Physics Content Standards

1.01.01

Use dimensional analysis and equations to calculate physical quantities with correct significant digits, scientific notation and SI units.

1.01.02

Identify sound experimental design on the basis of:

1. the testability of questions and hypotheses

2. the accuracy, precision, and reproducibility of the data acquired

3. the distinction between variable and controlled parameters

4. the use of appropriate tools and measurement technologies

5. the use of appropriate laboratory and safety procedures

1.01.03

Analyze experimental results by:

1. identifying discrepant results and the possible sources of error, including uncontrolled conditions

2. using appropriate graphical, pictorial, and/or statistical methods to draw conclusions

2.01.01

Use principles of estimation to determine physical properties of common objects within an order of magnitude (e.g., a comfortable walking pace is 1.0 x 10⁰ m/s, not 1.0 x 10^-1 m/s or 1.0 x 10¹ m/s).

2.01.02

Understand the basic theory of plate tectonics.

2.01.03

Understand that evolution is a change of life through time.

2.01.04

Know the difference between compounds and mixtures, elements and atoms, atoms and molecules, and atoms and ions.

2.01.05

Explain how chemical reactions are processes in which atoms are rearranged into different combinations of molecules and no matter how they are arranged, their total mass and number of each kind of atom stays the same (i.e., conservation of mass).

2.01.06

Understand the mole concept, molar mass and the significance of Avogadro's number.

2.01.07

Understand the structure and properties of water, including its cohesion, expansion on freezing, geometry of H-bonds, solvent properties, specific heat, and heats of vaporization and fusion. Know the significance of these properties of water for organisms and ecosystems.

2.01.08

Describe the overall structure of the universe, including galactic clusters, galaxies, (the Milky Way in particular), star clusters, stars, and solar system.

3.01.01

Understand the kinematic quantities position, displacement, speed, velocity, and acceleration and the relationships among them. Express this knowledge in terms of equations, graphs, motion maps, and descriptions.

3.01.02

Apply the constant acceleration kinematic equations to one- and two-dimensional motion, such as freely falling objects and projectiles.

3.01.03

Use free-body diagrams to analyze the forces acting on a body. Determine the net force acting on an object or on a system of objects.

3.01.04

Describe the motion of a body of mass m when the net force acting on it is zero (Newton's first law.)

3.01.05

Describe the motion of a body of mass m when a nonzero net force F acts on it (Newton's second law.)

3.01.06

Explain the connection between the mass m of a body and its weight w.

3.01.07

Describe Newton's third law of motion, making clear the fact that the pair of \ldblquote equal and opposite forces\rdblquote act on two different bodies.

3.01.08

Apply Newton's laws to solve problems that involve but are not limited to inclined planes, Atwood's machine, static and kinetic frictional forces, electromagnetic forces, gravitational forces, and states of equilibrium.

3.01.09

Distinguish between inertial and non-inertial reference frames such as linearly accelerating frames and rotating frames.

3.01.10

Solve uniform circular motion problems involving centripetal acceleration.

3.01.11

Understand that a linear restoring force (Hooke's law) results in simple harmonic motion, and solve simple harmonic motion problems. Understand damped and driven mechanical oscillators.

3.01.12

Using the small angle approximation, understand that a pendulum approximates simple harmonic motion and solve simple and physical pendulum problems.

3.02.01

Determine analytically and/or graphically the work done by a constant or variable force when the force vector is not necessarily parallel to the displacement vector.

3.02.02

Calculate the ideal and actual mechanical advantage of a variety of simple machines and relate them to the efficiency.

3.02.03

Understand the difference between conservative and nonconservative forces. Identify situations in which total mechanical energy is conserved, and solve energy conservation problems.

3.02.04

Understand potential energy and its relationship to conservative forces for the cases of gravitational, elastic and electrostatic potential energy.

3.02.05

Apply the work-energy theorem.

3.02.06

Understand the relationship between energy and power.

3.02.07

Apply the impulse-momentum theorem.

3.02.08

Understand the conservation of linear momentum and its relationship to Newton's laws.

3.02.09

Apply conservation laws to solve collision and variable-mass problems.

3.02.10

Determine the motion of an extended body or a system of particles. Calculate the center of mass for an extended body or a system of particles.

3.03.01

Understand the relationships among kinematic angular quantities. Understand torque and angular momentum and the form of Newton's laws for rotational motion.

3.03.02

Understand the quantitative relationships between kinematic and dynamic angular quantities and their translational counterparts.

3.03.03

Understand moments of inertia and the parallel axis theorem for extended bodies.

3.03.04

Solve rotation problems using Newton's laws and/or the equations of motion for rotating systems.

3.03.05

Solve rotation problems using conservation of energy and/or conservation of angular momentum, for example, rigid bodies rolling down inclined planes and rotating objects with changing moments of inertia.

3.04.01

Understand the Cavendish experiment for determining the universal gravitational constant.

3.04.02

Use Newton's universal law of gravity and/or Kepler's laws to solve a variety of problems.

3.04.03

Use graphical and analytical methods to solve problems involving gravitational potential energy, force, field strength, and energy conservation, for example, calculating escape velocity.

3.04.04

Understand the reason for changes in the observed positions of the sun and the moon, the seasons, phases of the moons, and eclipses.

4.01.01

Understand the concepts of density and pressure for a fluid.

4.01.02

Understand the dependence of pressure on depth in an incompressible fluid, for example, water, in hydrostatic equilibrium. Use graphical and analytical methods to solve problems for fluids in hydrostatic equilibrium.

4.01.03

Apply Pascal's principle. Understand the measurement of pressure or pressure difference using a barometer, for example, a mercury barometer.

4.01.04

Understand Archimedes' principle for buoyancy.

4.01.05

Understand fluid flow rates and fluid flux.

4.01.06

Use Bernoulli's principle and/or the continuity equation to determine pressure, velocity, and density in fluid flows, for example, in the Venturi effect and aerodynamic lift.

4.02.01

Know the characteristics of the three states of matter at the atomic or molecular level.

4.02.02

Understand the ideal gas law, including the ways in which a real gas differs from an ideal gas.

4.02.03

Understand the kinetic theory of gases and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecular velocities in a gas.

4.02.04

Understand the equipartition theorem, including the dependence of kinetic energy of a gas molecule on temperature and the difference in molar specific heat between monatomic and diatomic gases.

4.02.05

Interpret pressure versus temperature phase diagrams.

4.02.06

Understand thermal expansion and contraction of liquids and solids in one or more dimensions.

4.02.07

Distinguish between mechanisms of heat flow, including conduction, convection, and radiation. Solve problems involving heat conduction.

4.02.08

Understand calorimetry, including its use to determine the specific heat of a material and the heat needed to change the phase of a substance.

4.02.09

Understand the 0^th, 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd laws of thermodynamics.

4.02.10

Understand heat and work in thermodynamic cycles of gases, including the relationship between work, pressure, and volume for adiabatic, isothermal, isochoric, and isobaric processes.

4.02.11

Understand real and theoretical thermodynamic cycles, such as those used in the Carnot engine and the refrigerator. Understand the efficiency of a heat engine.

4.02.12

Understand thermodynamic and statistical concepts of entropy especially for an ideal gas.

5.01.01

Distinguish between insulators and conductors. Understand charging by induction.

5.01.02

Use Coulomb's law to determine the force exerted on a point charge due to: another point charge, an arrangement of point charges, or a simple continuous charge distribution(s). Represent this knowledge in terms of a force diagram or graph.

5.01.03

Understand the concept of electric field and its relation to force and charge, and represent electric fields in terms of field lines and graphs. Understand the special case of an electric dipole field.

5.01.04

Understand electric flux and Gauss' Law. Apply Gauss' Law to determine the electric field due to continuous charge distributions with symmetric geometries.

5.01.05

Understand the concept of electrostatic potential and its relationship to electrostatic potential energy, work, and the electric field. Represent electrostatic potential in terms of equipotential surfaces and graphs.

5.01.06

Determine the torque on an electric dipole in a uniform electric field using the electric dipole moment. Determine the potential energy of an electric dipole as a function of its orientation in an external electric field.

5.01.07

Understand the concept of capacitance and its relation to charge on conductors, potential between conductors, and stored energy. Determine the capacitance for parallel plate, cylindrical and spherical capacitors. Understand the effect of inserting a dielectric into the space between the plates of a capacitor.

5.02.01

Understand the relationship between electric charge and electric current.

5.02.02

Understand the microscopic model for charge flow in a material, including relationships among current, current density, charge density, electric field, drift velocity, and resistivity.

5.02.03

Understand Ohm's law and its limitations. Understand the relationship between resistance and the physical properties of a resistor.

5.02.04

Understand energy and power relations in an electrical circuit.

5.02.05

Calculate the resistance (capacitance) of series and parallel networks of resistors (capacitors).

5.02.06

Understand Kirchhoff's rules in terms of conservation of charge and energy. Apply these rules to the analysis of DC circuits.

5.02.07

Understand the response of DC circuits to the insertion/removal of a resistor (bulb), or the shorting of a portion of the circuit.

5.02.08

Understand charging and discharging capacitors in time-dependent RC circuits. Represent this knowledge in terms of graphs of charge, voltage, and current as functions of time.

5.03.01

Determine the magnetic field lines for a bar magnet. Understand Gauss' law for magnetism as a consequence of the nonexistence of magnetic monopoles.

5.03.02

Know that the Earth has a magnetic field that roughly approximates a dipole with poles located near the geographic poles.

5.03.03

Determine the magnetic force on a charged particle moving in a magnetic field. Analyze the motion of a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field or in a combination of a uniform magnetic field and uniform electric field. Apply these ideas to the operation of a velocity selector, cyclotron, and mass spectrometer.

5.03.04

Determine the magnetic force on a current-carrying wire in a uniform magnetic field. Determine the magnetic force between two current-carrying wires.

5.03.05

Use the Biot-Savart Law to find the magnetic field for various wire geometries.

5.03.06

Determine the torque on a current-carrying loop in a uniform magnetic field using the magnetic dipole moment of the loop. Determine the potential energy of a magnetic dipole as a function of its orientation in an external magnetic field.

5.03.07

Understand the properties of magnetism in materials, including diamagnetism, paramagnetism, ferromagnetism. Understand the magnetization and demagnetization of ferromagnetic materials, including hysteresis.

5.04.01

Understand Ampere's law and the magnetic field produced by a constant electric current. Apply Ampere's law in symmetric geometries.

5.04.02

Understand Faraday's law and magnetic flux and how they apply to motors, generators, and transformers. Use Lenz's law to determine the direction of an induced current.

5.04.03

Understand the phenomena of self-inductance and mutual-inductance. Understand energy storage in and properties of an inductor.

5.04.04

Understand the behavior of AC circuits containing series and/or parallel combinations of capacitors, inductors, and resistors, including resonance phenomena for a series RLC circuit.

5.04.05

Understand how the displacement current term in Maxwell-Ampere's law completes the laws of electrodynamics.

5.04.06

Understand how Maxwell's equations explain transverse electromagnetic waves and the speed of light.

5.04.07

Understand energy density, energy flux, and radiation pressure for electromagnetic waves.

6.01.01

Understand mechanical waves and distinguish between transverse, longitudinal, and surface waves.

6.01.02

Understand electromagnetic waves and the electromagnetic spectrum.

6.01.03

Explain that electromagnetic radiation of various wavelength ranges interacts with living tissue and how its effects can be beneficial (photosynthesis) or harmful (in the case of X-rays, gamma-rays, etc.).

6.01.04

Understand properties of waves, including amplitude, wavelength, period, frequency, angular frequency, energy, speed, wave number, phase, and polarization. Understand how traveling wave solutions result from a linear wave equation. Understand how the physical properties of the medium determine the speed of wave propagation.

6.01.05

Explain the reflection and transmission that occurs when a wave encounters a boundary between two media.

6.01.06

Understand how superposition and interference of waves result in standing waves and beat phenomena, for example, for stretched strings and for open and closed pipes.

6.01.07

Understand wave intensity and its decrease as the square of distance in three dimensions.

6.01.08

Understand the intensity level of a sound wave as measured in decibels.

6.01.09

Understand the Doppler effect for sound and light.

6.02.01

Understand various methods for measuring the speed of light.

6.02.02

Understand the law of reflection and apply it to situations involving one or more plane mirrors. Use the law of reflection to construct the image produced by a plane mirror.

6.02.03

Understand the refraction and reflection of light at the interface between two optical media. Understand Snell's law and Fermat's principle. Understand the relationship of index of refraction to the speed of light propagation in a medium.

6.02.04

Understand how a critical angle arises in the phenomenon of total internal reflection. Understand how total internal reflection is used in devices such as light pipes, optical fibers, and reflecting prisms.

6.02.05

Understand the phenomenon of dispersion of light. Apply the concept of dispersion to explain phenomena such as the splitting of white light into its component colors by a prism, the operation of a prism spectrometer, and the rainbow.

6.02.06

Understand the nature of polarization for light. Understand how linearly polarized light can be produced by reflection at Brewster's angle. Understand the operation of simple polarizing filters and Malus's law.

6.02.07

Use ray diagrams and/or the mirror equation to understand how convex and concave mirrors produce an image. Understand the relationship between focal length and the radius of curvature of a spherical mirror.

6.02.08

Use ray diagrams and/or the thin lens equation to understand how convex and concave lenses produce an image. Use the lens-maker's formula.

6.02.09

Understand the simple magnifier, compound microscope, refracting and reflecting telescopes, and the human eye.

6.03.01

Understand Huygens' principle for wave propagation. Understand two-slit interference.

6.03.02

Understand multi-slit interference. Understand the diffraction grating and its use in spectroscopy.

6.03.03

Understand the diffraction of light by a single rectangular slit and by a circular aperture. Understand how diffraction limits the resolution of images.

6.03.04

Understand interference phenomena involving a thin film, for example, an oil film on water, a soap bubble, or a compact disk. Understand Bragg diffraction of x-rays.

6.03.05

Understand the Michelson interferometer and its use for precise length and wavelength measurements.

7.01.01

Understand the contributions of experiments such as the following: Michelson-Morley experiment; Thomson's measurement of the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron; M. Curie's studies of radioactivity; Rutherford's alpha particle scattering experiments; Millikan's oil-drop experiment; the photoelectric effect; Compton scattering of x-rays.

7.01.02

Understand the significance of the theoretical contributions of scientists such as the following: Einstein, Planck, Bohr, de Broglie, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and Pauli.

7.01.03

Understand the theory of special relativity and its implications, including relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, momentum, energy, mass-energy equivalence, and velocity addition. Understand space-time diagrams.

7.01.04

Understand Planck's law for blackbody radiation and Wien's displacement law. Understand the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.

7.01.05

Understand the photoelectric effect.

7.01.06

Understand particle-wave duality, de Broglie's hypothesis, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Pauli's exclusion principle.

7.01.07

Understand Bohr's model for a hydrogen atom. Understand how Bohr's model accounts for the observed hydrogen line spectrum.

7.01.08

Distinguish between Bohr's model and Schrödinger's model of the hydrogen atom.

7.01.09

Identify major regions of the periodic table (metals, nonmetals, metalloids, noble gases).

7.01.10

Understand isotopic nomenclature and its application to nuclear reactions. Know that isotopes can be stable or unstable (radioactive).

7.01.11

Understand α, β, and γ decay for radioactive nuclei.

7.01.12

Apply the concept of half-life to the decay of radioactive isotopes and the applications to radiometric dating.

7.01.13

Understand the nature of the nuclear force responsible for the binding of nuclei. Understand nuclear masses and nuclear binding energy.

7.01.14

Understand thermonuclear fusion reactions such as those that occur at the core of a star. Understand nuclear fission reactions and chain reactions such as those that occur in a nuclear reactor.

7.01.15

Identify the four fundamental forces of nature. Identify the fundamental particles of the standard model.

7.01.16

Discuss the evidence (e.g. Doppler shifts, presence of cosmic background radiation) for and implications of the Big Bang theory.