Everyday Physics: How Ordinary Things Really Work

What's inside

1. Level 1: Measuring Your World: Units and EstimatesFree
   You'll see how physics starts with measuring things, why units like metres, kilograms and seconds matter, and how a quick estimate can check whether an answer makes sense.
2. Level 2: Speed and Acceleration on Your JourneyFree
   Using car journeys and a ball rolling down a slope, you'll learn the difference between speed, velocity and acceleration, and how to work each one out.
3. Level 3: Newton's Laws: Seatbelts and Pushes
   You'll use Newton's three laws to explain why seatbelts save lives, why heavy things are harder to get moving, and why every push comes with a push back.
4. Level 4: Gravity, Weight and the Lift
   We'll pull apart mass and weight, see how gravity makes things fall, and work out why you feel heavier or lighter as a lift starts and stops.
5. Level 5: Friction and Drag: The Physics of Cycling
   From brakes and tyres to the wind in your face, you'll see how friction and air resistance help and hinder you on a bike, and what terminal velocity means.
6. Level 6: Energy: Stores, Transfers and Conservation
   With bouncing balls and swinging pendulums, you'll learn that energy is never made or destroyed, only moved between stores like movement, height and heat.
7. Level 7: Work, Power and Your Electricity Bill
   Using the kettle as our guide, you'll learn what work and power mean in physics, what a watt is, and how a kilowatt-hour on your bill turns into money.
8. Level 8: Heat vs Temperature: Why Water Takes Ages
   You'll find out why heat and temperature aren't the same thing, what's happening to molecules as things warm up, and why water needs so much energy to heat.
9. Level 9: Conduction, Convection, Radiation and Insulation
   You'll learn the three ways heat travels, and how flasks, duvets, double glazing and loft insulation slow it down.
10. Level 10: Pressure: Tyres, Straws, Weather and Altitude
    You'll see how pressure, force spread over an area, explains pumped-up tyres, drinking through a straw, weather systems and why water boils cooler on a mountain.
11. Level 11: Floating and Sinking: Density and Buoyancy
    We'll use density and Archimedes' principle to work out why huge steel ships float, why ice bobs on top of your drink, and why an egg sinks in fresh water.
12. Level 12: Waves and How Sound Travels
    You'll discover what a wave is, how sound moves as vibrations through air, and how frequency and amplitude set a sound's pitch and loudness.
13. Level 13: Music, Echoes and Noise-Cancelling Headphones
    You'll explore how instruments make notes using standing waves and resonance, how echoes work, and how headphones cancel noise by adding anti-sound.
14. Level 14: Light, Mirrors and Lenses
    You'll learn how light travels in straight lines, bounces off mirrors and bends through water and glass, and how lenses in glasses and cameras make images.
15. Level 15: Colour, Rainbows and Blue Skies
    You'll find out how white light splits into colours, why things look the colours they do, and what makes rainbows, blue skies and red sunsets.
16. Level 16: Circuits: Voltage, Current and Resistance
    Using a torch and its battery, you'll learn what current, voltage and resistance really are and how Ohm's law ties them together.
17. Level 17: Electricity at Home: Mains and Safety
    You'll see how mains electricity reaches your sockets, and how fuses, circuit breakers, earth wires and RCDs keep you safe from shocks and fires.
18. Level 18: Magnets, Electromagnets and Motors
    You'll learn how magnetic fields work, how an electric current makes a magnet, and how that turns into motion in motors and electricity in generators.
19. Level 19: The Electromagnetic Spectrum and Radiation
    From radio and microwaves to X-rays, you'll learn how one family of waves powers your phone and your microwave, and what radiation is and isn't.
20. Level 20: Materials: Why Things Bend, Stretch or Break
    You'll explore stress, strain and stiffness to see why rubber stretches, glass shatters, steel bends and some shapes are surprisingly strong.
21. Level 21: Modern Physics: GPS, LEDs and How We Know
    You'll see how relativity keeps the GPS in your phone accurate and how quantum ideas make LEDs glow and solar panels work. Along the way we'll find out how physicists test ideas like these, and why the results deserve your trust.
22. Level 22: Final Challenge: Your Everyday Physics Toolkit Exam
    This is the comprehensive review. You'll pull together everything from the course, including measurement, motion, forces, energy, heat, pressure, waves, light, electricity, magnetism, materials and modern physics, to explain ordinary things from start to finish.

Access

The first 2 levels are free with a free account. Every level, the podcast edition and the AI tutor come with All Access at £4.99/month or any Creator plan — see pricing.

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