Contemplanda
Contemplanda course syllabus
Physics of the Universe
A Contemplanda online course.
Physics of the Universe opens with motion: position, velocity, and acceleration, the forces that change motion, and the conservation of momentum in collisions. Practice in this first unit includes free-body diagrams, motion graphs that are read and sketched, and collision problems answered in parts. The mathematics is Algebra 1 together with right-triangle trigonometry, which the lessons introduce where forces and velocities are split into components.
Later units treat forces acting at a distance (gravity and electric and magnetic forces), energy, and circuits and the power grid. They continue with radioactive decay and the dating of rocks, with waves and electromagnetic radiation, including seismic waves as evidence of Earth's interior, and with stars, redshift, and the evidence for the Big Bang. Each reading is complete without its videos. Every practice question has a worked solution, and most problems carry hints. Questions are drawn at random from skill pools until a run of correct answers closes each skill.
Course at a glance
- Course title
- Physics of the Universe
- Publisher
- Contemplanda
- Structure
- 7 units and 2 semester exams, over two semesters (units 1 to 3 in semester 1; units 4 to 7 in semester 2)
- Lessons
- 71 lessons: 69 teaching lessons and 2 semester exams
- Credit
- Not awarded by Contemplanda
- Enrollment
- Through the student's school
Credit and enrollment
Contemplanda does not award high school credit. A student who wants credit for the course should ask their own school whether it will accept it.
Schools order course seats for their students by writing to info@contemplanda.com, and a student enrolls through their school.
Students enrolled through Contemplanda Direct sign in at direct.contemplanda.com. A student whose school delivers the course signs in on the school's own portal instead.
How the course works
- Each teaching lesson combines one to three videos, written explanations, practice, and a graded check.
- Every teaching lesson has a graded check whose questions are drawn for each student from a pool.
Units and lessons
Every published lesson, by semester and unit.
Semester 1
Forces and motion
- Position, velocity, and speed
- Acceleration
- Representing motion: graphs and models
- Constant acceleration and free fall
- Vectors and projectile motion
- Forces and free-body diagrams
- Newton's first law and equilibrium
- Newton's second law from data
- Newton's third law
- Friction and real surfaces
- Spring forces and Hooke's law
- Momentum
- Impulse and collision forces
- Conservation of momentum
- Inelastic collisions and energy accounts
- Elastic collisions
- Engineering: design a safer collision
- Newton's laws in Earth's crust
Forces at a distance
- Uniform circular motion
- Gravitational force and fields
- Orbits and satellites
- Kepler's laws and the solar system
- Electric charge and Coulomb's law
- Electric fields
- Magnets and magnetic fields
- Electromagnetic forces and materials
- Comparing the field forces
Energy
- Kinetic energy
- Work and energy transfer
- Potential energy
- Conservation of energy and energy accounting
- Power and the electric bill
Semester 1 final exam
- Semester 1 final32 questions
Covers all of semester 1, units 1 to 3.
Semester 2
Electricity and energy resources
- Electric current and resistance
- Series and parallel circuits
- Electric power and brightness
- Currents and magnetism: Ørsted to induction
- Generators, motors, and power plants
- Renewable energy: resources, costs, trade-offs
- Engineering: build and refine an energy converter
Matter, nuclear processes, and Earth history
- Density and the layered Earth
- Pressure and the atmosphere
- Buoyancy and convection
- Atoms and the nucleus
- Radioactive decay and half-life
- Fission and nuclear power
- Fusion and E=mc²
- Radiometric dating: reading rock clocks
- Seafloor spreading and plate tectonics
- Earth's formation and early history
- Building and destroying Earth's surface
Waves and electromagnetic radiation
- Oscillations and simple harmonic motion
- The pendulum: timekeeping and measuring gravity
- Energy in oscillation
- Wave anatomy: v = fλ
- Sound and waves in media
- Seismic waves and Earth's interior
- Wave behavior: reflection, refraction, interference
- The electromagnetic spectrum
- EM radiation and matter: ionizing vs non-ionizing
- Wave or particle? The photoelectric effect
- Analog to digital: information in waves
Stars and the origins of the universe
- The Sun: fusion in the core
- Space weather and the Sun-Earth connection
- Spectra: fingerprints of the elements
- Classifying stars: the H-R diagram
- Spinning up: angular momentum in a collapsing cloud
- Stellar life cycles and the origin of the elements
- Redshift and the expanding universe
- The Big Bang: three lines of evidence
Semester 2 final exam
- Semester 2 final37 questions
Covers all of semester 2, units 4 to 7.
Assessment
Each teaching lesson includes a graded check.
Each semester closes with a final exam. The semester 1 final has 32 questions on units 1 to 3, and the semester 2 final has 37 questions on units 4 to 7.
Contemplanda publishes no grade weighting for this course. A school that decides to grant credit for it also decides how the work counts toward a grade.
Academic integrity
Work in the course must be the student's own.
Answer keys for graded questions are never sent to the student's device.
Materials and technology
- Where the course runs
- In a web browser, through Contemplanda Direct or inside a school's own platform
- Textbook
- None required. The course's own lessons are the text.