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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
- Kinds of Matter
- Detecting Interactions
- Fundamental Interactions
- Determinism
- System & Surroundings
- Newton's First Law of Motion
- Newton's Second Law of Motion
- Newton's Third Law of Motion
- Gravitational Force
- Electric Force
- Conservation of Energy
- Conservation of Charge
- Terminal Speed
- Simple Harmonic Motion
- Speed and Velocity
- Electric Polarization
- Perpetual Freefall (Orbit)
- 2-Dimensional Motion
- Center of Mass
- Reaction Time
Theory
Notable Scientists
- Christian Doppler
- 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
- Leonhard Euler
- Robert Fox Bacher
- Stephen Hawking
- Amedeo Avogadro
- Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen
- Pierre Laplace
- Thomas Edison
- Hendrik Lorentz
- Jean-Baptiste Biot
- Lise Meitner
- Lisa Randall
- Felix Savart
- Heinrich Lenz
- Max Born
- Archimedes
- Jean Baptiste Biot
- Carl Sagan
- Eugene Wigner
- Marie Curie
- Pierre Curie
- Werner Heisenberg
- Johannes Diderik van der Waals
- Louis de Broglie
- Aristotle
- Émilie du Châtelet
- Blaise Pascal
- Benjamin Franklin
- James Chadwick
- Henry Cavendish
- Thomas Young
- James Prescott Joule
- John Bardeen
- Leo Baekeland
- Alhazen
- Willebrod Snell
- Fritz-David
- Johannes Kepler
- Johann Wilhelm Ritter
- Philipp Lenard
- Xuesen Qian
- Robert A. Millikan
- Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
- Guglielmo Marconi
Properties of Matter
Contact Interactions
Momentum
- Vectors
- Kinematics
- Conservation of Momentum
- Predicting Change in multiple dimensions
- Derivation of the Momentum Principle
- Momentum Principle
- Impulse Momentum
- Curving Motion
- Projectile Motion
- Multi-particle Analysis of Momentum
- Iterative Prediction
- Analytical Prediction
- Newton's Laws and Linear Momentum
- Net Force
- Center of Mass
- Momentum at High Speeds
- Change in Momentum in Time for Curving Motion
Angular Momentum
- The Moments of Inertia
- Moment of Inertia for a ring
- Rotation
- Torque
- Systems with Zero Torque
- Systems with Nonzero Torque
- Right Hand Rule
- Angular Velocity
- Predicting the Position of a Rotating System
- Translational Angular Momentum
- The Angular Momentum Principle
- Angular Momentum of Multiparticle Systems
- Rotational Angular Momentum
- Total Angular Momentum
- Gyroscopes
- Angular Momentum Compared to Linear Momentum
Energy
- The Photoelectric Effect
- Photons
- 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 (Mechanical)
- Transformation of Energy
Collisions
Fields
Simple Circuits
- Components
- Steady State
- Non Steady State
- Charging and Discharging a Capacitor
- Thin and Thick Wires
- Node Rule
- Loop Rule
- Resistivity
- Power in a circuit
- Ammeters,Voltmeters,Ohmmeters
- Current
- Ohm's Law
- Series Circuits
- Parallel Circuits
- RC
- AC vs DC
- Charge in a RC Circuit
- Current in a RC circuit
- Circular Loop of Wire
- Current in a RL Circuit
- RL Circuit
- LC Circuit
- Surface Charge Distributions
- Feedback
- Transformers (Circuits)
- Resistors and Conductivity
- Semiconductor Devices
Maxwell's Equations
Radiation
- Producing a Radiative Electric Field
- Sinusoidal Electromagnetic Radiaton
- Lenses
- Energy and Momentum Analysis in Radiation
- Electromagnetic Propagation
- Snell's Law
- Effects of Radiation on Matter
- Light Propagation Through a Medium
- Light Scaterring: Why is the Sky Blue
- Light Refraction: Bending of light
- Cherenkov Radiation
Waves
Real Life Applications of Electromagnetic Principles
Optics
Computing
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
- A page for review of Vectors and vector operations