If you’re looking for a challenging physics curriculum that’s easy to use, look no farther than Principles of Physics from Kinetic Books. This digital physics textbook combines traditional textual information with interactive physics simulations and problems. The course is designed for the gifted high school science student or non-science college major and will prepare a student for the Advanced Placement Physics B exam. This is an algebra-based course. Algebra is necessary for working many of the problems. Conceptual Physics is available for those looking for less rigorous high school level physics course.

Similar to Conceptual Physics, the textbook covers topics in mechanics, mechanical waves, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, light and optics, special relativity, quantum physics, and nuclear physics. Five additional chapters are included in this text. For example, an additional chapter provides more problem solving applying Newton’s laws, a chapter on electric flux and Gauss' Law, and a chapter on diffraction. Most chapters include expanded material. The optional topics in Conceptual Physics are completely covered in Principles of Physics.

The course breaks each chapter into subtopics with interactive problems and sample problems available with each topic. The student does not proceed to new information until thoroughly covering a topic and working problems that go with that topic. Most text pages include some type of simulation. The software includes a variety of interactive means to help students grasp the material. These include whiteboards, interactive problems, sample problems and derivations of equations, interactive checkpoints, and quizboards. The software gives you the ability to vary the text size, highlight text, and add short notes to pages. There is no index to the book, but there is a search tool provided on every page.

Whiteboards are a sequence of narrated animations. The narration can be muted and read as text. Each animation can be repeated as often as a student requires. The whiteboard information is an additional presentation of the material found in the text of that textbook page. The textbook page must still be read to get all the information provided.

Interactive problems are often simulations that require you to input information that will vary the outcome of the simulation. The goal is to solve the problem by entering the correct variables. Sample problems and derivations of equations require students to use the knowledge they have gained to solve problems and equations. These problems have explanations, resources, and step-by-step solutions to help students understand how to solve that type of problem.

Interactive checkpoints are problems that initially have all the problem solving strategies hidden. As needed, the student may request to see the variables of the problem, the strategy needed to solve the problem, the physics principles or equations used, and the step-by-step solution. After inputting the answer to the problem, the student may check to see if his solution is correct.

Quizboards are a means to see how well the student understands the material in the chapter. Students may answer the question, check to see if they have the correct answer, get a hint, or get the solution. Quizboards do not track students’ answers. Once a student goes on to another quizboard question, his answer is lost. This does allow the student to go back and retry troublesome questions.

Conceptual problems follow each chapter. These problems were designed to be graded using the online assessment of homework. The server grades the questions that it can grade and forwards questions it cannot grade. The software is designed so that some problems may vary the variables used in the problem. The server is able to grade these problems. Homeschoolers may pay a fee of $50 per year that allows them to grade two students with the service. Currently this service provides answers, but the publisher is working on providing the fully worked out solutions for all problems in the future.

It is possible to print out the conceptual problems pages and have your student answer these on paper. Answers are available by selecting the “view answers” link for all the odd numbered problems.

I highly recommend Principles of Physics for the homeschool family looking for quality instruction with ease of use at great price. You can have an Advanced Placement physics curriculum for about $80 using Principles of Physics in combination with Virtual Physics Lab, also from Kinetic Books and, for real-life physics experiments, Hands-On Physics Activities With Real-Life Applications by James Cunningham and Norman Herr. That’s an amazing deal.

The software uses your browser for display. It was easily installed on my XP computer. The publisher took care to make installation smooth, providing information at each step of the installation process to make the installation work properly. That includes a page of setup checks that assure that the program will function properly when installation is complete. Please pay careful attention to the requirements to run the software. The browser version is important. The software can be used on Windows and Macintosh computers.

System Requirements

Windows Requirements
Win 98/2000/XP
400 MB Disk Space
128 MB RAM minimum
A Browser: IE version 6.0 or higher, Firefox version 1.0 or higher.
Note: it worked fine using Netscape 7.2, which uses Firefox.

Macintosh Requirements
MAC OS X version 10.2 or higher
370 MB Disk Space
128 MB RAM minimum
A Browser – Safari version 1.0.2 or higher