Introductory Physics: Modeling with Physics

This is an open-access textbook for calculus-based introductory physics courses. Anyone that complies with the license is welcome to modify and use this work for their own use, and we hope that you will choose to contribute. The textbook is specifically intended for a flipped-classroom approach, wherein students complete readings at home and the material is then discussed in class. The textbook thus contains questions and activities to engage readers. This text also includes a curriculum in experimental physics, detailing the scientific method and process, suggesting experiments to perform at home and in the lab, and has chapters that cover: writing and reviewing proposals, writing and reviewing reports, analyzing data, as well as an introduction to python. Finally, this textbook was written with many contributions from students! We hope that you may find it useful, and we are interested to know if you are using it!

This book is a remix of Introductory Physics: Building Models to Describe Our World. All licensing and copyrights are derived from this original text. Anyone is welcome to compile their own version including or excluding chapters. The original open-access files are found at https://github.com/OSTP/PhysicsArtofModelling/tex/.

This version of the textbook is also open-access and can be found at https://github.com/troymessina/PhysicsArtOfModeling. The following chapters are included in the textbook by default:

1. The scientific method and physics

2. Comparing model and experiment

3. Vectors

4. Linear momentum and the centre of mass

5. Newton’s Laws

6. Applying Newton’s Laws

7. Work and energy

8. Potential energy and conservation of energy

9. Gravity

10. Rotational dynamics

11. Rotational energy and momentum

12. Simple harmonic motion

13. Waves

14. Fluid mechanics

15. Electric charges and fields

16. Gauss’ Law

17. Electric potential

18. Electric current

19. Electric circuits

20. The magnetic force

21. Sources of magnetic field

22. Electromagnetic induction

23. The theory of Special Relativity

24. Appendix A: Calculus

25. Appendix B: An Introduction to Visual Python

26. Appendix C: Guidelines for lab related activities

Introductory Physics: Building Models to Describe Our World by Ryan D. Martin, Emma Neary, Joshua Rinaldo, and Olivia Woodman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at https://github.com/OSTP/PhysicsArtofModelling.