton and maybe of some of his laws. Like, that thing about equal and opposite reactions and such. But what do his laws mean?
Did you know that at a certain point on a moving wheel... there's no motion? I mean, kinda... it's all relative, right? Prepare to have your mind blown in this episode as Shini delves into the world of rotational motion!
In this episode, Shini talks to us about a particular mistake made in engineering the Millennium Bridge which allows us to talk about simple harmonic motion.
Today, Shini sits down with us to discuss centripetal force, centrifugal force, and a few other bits of physics to help us understand uniform circular motion.
Shini introduces the ideas of vectors and scalars so we can better understand how to figure out motion in 2 dimensions. But what does that have to do with baseball? Or two baseballs?
When you hear the word work, what is the first thing you think of? Maybe working out? Work is a word that has a little bit of a different meaning in physics and today, Shini is going to walk us through it.
Explore how our understanding of planetary orbits has changed throughout history in this video about Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Animations show the geocentric model of the solar system and the heliocentric model.
Learn how the shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun and the Earth's tilt on its axis affect the amount of sunlight we get in winter and summer. Related Lesson
This video asks the question: if you placed a camera at a fixed position, took a picture of the sky at the same time every day for an entire year, and overlaid all of the photos on top of each other, what would the sun look like? It makes a ‘figure 8’ pattern, known as the Sun’s analemma. Related Lesson
This video illustrates how Van Gogh's painting Starry Night captured turbulence, or the state of movement, fluid and light. Learn about how this relates to concepts in physics and mathematics.
What are vectors, and why do they matter? This video explains how vectors are used by physicists, air traffic controllers, and video game creators. Related Lesson
Why does wearing a jacket in the cold keep you warmer? What is happening to all the heat inside your body? In this episode, Shini talks about the physics of heat!
What is torque? In this episode, Shini sits down with us to discuss what torque is, how it works, why it works, and what it all has to do with this thing called moment of inertia.
In this activity, you relate gravitational force to masses of objects and distance between objects. In addition, you learn about Newton's third law for gravitational forces. You can visualize the gravitational force that two objects exert on each other.
In 2012, scientists at CERN discovered evidence of the Higgs boson, one of two types of fundamental particles and a game-changer in the field of particle physics, proving how particles gain mass. This animated video explains the exciting implications of the Higgs boson. Related Lesson
To help us understand the Higgs boson (a magic particle) and the Higgs Field, this video outlines an analogy of a large dinner party, a loud group of physicists, and Peter Higgs himself. Related Lesson
Whether or not you realize it, surfers are masters of complicated physics. Nick Pizzo dives into the gnarly physics that make surfing possible. Related Lesson
In the third act of Swan Lake, the Black Swan pulls off a seemingly endless series of turns, bobbing up and down on one pointed foot and spinning thirty-two times. How is this move — which is called a fouetté — even possible?
COLLISIONS! A big part of physics is understanding collisions and how they're not all the same. Mass, momentum, and many other things dictate how collisions can be unique.
How the heck do we map out a planet without oceans? NASA had to figure that out when we sent the Mariner 9 probe to Mars. There's some tricky, yet fascinating science behind all of it!
Try this amazing tool for learning the concepts of motion, forces, electricity, magnetism, light, and so much more. You can bounce and slide your way through the developed levels or get creative and make your own level.
This video is a quick and entertaining look at how space and time exist together. Go to the Think section for nine related activities and Dig Deeper to learn more about the history of this theory. Related Lesson
What are vectors, and why do they matter? This video explains how vectors are used by physicists, air traffic controllers, and video game creators. Related Lesson
Try out this activity by moving the boat around the water by changing the magnitude and direction of the boat's speed (blue vector) or the magnitude and direction of the water current (red vector).
What is music? How does it work? What are the physics of music? In this episode, Shini talks to us about how music functions in terms of waves and how these waves interact with our ears.
Ropes can tell us a lot about how traveling waves work so, in this episode, Shini uses ropes to talk about how waves carry energy and how different kinds of waves transmit energy differently.
A realistic mass and spring laboratory. Hang masses from springs and adjust the spring stiffness and damping. A chart shows the kinetic, potential, and thermal energy for each spring.
Guitar masters are capable of bending the physics of waves to their wills, plucking melody from inspiration and vibration. But how do guitars translate into rhythm, melody, and music? Related Lesson
Open Access Textbooks
Although these textbooks are written for first year college students, teachers may find them useful for introducing concepts.
