About

Your resource to make physics teaching relevant to real world contexts.

Physics is a core subject that deals with many real life issues – reusable energy, climate change, and medical advancement. Yet it can be a challenge to link physics concepts to these important issues; most high school and university physics curriculum materials do not contain lessons and problem sets directly related to realistic problems. With this in mind, we set out to develop an extensive online database of materials which can support instructors who want to incorporate realworld physics examples and problems into their courses.

In this website you will find:

overviews that clearly explain the physics concepts in a real world context
lecture notes in the form of power point presentations
data sheets with realistic numbers and information
problem sets and exam questions that would interest students (including solutions)
take-home experiments that can be done by students or by teachers as demonstrations in class

The materials on this site were developed by a team of physics instructors at the University of British Columbia and are in the process of being tested by high school teachers and graduate and undergraduate physics students. Ongoing surveying of instructors and student using this resource is being undertaken and feedback is appreciated at any time. Each topic is connected to curriculum content and learning outcomes within the high school science curriculum in the province of British Columbia (which in many cases follows the Pan-Canadian Science Curriculum). We provide solutions to all problem sets and multiple choice questions, which in some cases include providing excel spreadsheets to perform simulations and calculations. Take home experiments are tested and sample data sets provided. Therefore we hope that these materials can be easily incorporated into existing secondary and undergraduate physics courses.

We hope that through this website, we can encourage students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills, and eventually help instructors to make sustainability central to their teaching.

People involved in the project:

Janelle van DongenPhD StudentDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Andrzej KotlickiFacultyDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Theresa LiaoCommunications CoordinatorDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Mathew (Sandy) MartinukPhD StudentDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Rachel MollInstructorDepartment of Curriculum & Pedagogy University of British Columbia

Georg RiegerFacultyDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Oren RippelCombined Honours Math and Physics Undergraduate StudentDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Angela RuthvenOutreach AssistantDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Brittany TymosHonours BiophysicsDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Chris WalthamFacultyDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Claire WheelerUndergraduate StudentDepartment of Mechanical Engineering University of British Columbia

Chenchong (Charles) ZhuHonours Physics and AstronomyDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia

Anoushka RajanUndergraduate StudentDepartment of Mechanical Engineering University of British Columbia

Zendai KashinoOutreach AssistantDepartment of Physics & Astronomy University of British Columbia