This comprehensive series of introductory physics courses help every student with zero background to master SATII, AP1, and AP2 level physics.
The art of physics is critical thinking.
The art of physics education is to learn through inquiry.
---by Prof. Man
Professor Man, (Biography)
Physics Ph. D. from Princeton University
A college professor with 10+ years of experience.
Physics is not hard if you meet the right teacher who focuses on understanding and reasoning.
Dive deep in the well-designed hands-on experimental assignments and critical thinking assignments for each lecture.
The active learning processes allow you to discover the underlining physics principles on your own.
At the price of one week of summer camp, enjoy 4 months of professional physics education.
FAQ
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What is the format of the course?
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2/3 of the class is offered as recorded video lectures. (Each hour concentrated recorded lecture requires more than 40 hours of work in designing, writing, drawing, recording experimental demos, creating animations, recording audio narratives, video editing, and video & audio synthesizing. Not a single moment is wasted in the recorded videos. )
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One main lecture (45-60 min.) is posted every week.
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One review-and-solution video is posted every week. (30-60 min.)
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One interactive assignment with instant feedback and multiple attempts per week. (30-75 min.)
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1/3 of the class is offered as interactive online lectures, once every two weeks. Recordings are provided. (90 min.)
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Every week the students will follow the lecture guidance to conduct research, performing hands-on experimental assignments, critical thinking assignments, and AP test and SAT II practice problems.
You can watch the videos at your choice of time. It is convenient to have such flexibility. However, once falling behind it is hard to catch up. So, please be disciplined to keep up with the pace so that you can understand the live interactive lectures.
Each assignment includes an interactive part with instant feedback and multiple attempts and an essay part for text discussions.
Please click the following links for detail
How to use the resources of interactive assignments with instant feedback and how to understand our weekly learning progress reports?
How to answer the essay part of the assignment?
Where and how to buy the experimental tools?
A letter to parents from Professor Man "How to arrange your physics study in the USA". (This letter is in Chinese)
All course materials and lectures are in English.
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What is the learning objective and prerequisites?
Course objectives for Sessions of Thermal Physics and Optics:
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1. Students will systematically study and deeply UNDERSTAND general physics, in the field of thermal physics and optics, at SAT II physics level and AP1-and-AP2’s level,
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2. Students will build up habits and acquire abilities in observing natural phenomena in daily lives, designing and performing research experiments, asking original and creative questions, and solving problems independently.
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3. Students will be capable of answering SAT II physics questions (both conceptual and calculation ones) in the related fields.
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4. Students will develop comprehensive knowledge in heat-and- light related concepts and phenomena and be well-prepared to apply that knowledge in biology and chemistry studies.
Prerequisites for Thermodynamics and Optics:
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No physics background is needed.
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Basic pre-algebra skills are needed.
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One can start as early as Grade-7 to allow enough years for a complete "learning through inquiry" process for thermal physic, optics, mechanics, and electromagnetism. That will build a solid foundation for all your natural-science AP courses.
This way, you will have plenty of time to prepare for the physics competition, if interested. -
To start this series Grade-10 (the latest) still allows enough time to finish the entire series before the end of Grade-10, hence still very helpful for SAT II, and AP physics. One may be able to skip AP1 or even AP2 and jump to APC after taking these courses.
Prerequisites for Mechanics:
- Algebra and trigonometry.
- We strongly recommend taking our thermodynamics and optics course before mechanics, unless the student is about to be late in taking AP1 in school.
Prerequisites for Electromagnetism:
- Algebra and a little bit trigonometry.
- Mechanics is required. (Thermodynamics and optics are strongly recommended before taking Electromagnetism.
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Where can I submit questions and homework?
All lecture and review videos, weekly interactive assignments, experimental guidance, notes in pdf, discussion forum, recorded live lectures are integrated on one powerful platform widely used by many universities, including Caltech.
Questions can be submitted to the forum within the course platform. Professor Man will answer all questions posted there herself.
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Can I review my previous sessions?
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Recordings for live online lectures are always provided.
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All previous course content is available during the period when the student is actively enrolled.
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After the enrollment termination, the content will be kept for a few months.
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What are special about these courses?
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Learn through inquiry
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Allow enough time and focus on the active learning process.
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Hands-on experiments and guided research projects.
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Real-world problem-solving and applications.
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Comprehensive content and systematic training in critical thinking.
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Interesting and attractive to inspire curiosity
The instructor designed this course for her own kids and her friends' kids to address the following problems:
1. In the USA, Physics is not officially taught until very late in high school (after Biology and Chemistry), while many countries offer 5-6 years of physics before college. Physics is the foundation of all science and engineering subjects and is related to every aspect of our daily lives. Curious kids need to learn more conceptual physics earlier in order to understand nature and prepare for other science courses.
2. Physics is not an easy subject. Without appropriate preparation, high school students taking AP physics often find physics difficult and end up memorizing equations and gambling about which equation to use without actually understanding the physics laws. Even for pre-Med exams, students often complain that physics is the hardest topic. Some systematic and serious conceptual study in physics is necessary before AP physics courses.
3. Physics needs to be taught in an easy-to-digest way by offering the students enough active learning experiences so that students can actually understand “why and how” for each topic. Before reading the textbook conclusions, engaging in well-designed hands-on experimental assignments and step-by-step reasoning questions allows the students to explore and find the answers about “why and how” on their own.
4. Physics is fun. Physics is useful. Physics is everywhere. Physics makes sense everywhere. Many kids don’t get enough chances to realize those, hence their passion and confidence are far below where their potential might be able to reach.
What are the teaching strategies of the courses?
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1. This course series offers a systematic preparation for SAT II level physics and the conceptual part of AP Physics. Every new topic is built on the previous ones in a logical order to provide a comprehensive picture of physics.
2. Every lecture has particular experimental assignments and well-designed critical thinking questions to guide the students through a journey of observation, question, hypothesis, experiment, and analysis, before reaching a conclusion; so that students would find “why and how” on their own, with a deep understanding that is not easy to forget.
3. Instead of stuffing students’ minds with textbook conclusions and facts, active learning experiences, including experiments and independent reasoning processes, are emphasized throughout the entire course. Most of the assignments are open-end questions.
4. Conceptual understanding and real-life applications of physics laws are emphasized in every lecture, together with some calculation problems to prepare for the SAT level exam.
5. Students are encouraged to always ask questions during the courses. All kinds of questions are welcome. The instructor has a passion to interact with curious kids and is very experienced in dealing with questions on various scopes. Instead of providing a short answer, the instructor often extends one question to more questions to dig deeper and inspire more independent thinking.
6. The instructor is a current college physics professor with 10+ years of experience in teaching general physics. She runs an active photonics research lab and has strong publication records. She also does scientific writing and outreach activities on frontier physics topics, targeting a general public who has little physics background. Frontier physics breakthroughs would be lively integrated into these courses. For example, the science behind the first black-hole image in 2019 and every year’s Physics Nobel Prize can be explained to the students at the right level. Direct interactions with a research-active physics professor can greatly inspire kids’ interests and broaden their vision.