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I taught high school physics for 7 years, and made and collected lots of online resources for my students. This page has everything useful I can share from my time teaching, most importantly the 142 animated video lectures I made for the IB Physics SL curriculum.

Video lectures

Below are all my IB physics videos, also hosted on my YouTube channel. I only taught IB physics SL and don't have time to make HL videos right now. If you're looking for HL resources Chris Doner and Sirius Revision both have great videos on IB HL topics!

I made these videos under the old curriculum and reorganized them into the new one. There's a chance there are some inconsistencies between the old and new curricula, but so far not many have come up! A few topics are missing because they weren't in the old curriculum.

A: Space, Time and Motion (44)
1: Kinematics (15)
Distance and displacement in physics Speed and velocity Acceleration Average vs. instantaneous velocity Position-time graphs Velocity-time graphs: constant velocity and the area under the curve Velocity-time graphs part 2: graphs with changing velocity Translating position and velocity physics graphs Acceleration-time graphs Translating motion graphs: position, velocity, and acceleration Proving kinematics using geometry Free fall 2D projectile motion Air resistance on projectiles & terminal velocity Physics motion maps
2: Forces and momentum (17)
Forces & free body diagrams Properties of common forces Force webs in IB physics Finding the net force Mass vs weight Static vs kinetic friction Newton's first law Newton's second law Newton's third law Inclined planes What is momentum? Impulse & Ft graphs Conservation of momentum Momentum - open and closed systems Collisions - momentum Uniform circular motion 5 examples of solving centripetal force problems
3: Work, energy and power (12)
Work in physics Work & energy Kinetic energy Gravitational potential energy Elastic potential energy Thermal energy Other types of energy Open & closed systems in energy LOL diagram energy graph examples Force distance graphs Power Efficiency in physics
B: The Particulate Nature of Matter (22)
1: Thermal energy transfers (7)
Temperature, thermal energy, and heat Phase changes Q = mcΔT and specific heat Q = mL and latent heat Using power in heat equations How to draw and read temperature vs. heat graphs Thermal equilibrium
2: Greenhouse effect (1)
Why climate change happens
3: Gas laws (4)
Pressure What is an ideal gas? The ideal gas law: pV = nRT The average kinetic energy per molecule equation for an ideal gas
5: Current and circuits (10)
Voltage Electron-volts vs joules Resistance and resistivity Circuits Series and parallel circuits and equivalent resistance Ohm's law: V = IR Ohmic vs. non ohmic resistors Ammeters and voltmeters: ideal and non-ideal Power in circuits Internal resistance and EMF
C: Wave Behavior (20)
1: Simple harmonic motion (2)
Simple harmonic motion Waves: phase difference
2: Wave model (4)
Waves: basic definition, transverse vs longitudinal, mechanical vs electromagnetic Waves: amplitude, period, frequency, wavelength, crests & troughs Waves: V = λf, velocity of a wave, graphs Electromagnetic waves
3: Wave phenomena (11)
Waves: superpositions Waves: phase difference Wave reflections Light intensity Reflection Wavefronts Refraction and Snell's Law The critical angle and total internal reflection Diffraction and Huygens's Principle Proving Young's double slit interference equation Solving problems with Young's double slit interference equation
4: Standing waves and resonance (3)
Standing waves Harmonics of a standing wave Sound as a standing wave
D: Fields (9)
1: Gravitational fields (1)
Universal gravitation
2: Electric and magnetic fields (8)
Electric charge Coulomb's law Electric fields Electron-volts vs joules 3D vector notation The corner right hand rule The curl right hand rule Combining the corner and curl right hand rule
E: Nuclear and Quantum Physics (17)
1: Structure of the atom (6)
Atomic notation Photon energy and the Planck constant Electron energy levels and photons Absorption and emission spectra The Geiger Marsden Rutherford gold foil experiment The four fundamental forces
3: Radioactive decay (6)
Nuclear radiation and decay Alpha, beta, and gamma radiation Half-life Mass defect and binding energy Binding energy per nucleon and stability Fusion, fission, and energy in nuclear equations
4: Fission (1)
Fusion, fission, and energy in nuclear equations
5: Fusion and stars (4)
Fusion, fission, and energy in nuclear equations The four fundamental forces Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams of stars Stellar parallax
Lab Reports and Background Math (30)
Lab reports (7)
Lab reports: independent variable, dependent variable, control variables, and research question Measurement uncertainty Organizing a data table and statistical uncertainty Making the maximum and minimum line of best fit on Logger Pro The average line of best fit equation Proportional reasoning in an IB lab report Lab report: meaning of slope and y-intercept
Background math (23)
How to find the number of significant figures in a number Calculations with significant figures Variables, units, the SI, fundamental vs derived units, and prefixes Reducing derived units to fundamental SI units Unit conversion using the factor label method Using linear, quadratic, inverse, & inverse square graphs to understand proportionality Uncertainty notation and the range of possible values Absolute, fractional, and percent uncertainty Propagating uncertainty: addition and subtraction Propagating uncertainty: multiplication and division Propagating uncertainty: powers and roots Propagating uncertainty in IB physics problems Vectors vs scalars Labeling vectors and adding vectors using the tip to tail method Recording the angle of a vector Using trigonometry to find the angle of a vector X and Y components of vectors Finding vector X and Y components using trigonometry Adding complex vectors What the trig identities mean - review of trigonometry Using trig to find missing sides of a triangle Inverse trig functions 3D vector notation
Advice and resources
How to learn physics
  • Start with great explanations. I've tried to provide those on my YouTube channel.
  • Diligently take notes on everything. Map the idea for yourself. Form a narrative in your head.
  • For anything that requires memorization (thankfully physics is low on memorization compared to other sciences, that's one reason why I studied it!), use spaced repetition. This blog post goes into a lot of detail on spaced repetition, it's the single most important learning tool we have for actually retaining important information.
  • Take this knowledge and do a ton of varied practice problems, and see where you're tripping up and what you're getting right. Most of the learning happens here. You will mostly be blind to all the ways you're misunderstanding the equations until you actually try to use them. Becoming an expert in physics means marinating your brain in these tiny failures until you have a deep intuitive understanding for how to avoid them. Failure feels bad, but it's your ladder to understanding. If you're willing to put up with the bad feelings it causes, you can be among a small percentage of people who know the fundamental nature of reality.
  • Remember that everything in physics is actually deeply coherent, and an application of a few ideas used over and over in different circumstances. If you truly understand Newton's 3 laws, and know that energy just means "the ability to apply a force F over distance D" it's possible to independently derive the equations for energy, as an example. Most students leave physics without much of an understanding of this underlying structure. For them, learning the equations for momentum, energy, kinematics, and force is kind of like learning about different unrelated parts of a cell. I think this is a huge tragedy, because the main lesson and mindset of physics is that all of these are actually expressions of the same underlying ideas, and you can move back and forth between them. Try in your own time to get a deep sense of why each equation looks the way that it looks. Understand why if Newton's second and third laws are true, momentum has to be conserved as well.
  • Use AI to test yourself whenever possible. Talk through what you're thinking with an AI model. Have it design new novel tests and problems for you. AI now is akin to the internet when I was in school. Something relatively new with insane potential that most people are still not tapping at all.
  • Most students haven't had calculus when they take their first physics course, which is a shame, because calculus makes it much easier to understand physics. And calculus is not actually that hard to understand. If you don't know calculus, see if you can find good resources for learning what a derivative is. I'd recommend 3Blue1Brown's Essence of Calculus series, plus a free online course to test yourself.
  • Besides AI, your 3 best bets for external resources on physics are going to be: Textbooks, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Popular books on physics mostly focus on surface-level stories, very simple ideas, or the deep history of physics or how it's applied in the real world. These can be good to know for other reasons, but mostly don't help you approach a deep understanding of physics itself.
  • I have more advice on strategies for learning something new here.
Physics resources I like

Books

I don't think popular books are a useful tool for learning actual physics, they're usually too focused on stories and just can't go into enough of the abstract detail required to actually understand physics well. These books are some of my favorite popular applications of physics or histories of physics. Reading these will teach you a lot about how our knowledge of physics interacts with the real world, but less about the underlying nature of physics itself.

Popular physics YouTube channels