P0 The preface: how this curriculum works

Goal: know what the curriculum is, how it's organised, how to learn with it, and what's ahead. Needs: nothing. Start here.

In this chapter

• Why physics is the search for a small set of rules, and why those rules are written in maths.
• The four levels of the curriculum, and how they form a spiral.
• The three kinds of series (maths toolkit, physics, branch), and how they fit together.
• The routine that makes learning stick: worked examples, graded problems, recall, and coming back later.
• What's ahead, from falling apples to quantum fields.

Notes

One set of rules

An apple falling, the Moon orbiting the Earth, and a star shining for billions of years look unrelated, but they follow the same small set of rules. Physics is the search for those rules. The rules are written in mathematics, because it's the most precise language we have. For example, Newton's law of gravitation:

• \(F\): the pull of gravity between two objects (in newtons)
• \(G\): the gravitational constant, a constant of nature, the same everywhere
• \(m_1, m_2\): the two masses (in kilograms)
• \(r\): the distance between their centres (in metres)

One short equation like this describes the orbits of the planets to remarkable accuracy. Learn to read it, and you can check the rules for yourself.

A map in four levels

The curriculum is a spiral. Each big idea is met first as intuition, then revisited with more maths.

Each level is made of series. Physics (P) series tell the story of an idea, maths toolkits (M) teach one tool each, arriving just before the physics that needs them, and branches (B) are specialised fields to explore in any order. Altogether: 103 series, about 630 episodes, about 195 hours.

How to learn with it

Watching alone isn't enough; recalling is what makes knowledge last (see Start here). Every series has a worked example, problems in three grades with full solutions, and recall questions to answer from memory.

What's ahead

Motion and gravity; energy, waves and heat; electricity, magnetism and light; relativity and the quantum world; atoms, nuclei and particles; stars, black holes and the expanding universe. Then the frontiers: quantum fields, the Standard Model, and open questions like dark matter and quantum gravity.

Key terms

Spiral curriculum

A course that returns to the same big ideas several times, each time in more depth.

Retrieval practice

Learning by recalling information from memory, rather than rereading it.

Testing effect

The finding that recalling material (testing yourself) improves long-term memory more than restudying it.

Sources

Jerome Bruner, the spiral curriculum. Bruner argued that the basic ideas of a subject can be grasped intuitively early on, then revisited in increasingly formal ways. Source: J. S. Bruner, The Process of Education, Harvard University Press, 1960. Book record

Roediger and Karpicke, the testing effect. In Experiment 2, students learned a prose passage in four 5-minute periods: four study periods (SSSS), or one study period and three recall tests (STTT). After 5 minutes, SSSS recalled 83% and STTT 71%; after one week, SSSS recalled 40% and STTT 61%. Source: H. L. Roediger III and J. D. Karpicke, "Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention", Psychological Science 17(3), 249–255, 2006. PubMed

Check yourself

• What is physics, and what kinds of questions does it try to answer?
• Why is maths the language of physics?
• What are the four levels, and how does the spiral work?
• What are the five steps of the learning routine, and why does recalling beat rereading?

Next: M1 · Numbers, units and estimation · The full curriculum · Progress