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| Introduction | |
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| About This Book | |
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| Conventions Used in This Book | |
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| What You're Not to Read | |
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| Foolish Assumptions | |
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| How This Book Is Organized | |
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| Icons Used in This Book | |
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| Where to Go from Here | |
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| Putting Physics into Motion | |
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| Using Physics to Understand Your World | |
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| What Physics Is All About | |
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| Observing Objects in Motion | |
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| Absorbing the Energy Around You | |
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| Feeling Hot but Not Bothered | |
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| Playing with Charges and Magnets | |
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| Preparing for the Wild, Wild Physics Coming Up | |
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| Understanding Physics Fundamentals | |
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| Don't Be Scared, It's Only Physics | |
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| Measuring the World Around You and Making Predictions | |
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| Don't mix and match: Keeping physical units straight | |
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| From meters to inches and back again: Converting between units | |
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| Eliminating Some Zeros: Using Scientific Notation | |
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| Checking the Precision of Measurements | |
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| Knowing which digits are significant | |
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| Estimating accuracy | |
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| Arming Yourself with Basic Algebra | |
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| Tackling a Little Trig | |
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| Exploring the Need for Speed | |
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| Dissecting Displacement | |
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| Examining axes | |
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| Measuring speed | |
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| Speed Specifics: What Is Speed, Anyway? | |
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| Reading the speedometer: Instantaneous speed | |
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| Staying steady: Uniform speed | |
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| Swerving back and forth: Nonuniform motion | |
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| Busting out the stopwatch: Average speed | |
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| Pitting average speed versus uniform motion | |
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| Speeding Up (or Down): Acceleration | |
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| Defining acceleration | |
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| Determining the units of acceleration | |
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| Positive and negative acceleration | |
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| Average and instantaneous acceleration | |
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| Uniform and nonuniform acceleration | |
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| Relating Acceleration, Time, and Displacement | |
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| Not-so-distant relations | |
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| Equating more speedy scenarios | |
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| Linking Speed, Acceleration, and Displacement | |
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| Following Directions: Which Way Are You Going? | |
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| Conquering Vectors | |
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| Asking for directions: Vector basics | |
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| Putting directions together: Adding vectors | |
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| Taking distance apart: Subtracting vectors | |
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| Waxing Numerical on Vectors | |
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| Breaking Up Vectors into Components | |
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| Finding vector components given magnitudes and angles | |
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| Finding magnitudes and angles given vector components | |
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| Unmasking the Identities of Vectors | |
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| Displacement is a vector | |
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| Velocity is another vector | |
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| Acceleration: Yep, another vector | |
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| Sliding Along on Gravity's Rainbow: A Velocity Exercise | |
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| May the Forces of Physics Be with You | |
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| When Push Comes to Shove: Force | |
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| Forcing the Issue | |
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| For His First Trick, Newton's First Law of Motion | |
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| Getting it going: Inertia and mass | |
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| Measuring mass | |
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| Ladies and Gentlemen, Newton's Second Law of Motion | |
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| Naming units of force | |
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| Gathering net forces | |
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| Newton's Grand Finale: The Third Law of Motion | |
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| Tension shouldn't cause stiff necks: Friction in Newton's third law | |
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| Analyzing angles and force in Newton's third law | |
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| Finding equilibrium | |
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| What a Drag: Inclined Planes and Friction | |
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| Don't Let It Get You Down: Dealing with Gravity | |
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| Leaning Vertical: An Inclined Plane | |
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| Figuring out angles the easy way | |
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| Playing with acceleration | |
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| Getting Sticky with Friction | |
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| Calculating friction and the normal force | |
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| Conquering the coefficient of friction | |
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| Understanding static and kinetic friction | |
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| Handling uphill friction | |
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| Determining How Gravity Affects Airborne Objects | |
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| Going up: Maximum height | |
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| Floating on air: Hang time | |
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| Going down: Factoring the total time | |
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| Firing an object at an angle | |
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| Circling around Circular Motions and Orbits | |
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| Staying the Course: Uniform Circular Motion | |
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| Changing Direction: Centripetal Acceleration | |
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| Controlling velocity with centripetal acceleration | |
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| Finding the magnitude of the centripetal acceleration | |
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| Pulling Toward the Center: Centripetal Force | |
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| Negotiating Curves and Banks: Centripetal Force through Turns | |
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| Getting Angular: Displacement, Velocity, and Acceleration | |
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| Dropping the Apple: Newton's Law of Gravitation | |
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| Deriving the force of gravity on the earth's surface | |
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| Using the law of gravitation to examine circular orbits | |
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| Looping the Loop: Vertical Circular Motion | |
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| Manifesting the Energy to Work | |
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| Getting Some Work out of Physics | |
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| Work: It Isn't What You Think | |
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| Working on measurement systems | |
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| Pushing your weight | |
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| Taking a drag | |
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| Considering Negative Work | |
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| Getting the Payoff: Kinetic Energy | |
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| Breaking down the kinetic energy equation | |
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| Putting the kinetic energy equation to use | |
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| Calculating kinetic energy by using net force | |
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| Energy in the Bank: Potential Energy | |
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| Working against gravity | |
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| Converting potential energy into kinetic energy | |
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| Choose Your Path: Conservative versus Nonconservative Forces | |
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| Up, Down, and All Around: The Conservation of Mechanical Energy | |
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| Determining final velocity with mechanical energy | |
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| Determining final height with mechanical energy | |
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| Powering Up: The Rate of Doing Work | |
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| Common units of power | |
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| Alternate calculations of power | |
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| Putting Objects in Motion: Momentum and Impulse | |
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| Looking at the Impact of Impulse | |
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| Gathering Momentum | |
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| The Impulse-Momentum Theorem: Relating Impulse and Momentum | |
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| Shooting pool: Finding impulse and momentum | |
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| Singing in the rain: An impulsive activity | |
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| When Objects Go Bonk: Conserving Momentum | |
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| Measuring velocity with the conservation of momentum | |
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| Measuring firing velocity with the conservation of momentum | |
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| When Worlds (or Cars) Collide: Elastic and Inelastic Collisions | |
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| When objects bounce: Elastic collisions | |
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| When objects don't bounce: Inelastic collisions | |
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| Colliding along a line | |
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| Colliding in two dimensions | |
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| Winding Up with Angular Kinetics | |
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| Going from Linear to Rotational Motion | |
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| Understanding Tangential Motion | |
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| Finding tangential speed | |
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| Finding tangential acceleration | |
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| Finding centripetal acceleration | |
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| Applying Vectors to Rotation | |
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| Calculating angular velocity | |
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| Figuring angular acceleration | |
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| Twisting and Shouting: Torque | |
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| Mapping out the torque equation | |
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| Understanding lever arms | |
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| Figuring out the torque generated | |
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| Recognizing that torque is a vector | |
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| No Wobbling Allowed: Rotational Equilibrium | |
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| Hanging a flag: A rotational equilibrium problem | |
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| Ladder safety: Introducing friction into rotational equilibrium | |
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| Round and Round with Rotational Dynamics | |
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| Rolling Up Newton's Second Law into Angular Motion | |
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| Converting tangential acceleration to angular acceleration | |
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| Factoring in the moment of inertia | |
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| Examining Moments of Inertia | |
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| CD players and torque: An inertia example | |
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| Angular acceleration and torque: Another inertia example | |
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| Wrapping Your Head around Rotational Work and Kinetic Energy | |
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| Doing some rotational work | |
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| Tracking down rotational kinetic energy | |
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| Measuring rotational kinetic energy on a ramp | |
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| Can't Stop This: Angular Momentum | |
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| Reviewing the conservation of angular momentum | |
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| Satellite orbits: A conservation of angular momentum example | |
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| Springs-n-Things: Simple Harmonic Motion | |
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| Hooking Up with Hooke's Law | |
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| Keeping springs stretchy | |
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| Deducing that Hooke's law is a restoring force | |
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| Moving with Simple Harmonic Motion | |
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| Examining basic horizontal and vertical simple harmonic motion | |
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| Diving deeper into simple harmonic motion | |
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| Finding the angular frequency of a mass on a spring | |
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| Factoring Energy into Simple Harmonic Motion | |
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| Swinging with Pendulums | |
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| Laying Down the Laws of Thermodynamics | |
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| Turning Up the Heat with Thermodynamics | |
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| Getting into Hot Water | |
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| When the thermometer says Fahrenheit | |
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| When the thermometer says Celsius | |
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| When the thermometer says Kelvin | |
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| The Heat Is On: Linear Expansion | |
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| Deconstructing linear expansion | |
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| Workin' on the railroad: A linear expansion example | |
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| The Heat Continues On: Volume Expansion | |
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| Going with the Flow (of Heat) | |
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| Changing Phases: When Temperatures Don't Change | |
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| Breaking the ice with phase changes | |
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| Understanding latent heat | |
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| Here, Take My Coat: Heat Transfer in Solids and Gases | |
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| Boiling Water: Convection | |
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| Too Hot to Handle: Conduction | |
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| Examining the properties that affect conduction to find the conduction equation | |
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| Applying the heat-transferred-by-conduction equation | |
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| Emitting and Absorbing Light: Radiation | |
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| You can't see radiation, but it's there | |
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| Radiation and blackbodies | |
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| Crunching Avogadro's Number | |
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| Forging the Ideal Gas Law | |
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| Gas pressure: An ideal gas law example | |
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| Boyle's Law and Charles' Law: Alternative expressions of the ideal gas law | |
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| Tracking Ideal Gas Molecules | |
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| Predicting air molecule speed | |
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| Calculating kinetic energy in an ideal gas | |
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| When Heat and Work Collide: The Laws of Thermodynamics | |
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| Gaining Thermal Equilibrium: The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics | |
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| Conserving Heat and Energy: The First Law of Thermodynamics | |
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| Calculating conservation | |
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| Examining isobaric, isochoric, isothermal, and adiabatic processes, oh my! | |
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| Figuring out specific heat capacities | |
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| When Heat Flows: The Second Law of Thermodynamics | |
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| Putting heat to work: Heat engines | |
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| Evaluating heat's work: Heat engine efficiency | |
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| Carnot says you can't have it all | |
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| Going Cold: The Third (and Absolute Last) Law of Thermodynamics | |
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| Getting a Charge out of Electricity and Magnetism | |
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| Zapping Away with Static Electricity | |
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| Plus and Minus: Electron and Proton Charges | |
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| Push and Pull: Electric Forces | |
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| Charging it to Coulomb's law | |
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| Bringing objects together | |
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| Calculating the speed of electrons | |
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| Looking at forces between multiple charges | |
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| Influence at a Distance: Electric Fields | |
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| Coming from all directions: Electric fields from point charges | |
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| Charging nice and steady: Electric fields in parallel plate capacitors | |
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| Electric Potential: Cranking Up the Voltage | |
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| Calculating electric potential energy | |
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| Realizing the potential in voltage | |
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| Discovering that electric potential is conserved | |
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| Finding the electric potential of point charges | |
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| Getting fully charged with capacitance | |
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| Giving Electrons a Push with Circuits | |
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| Electrons on the March: Current | |
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| Defining current | |
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| Calculating the current in batteries | |
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| Giving You Some Resistance: Ohm's Law | |
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| Determining current flow | |
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| Examining resistivity | |
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| Powering Up: Wattage | |
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| Flowing from One to the Other: Series Circuits | |
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| Splitting the Current: Parallel Circuits | |
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| Looping Together Electricity with Kirchoff's Rules | |
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| Implementing the loop rule | |
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| Using multiple-loop circuits | |
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| Conquering Capacitors in Parallel and Series Circuits | |
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| Capacitors in parallel circuits | |
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| Capacitors in series circuits | |
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| Putting Together Resistors and Capacitors: RC Circuits | |
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| Magnetism: More than Attraction | |
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| Finding the Source of Attraction | |
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| Forcing a Moving Charge | |
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| Figuring the Quantitative Size of Magnetic Forces | |
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| Moving in Orbits: Charged Particles in Magnetic Fields | |
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| Magnetic fields do no work | |
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| ... but they still affect moving charged particles | |
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| Pushing and Pulling Currents | |
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| Forces on currents | |
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| Torques on currents | |
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| Identifying the Magnetic Field from a Wire | |
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| Centering on Current Loops | |
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| Achieving a Uniform Magnetic Field with Solenoids | |
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| Keeping the Current Going with Voltage | |
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| Inducing EMF (Electromagnetic Frequency) | |
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| Moving a conductor in a magnetic field to cause voltage | |
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| Inducing voltage over a certain area | |
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| Factoring In the Flux with Faraday's Law | |
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| Getting the Signs Right with Lenz's Law | |
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| Figuring out Inductance | |
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| Examining Alternating Current Circuits | |
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| Picturing alternating voltage | |
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| Unearthing root mean square current and voltage | |
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| Leading with capacitors | |
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| Lagging with inductors | |
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| Handling the Triple Threat: RCL Circuits | |
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| Shedding Some Light on Mirrors and Lenses | |
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| All about Mirrors (srorriM tuoba llA) | |
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| When Light Gets Bendy | |
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| Refracting light with Snell's Law | |
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| Examining water at apparent depths | |
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| All Mirrors and No Smoke | |
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| Expanding with concave mirrors | |
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| Contracting with convex mirrors | |
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| Seeing Clearly with Lenses | |
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| Expanding with converging lenses | |
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| Contracting with diverging lenses | |
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| The Part of Tens | |
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| Ten Amazing Insights on Relativity | |
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| Nature Doesn't Play Favorites | |
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| The Speed of Light Is Constant, No Matter How Fast You Go | |
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| Time Dilates at High Speeds | |
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| Space Travel Ages You Less | |
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| Length Contracts at High Speeds | |
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| E = mc[superscript 2]: The Equivalence of Matter and Energy | |
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| Matter Plus Antimatter Equals Boom | |
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| The Sun Is Radiating Away Mass | |
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| The Speed of Light Is the Ultimate Speed | |
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| Newton Is Still Right | |
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| Ten Wild Physics Theories | |
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| You Can Measure a Smallest Distance | |
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| There Might Be a Smallest Time | |
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| Heisenberg Says You Can't Be Certain | |
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| Black Holes Don't Let Light Out | |
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| Gravity Curves Space | |
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| Matter and Antimatter Destroy Each Other | |
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| Supernovas Are the Most Powerful Explosions | |
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| The Universe Starts with the Big Bang and Ends with the Gnab Gib | |
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| Microwave Ovens Are Hot Physics | |
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| Physicists May Not Have Physical Absolute Measures | |
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| Glossary | |
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| Index | |