Main Page
Welcome to the Georgia Tech Wiki for Intro Physics. This resources was created so that students can contribute and curate content to help those with limited or no access to a textbook. When reading this website, please correct any errors you may come across. If you read something that isn't clear, please consider revising it!
Looking to make a contribution?
- Pick a specific topic from intro physics
- Add that topic, as a link to a new page, under the appropriate category listed below by editing this page.
- Copy and paste the default Template into your new page and start editing.
Please remember that this is not a textbook and you are not limited to expressing your ideas with only text and equations. Whenever possible embed: pictures, videos, diagrams, simulations, computational models (e.g. Glowscript), and whatever content you think makes learning physics easier for other students.
Source Material
All of the content added to this resource must be in the public domain or similar free resource. If you are unsure about a source, contact the original author for permission. That said, there is a surprisingly large amount of introductory physics content scattered across the web. Here is an incomplete list of intro physics resources (please update as needed).
- A physics resource written by experts for an expert audience Physics Portal
- A wiki book on modern physics Modern Physics Wiki
- The MIT open courseware for intro physics MITOCW Wiki
- An online concept map of intro physics HyperPhysics
- Interactive physics simulations PhET
- OpenStax algebra based intro physics textbook College Physics
- The Open Source Physics project is a collection of online physics resources OSP
- A resource guide compiled by the AAPT for educators ComPADRE
Organizing Categories
These are the broad, overarching categories, that we cover in two semester of introductory physics. You can add subcategories or make a new category as needed. A single topic should direct readers to a page in one of these catagories.
Interactions
Notable Scientists
- Albert Einstein
- Ernest Rutherford
- Joseph Henry
- Michael Faraday
- J.J. Thomson
- James Maxwell
- Robert Hooke
- Carl Friedrich Gauss
- Nikola Tesla
- Andre Marie Ampere
- Sir Isaac Newton
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Oliver Heaviside
- Rosalind Franklin
- Erwin Schrödinger
- Enrico Fermi
- Robert J. Van de Graaff
- Charles de Coulomb
- Hans Christian Ørsted
- Philo Farnsworth
- Niels Bohr
- Georg Ohm
- Galileo Galilei
- Gustav Kirchhoff
- Max Planck
- Heinrich Hertz
- Edwin Hall
- James Watt
- Count Alessandro Volta
- Josiah Willard Gibbs
- Richard Phillips Feynman
- Sir David Brewster
- Daniel Bernoulli
- William Thomson
Properties of Matter
Contact Interactions
Momentum
Angular Momentum
Energy
- The Energy Principle
- Predicting Change
- Rest Mass Energy
- Kinetic Energy
- Potential Energy
- Work
- Thermal Energy
- Conservation of Energy
- Electric Potential
- Energy Transfer due to a Temperature Difference
- Gravitational Potential Energy
- Point Particle Systems
- Real Systems
- Spring Potential Energy
- Internal Energy
- Translational, Rotational and Vibrational Energy
- Franck-Hertz Experiment
- Power
- Energy Graphs
- Air Resistance
- Electronic Energy Levels
- Second Law of Thermodynamics and Entropy
- Specific Heat Capacity
- Quantized Energy Levels
Collisions
Fields
- Electric Field of a
- Electric Potential
- Electric Force
- Polarization
- Charge Motion in Metals
- Magnetic Field
- Right-Hand Rule
- Direction of Magnetic Field
- Magnetic Field of a Long Straight Wire
- Magnetic Field of a Loop
- Bar Magnet
- Magnetic Force
- Hall Effect
- Lorentz Force
- Biot-Savart Law
- Biot-Savart Law for Currents
- Integration Techniques for Magnetic Field
- Sparks in Air
- Motional Emf
- Detecting a Magnetic Field
- Moving Point Charge
- Non-Coulomb Electric Field
- Motors and Generators
Simple Circuits
Maxwell's Equations
Radiation
Resources
- Commonly used wiki commands Wiki Cheatsheet
- A guide to representing equations in math mode Wiki Math Mode
- A page to keep track of all the physics Constants
- An overview of VPython