SPH 4U

Text: Nelson Physics 12

(Thompson Nelson Publishing, 2003)

This course offers a further exploration of the concepts of physics, and improving on scientific skills learned in earlier grades. While the course can be used to prepare for University-level courses in Physics, it can also serve as a way of examining more deeply the world around us using physical laws.

DYNAMICS

Examining types of forces (gravity, friction) and how the interaction of these forces produces movement. Projectile launches and other two-dimensional motion as well as circular motion are included in this unit.

More friction could have prevented this demonstration of torque.

Conservation of momentum and applying it to crashing and smashing. Transfer of energy from one type to another. From satellites to high divers, this unit deals with how people and things change one type of energy into another.

Einstein's field equation. Don't worry, we won't be working with anything as nasty as this in this course.

ELECTRIC, GRAVITATIONAL AND MAGNETIC FIELDS

How do electric charges and magnets make fields? How do those fields affect other charges and magnets? And how are gravity, electricity and magnetism similar, and different? Find out in this section.

deBroglie and Bohr both contributed greatly to our understanding of how light behaves as a wave...

WAVE NATURE OF LIGHT

Discover how light waves behave like water waves... and also like particles. Interference, polariazation and their practical technological uses will be discussed.

...as did Planck. Newton always considered light a particle. Strange thing is, they're *all* right.

MATTER-ENERGY INTERFACE

Quantum mechanics, in all it's glory! Discover the strange goings-on at the level of the atom. How can light be both a wave and a particle at the same time? An interesting but perplexing unit.