Physics is everything.

Is Physics easy and fun for you? Or is it boring and difficult? Either way this website is designed for everyone! If you find the topic easy and boring then skip over it. If you feel as if it is difficult take as much time as you want to stay on that chapter. Don't rush! Ask me questions :)

Physics is the best attempt in explain how things work in our universe. We believe that the universe is made up of matter and energy. Matter is anything that has mass; it takes up space. Energy is found in many forms which you might be able to name some! We will continue to learn more about energy. So as we said matter is anything that has mass. So what is mass? Mass is the amount of matter an object has. Examples of matter: a person, a tree, even air! However light is not an example of matter because it doesn't take up space and doesn't have mass. Energy is the amount of change something has such as temperature, distance, and velocity.

Natural laws govern our universe. These laws tell us how the universe naturally works. So lets say we have a ball and we drop it, the ball will fall right? We test natural laws with experiments. When you set up an experiment you have to be careful to include all necesary parts, but also do not change your variables around because the data can get tricky! Say you are using a smart phone and you're battery keeps dying fast. You think it might be because you keep talking on the phone alot, or your brightness is at the maximum, or you have many icons opened using more data (these three possibilities are called variables). How can you tell what one is using up your battery? If you change all three of these you won't be able to tell which one is affecting your battery most. But if you set up an experiment where you try each one for a certain time period and record the change in battery then you will have a better conclusion.

Let's Measure and Convert!

Units of Measurement

What is a measurement?  Size, length, or the amount of something. You have measured

your foot at a shoe store? Or your weight on a scale at the doctors? Or maybe your age

which is measured by the calendar! So then what is a unit? A unit is simply what you

say after the number. Such as my shoe size is 9 inches, inches is the unit.

My weight is 125 pounds, pounds is the unit. I am 21 years old, the unit is years.

For physics we ALL use S.I. units.

Common SI Units (Always use these in Physic Problems!):

• Distance or Length--- meters (m)

• Mass--- kilograms (kg)

• Time--- seconds (s)

• Temperature--- kelvin (K)

• Electric Current--- amperes (A)

• Energy and Work --- joule (J)

• Force--- Newton (N)

• Power--- Watt (W)

You will learn when these are used later but always use these units. Sometimes you will be given different units REMEMBER you have to convert into these units before plugging into the equations!

Unit Conversions

Lets get comfortable converting with units you already know about.

giga(G)= 10^9

mega (M)= 10^6

kilo (k)= 10^3

centi (c)= 10^-2

milli (ml)= 10^-3

micro (µ)= 10^-6

nano (n)= 10^-9

pico (p)= 10^-12

Lets say you have 100 cm, you need this to be in meters! So 100 cm multiply this by 10^-2 since centi=10^-2..... you will get 1 meter! The negative 2 tells you to move the decimal place to the left two times. 100.0 cm--- 1.00 m.