Physics is a natural science that deals with the structure of matter and the interactions between the fundamental constituents of the observable universe. Physicists ask the fundamental questions: How did the universe begin? How and of what is it made? How does it change? What rules govern its behavior? Most of the phenomena in the world around you are, at the fundamental level, based on physics. Many of the everyday technological inventions that we now take for granted resulted from discoveries in physics. A good understanding of principles in physics will help you analyze complex problems and reason logically.

University Physics I is an advanced physics course for engineering students in their second semester of freshman year, or their first semester of sophomore year, and it covers Newtonian mechanics and the special theory of relativity.

Newtonian mechanics is based on Newton’s laws of motion, and several other basic assumptions. Until the end of the 19th century, it was believed that the motion of matter could be completely understood by Newtonian mechanics. However, the formulation by Maxwell of a unified theory of electromagnetism changed everything. Maxwell’s theory was extraordinarily successful, but at a fundamental level it seemed to be inconsistent with the Newtonian ideas of space and time. Albert Einstein combined the experimental results and physical arguments of others with his own unique insights, and formulated the new principles in terms of which space, time, matter and energy were to be understood. These principles and their consequences constitute the special theory of relativity, or special relativity.