The subject that explains why the mathematics exists, taught by someone
who has had to get it right on real hardware. Personally, every class,
one student at a time.
branches, opened in every stage, not mechanics followed by everything else
1:1
live on Zoom, taught personally by a Master’s-qualified aerospace engineer
13
years, three stages, one continuous plan from Kindergarten to Grade 12
15
students in the practice, in total. Never a group. Never a stand-in.
01 The thing that gets lost
Somewhere around ninth grade, physics stops being about the world and becomes a formula sheet.
The child who wanted to know why the bathwater spins one way is handed a
page of equations and told which ones are examinable. Nothing in between
connected the two, and the honest ones notice.
Here is the detail that gives the whole game away. Every serious board hands
the student the equations in the examination room. The IB gives every
candidate a clean copy of the physics data booklet for every paper. The
College Board prints a table of information and equations for AP Physics.
Cambridge and AQA print the formulae on the paper. Nobody is testing whether
a student can remember v² = u² + 2as.
What is being tested is the thing that is not on the sheet: knowing which
situation you are standing in. Whether this is a momentum problem or an
energy problem. Whether the thing you have been given is a rate or a total.
Whether the answer you just wrote down is physically possible. A student who
has been taught to match a question to a formula can pass for years and then
fail the first paper that phrases something in an unfamiliar way, and neither
they nor their school will be able to say what went wrong.
Physics is the subject where that habit is caught early, because physics
punishes it early. It is also the subject where the mathematics finally
acquires a reason: a gradient becomes a velocity, an area under a curve
becomes a distance actually travelled, and a logarithm becomes the only
way to answer a question about a rocket. Taught in that order, the question
of what any of it is for answers itself.
The students I take are rarely behind. They are usually ahead, and unchallenged.
Abhishek Dabas · MSc Astronautics and Space Engineering
02 Where it all points
One demonstration, on a world with no air, ended an argument two thousand years old.
At the end of the third moonwalk of Apollo 15, on 2 August 1971,
Commander David Scott stood in front of the television camera at Hadley-Apennine
holding a 1.32 kg aluminium geological hammer in one hand and a falcon
feather in the other, and let go of both. There is no air on the Moon. They
landed together.
Apollo 15Hadley-Apennine, the Moon2 August 1971, EVA-3g = 1.62 m/s²
0.00t, SECONDS SINCE RELEASE
0.00h, METRES FALLEN
0.00v, METRES PER SECOND
0.00GAP BETWEEN THEM, IN METRES
Watch the strobe rather than the objects. The marks are laid down at
equal intervals of time, and the gaps between them come out
1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. That is Galileo’s odd-number rule, and it is
the same sentence as h = ½ g t²
written in a way an eight-year-old can check by counting.
Your child meets this exact demonstration three times. In Grade 3 it is
“heavy things do not fall faster, air just gets in the way”. In
Grade 7 it is a measurement, a table and a graph. In Grade 11 it is a
constant-acceleration problem whose velocity-time graph has an area, and
that area is the distance fallen. One event, three depths, thirteen years
apart, and the student who saw it at seven recognises it at seventeen.
One of the reasons we got here today was because of a gentleman named
Galileo, a long time ago, who made a rather significant discovery about
falling objects in gravity fields.
David R. Scott · Commander, Apollo 15 · Hadley-Apennine, 2 August 1971
03 The eight branches
Physics is not one year of forces. It is eight branches, and your child meets all of them every year.
Most school courses run the branches in single file: a term of forces, then a
term of electricity, then a year in which none of it is mentioned again.
Here all eight are opened in every stage and reopened deeper in the next.
Choose a stage and the whole map redraws itself at that depth.
Stage One · Notice
The first stage is not early physics. It is the habit physics is built on:
watch carefully, describe honestly, say out loud what you think will happen,
and then check. It is answered with string, water, a torch, a ball and a
stopwatch, and every one of the eight branches appears here in a form a
six-year-old can hold in their hands. It runs alongside elementary school
science rather than repeating it, and covers the physical-science
expectations most schools work to.
8branches, every year
1:1live on Zoom
1investigation per term
Stage Two · Measure
The middle stage converts noticing into measuring. Ratio, rearrangement and
graphs stop being schoolwork and become instruments: a student calculates
rather than guesses, plots rather than describes, and learns that a number
without a unit and an uncertainty is not yet an answer. It runs ahead of
middle-school physical science and sets up IGCSE, GCSE and high-school
physics, so that a student arrives at the first examination course already
fluent in the method rather than meeting it for the first time.
8branches, in rotation
1:1live on Zoom
2investigations per term
Stage Three · Model
The final stage is taught against the board the family actually sits:
Cambridge or Edexcel IGCSE, AQA GCSE, IB Physics at SL or HL, AP Physics 1,
2 or C, or A-Level. The content below is the union of those specifications,
and the plan drawn up after the assessment is the subset that belongs to
your child, in your school's order. The purpose is not the grade. It is a
student who can derive it, test it, and say where it stops being true.
8branches, at depth
1:1live on Zoom
1full investigation, written up
Motion and Forces
Why things move, and why they stopPutting a number on movementMechanics, properly
Pushes, pulls, and what a force actually does
Fast and slow, and how you could tell for certain
Rolling, sliding, and friction you can feel
Everything falls, and it falls the same
Predicting where a thrown ball will land
Speed, distance and time as one relationship
Reading distance-time and speed-time graphs
Newton’s three laws, in plain words first
Balanced and unbalanced forces, resultants
Weight is not mass, and the difference matters
Momentum, and why a collision hurts
Kinematics in one and two dimensions
Free-body diagrams and resolving forces
Projectiles, and why the two axes are independent
Momentum, impulse, elastic and inelastic collisions
Circular motion and centripetal force
Torque, moments and rotational dynamics
Why it comes firstA child who can predict where a ball lands is already doing the thing the whole subject is made of.
Where it goesGraphs of motion are the first place a gradient means something physical, which is why calculus later feels obvious rather than arbitrary.
Where it goesMechanics carries the largest exam weighting in almost every specification, and AP Physics C: Mechanics is entirely this branch.
Energy, Work and Power
Where the energy wentCounting energy, and never losing anyThe idea that answers questions you cannot solve
Energy has names: moving, stored, hot, bright, loud
Where does it go when something stops?
Food, fuel, batteries and the Sun
Building something that stores energy and lets it go
Work as force multiplied by distance
Kinetic and gravitational potential energy
Conservation of energy, and where the “lost” energy actually went
Power: the same job, done faster
Efficiency, and reading a Sankey diagram
Energy resources, and how electricity is really generated
The work-energy theorem
Conservative forces and potential energy functions
Elastic potential energy and Hooke’s law
Power, efficiency and real machines
Rotational kinetic energy and angular momentum
Energy in oscillations, and where it goes when they damp
Why it matters“Energy” is the word children use most and can define least. Fixing that early pays for a decade.
Where it goesConservation laws are how a physicist answers a question they cannot solve directly. Students meet that trick here for the first time.
Where it goesEvery hard problem in mechanics has an energy solution that is three lines long. Finding it is a skill, and it is taught.
Matter and Thermal Physics
Solid, liquid, gas, and hotParticles, pressure and temperatureThermodynamics and the behaviour of materials
Solid, liquid, gas, and what changes between them
Hot and cold, and what a thermometer really reads
Ice, water and steam are the same stuff
Floating, sinking, and being able to say why
The particle model of matter
Density, pressure, and floating explained properly
Temperature is not the same thing as internal energy
Specific heat capacity and latent heat
Conduction, convection and radiation
The gas laws, derived from the particle model
Kinetic theory and the ideal gas equation
Internal energy and the first law of thermodynamics
Specific and latent heats, measured with an uncertainty
Thermal transfer, emissivity and the greenhouse effect
Entropy and the second law
Stress, strain, Young’s modulus and material failure
Why it mattersMelting an ice cube is the first experiment where the answer disagrees with what a child expected, and that is the whole method in miniature.
Where it goesThe particle model is the first time a student explains something they cannot see by proposing something they cannot see. That is what a physical model is.
Where it goesThermal physics is where the IB, AQA and Cambridge all place their greenhouse-effect content, and where an engineer spends a surprising amount of a career.
Waves, Sound and Light
Shadows, echoes and colourWhat every wave has in commonSuperposition, and the evidence that light is a wave
Sound is something moving, and you can feel it
Loud and quiet, high and low
Shadows, mirrors, and where light goes
Colour, and splitting white light apart
Amplitude, wavelength, frequency and speed
The wave equation, and using it both ways
Reflection, refraction and total internal reflection
Lenses, and how an image is actually formed
The electromagnetic spectrum, end to end
Pitch, loudness, echoes and measuring the speed of sound
Superposition, interference and Young’s double slit
Diffraction gratings, and measuring a wavelength with one
Standing waves, harmonics and resonance
Simple harmonic motion, damping and forced oscillation
Polarisation, and what it proves about light
The Doppler effect, in sound and in starlight
Lens and mirror equations, optical fibres
Why it mattersA shadow is the first thing a child can predict exactly, before anyone has used the word “model”.
Where it goesWaves is the branch that reappears inside every other one: in circuits as a.c., in astronomy as red-shift, in quantum physics as everything.
Where it goesTwo slits and a lamp are the reason anyone believed light was a wave, and the reason the photoelectric effect was such a shock a century later.
Electricity and Magnetism
Making something light upCurrent, voltage, resistance, and real circuitsFields, induction and the machines they run
Building a circuit that lights a bulb
Conductors, insulators and switches
Static electricity you can make and feel
Magnets: attract, repel, and what a compass is doing
Current, voltage and resistance, and what each one is
Series and parallel circuits, and predicting both
Ohm’s law, and the components that disobey it
Electrical power, and reading the household bill
Safety: fuses, earthing and the ring main
Electromagnets, the motor effect and the generator effect
Capacitors: charging, discharging and energy stored
Electric fields, potential, and Coulomb’s law
Magnetic fields, F = BIL and F = BQv
Electromagnetic induction and Faraday’s law
Transformers, alternating current and the grid
Gauss’s law and the calculus treatment, for AP Physics C
Why it mattersA circuit is the first system a child can build, break on purpose, and repair with a reason.
Where it goesParallel circuits are where most students first meet an answer that is genuinely counter-intuitive and survive it.
Where it goesThis is half of the AP Physics C sequence and the largest single block of A-Level, and it is where fields become a way of thinking rather than a topic.
Fields, Gravitation and Orbits
Why the Moon does not fall downGravity with numbers on itField theory, orbits and cosmology
Everything falls, and the Moon is falling too
Bigger things pull harder
The Solar System, laid out to scale
Day, night and the seasons, from a torch and a ball
Weight, mass and g, and why the Moon gives a different answer
Gravity across the Solar System, compared
Orbits: why a satellite does not fall down
The life cycle of a star
Red-shift, and the evidence that the universe is expanding
Newton’s law of gravitation and the inverse square
Gravitational field strength and gravitational potential
Gravitational and electric fields, compared line by line
Kepler’s laws derived rather than quoted
Cosmology, and the evidence that supports it
Why it mattersThis is the branch that makes a child ask a question big enough to keep them at it for a decade.
Where it goesOrbits are the first place a student uses two ideas at once, and they are on the IGCSE, GCSE and IB specifications alike.
Where it goesThis is the branch I use professionally. Everything on this page about orbits is something I have had to get right rather than teach from a book.
Atomic, Nuclear and Quantum
Everything is made of something smallerInside the atom, and out of the nucleusWhere classical physics runs out
Everything is made of something smaller
Things we cannot see and can still detect
The Sun is a nuclear reactor, and it is the reason for lunch
The nuclear model of the atom, and how Rutherford found it
Isotopes, and reading the notation
Alpha, beta and gamma, and what stops each one
Half-life, read straight off a decay graph
Radiation: risk, dose, and the uses that outweigh it
Fission and fusion, and the difference that matters
Rutherford scattering and the evidence for a nucleus
Nuclear equations, mass defect and binding energy per nucleon
Radioactive decay as an exponential, and the decay constant
The photoelectric effect, and why it broke the wave model
Wave-particle duality and the de Broglie wavelength
Fundamental particles and the standard model
Special relativity, for IB Higher Level
Why it mattersChildren accept atoms as a fact. Showing them that somebody had to find out, and how, is worth more than the fact.
Where it goesHalf-life is the first exponential most students meet, years before the mathematics course calls it one.
Where it goesEinstein’s Nobel Prize was for the law of the photoelectric effect, not for relativity, and Millikan spent years trying to disprove it before measuring Planck’s constant with it.
Measurement and the Laboratory
Measuring, and writing down what happenedFair tests, repeats and honest graphsUncertainty, and the paper that is marked on it
Measuring with rulers, cups, scales and a stopwatch
Doing it more than once, and noticing they disagree
Writing down what actually happened, not what you hoped
Drawing a result so somebody else can read it
Units, prefixes and converting without guessing
Repeat readings, anomalies and the mean
Precision, accuracy and resolution are three different things
Drawing a graph an examiner will accept
Fair tests: what you changed, what you kept the same
Absolute, fractional and percentage uncertainty
Propagating uncertainty through a calculation
Choosing what to plot so the relationship comes out straight
Error bars, gradients, and the uncertainty in a gradient
Systematic error, zero error and calibration
Writing to the standard of an IB scientific investigation or an A-Level practical endorsement
Why it comes firstA child who writes down the reading that spoils their idea has already learned the hardest thing in science.
Where it goesThis is the branch schools skip when they are behind, and the branch examiners reward most reliably.
Where it goesThe IB’s scientific investigation is worth 20% of the Diploma grade on its own; AQA states that at least 15% of GCSE marks draw on the required practicals; Cambridge examines it in a paper of its own.
Why all eight, every year
These eight branches are not separate subjects; they are eight views of the
same small set of rules. Energy sits inside mechanics. Fields sit inside both
gravitation and electricity, and are the same mathematics twice. Waves turn up
inside circuits, inside astronomy and inside quantum physics. A student who
meets them in single file, a term at a time, never finds out that they are one
thing, and spends the last two years of school trying to memorise what should
have been obvious.
This map is the default. Your child’s plan is not.
Everything above is what gets covered when nothing else is specified. In
practice almost nothing is unspecified: there is a board, a school, a scheme
of work, a set of topics that were taught badly two years ago and never
repaired, and a student who is three years ahead in one branch and behind in
another. So the assessment comes first, and then the plan is written for that
student — their specification, their school’s order of teaching, their
actual gaps — and revised every term as the picture changes. Where a family
is preparing for a named examination, the plan is built directly on that
board’s own topic list, which is set out in full further down this page.
Written for one student
After watching them work for forty-five minutes, not after reading a form.
Aligned to your board
Cambridge, Edexcel, AQA, OCR, IB or AP — in the specification’s own topic order, or your school’s.
Revised every term
A plan that never changes was never a plan. It is rewritten as the student moves.
04 Three stages, thirteen years
One plan that starts in kindergarten and ends with a physics paper that holds no surprises.
The same eight branches, three times, each time at a depth the previous stage
made possible. Here is what each one actually is.
Kindergarten-Grade 4
Notice
Watch it, describe it, and say what you think will happen next.
Attention and honesty, not arithmetic. String, water, a torch, a ball and a
stopwatch. It runs alongside elementary school science rather than adding a
second load on top of it.
A term is one question held open for twelve weeks. The child predicts out
loud, tests it, and writes down what happened even when it disagrees with
them — especially then. Nothing is memorised, because nothing needs to be
memorised yet. What is being protected is the willingness to be wrong in
public, which is the single most expensive thing a school can accidentally
train out of a bright child.
What a child is practising
Predicting before testing, out loud, every time
Describing what happened in their own words
Measuring, comparing and drawing to scale
Noticing that two readings of the same thing disagree
Finishing an investigation that did not work first time
At the end of a termA result they measured themselves, and a
page in their own handwriting explaining why they no longer believe what they
believed in week one.
Grades 5-8
Measure
Put a number and an uncertainty on it, and plot what changes with what.
Ratio, rearrangement and graphs become instruments. A number without a unit
and an uncertainty is not yet an answer. Runs ahead of middle-school physical
science and sets up IGCSE, GCSE and high-school physics.
This is the stage where the mathematics stops being a separate subject.
Rearrangement arrives because a circuit forces it, gradients arrive because
a motion graph does, and the question of what any of it is for stops being
asked. Two of the eight branches are foregrounded each term; the other six
turn up inside the investigation.
What a student is practising
Units, prefixes, estimation and sanity-checking a number
Uncertainty: how wrong could this reasonably be?
Plotting data and reading a gradient as a physical quantity
Writing a short, honest laboratory report
Defending a conclusion when it is questioned
At the end of a termA plotted result, an uncertainty beside it,
and an argument the student can hold under questioning.
Grades 9-12
Model
Derive it, test it, and know where it stops being true.
Taught against the family’s own specification: Cambridge or Edexcel IGCSE,
AQA GCSE, IB Physics SL or HL, AP Physics 1, 2 or C, or A-Level with AQA, OCR
or Edexcel.
Past papers, mark schemes and examiner reports are used properly rather than
endlessly. The difference this stage is built to produce is narrow and worth
a great deal: a student who, faced with an unfamiliar situation, works out
which physics applies instead of searching the formula sheet for something
with the right letters in it.
What a student leaves with
A specification finished, understood, and examined without surprises
A full investigation, written to IB or A-Level practical standard
Physics kept open as an option for engineering and the physical sciences
The habit of estimating an answer before calculating it
The ability to say what a model assumes, and when it fails
At the endA grade that reflects understanding rather than
recall, and a subject that is still open at eighteen.
Why this starts in kindergarten
Nothing in Stage One is examined, and that is the point. The physics that is
hard at sixteen is not hard because the content is difficult; it is hard
because it asks a student to hold two ideas at once, to trust a measurement
over an intuition, and to say “I do not know yet” without embarrassment.
Those are habits, and habits are cheap to build at six and expensive to build
at sixteen. Stage One buys them while they are cheap.
Built early
Curiosity, careful measurement, and the willingness to be wrong out loud.
Built by 8th grade
Real algebra used on real data, and a graph that says something.
Built by 12th grade
A specification understood, an investigation written, and the subject still open.
05 How it is taught
Why doesn’t the Moon fall down?
One question, answered three times. This is not a syllabus. It is what the
same idea looks like at three different ages, and it is the clearest way to
show you how your child would be taught rather than tell you.
Kindergarten to Grade 4
It is falling. It just keeps missing.
We throw something across the room and mark where it lands. Then we throw it
harder, and mark that. Then harder again. The path gets flatter every time,
and the child sees where this is going before anyone says it.
If you could throw it hard enough, the ground would curve away underneath it
exactly as fast as it drops, and it would never land at all. That is what the
Moon is doing. It is not held up. It is falling, forever, and missing.
What the child leaves with
The first genuinely surprising sentence in physics, and a picture they can
redraw for themselves.
Grades 5 to 8
Then put a number on it, and check something famous.
Anything moving in a circle is accelerating towards the middle, and the size
of that acceleration is a = v² / r. The
International Space Station orbits at roughly 420 km, which is
6,791 km from the centre of the Earth, at about 7.66 km/s.
a = v² / r = (7 660)² / 6 791 000 ≈ 8.6 m/s²
Roughly 88% of the 9.81 m/s² you feel standing in your kitchen.
Which settles something. Astronauts are not floating because gravity has
stopped. Gravity is almost exactly as strong up there as it is down here.
They are floating because they, and the station, and the pen they let go of,
are all falling together.
What the student leaves with
A calculation that overturns something they were sure of, done in four lines
with a calculator.
Grades 9 to 12
Derive it, then argue with it.
Set the gravitational force equal to the centripetal force required, and the
mass of the satellite cancels — which is the same cancellation as the
hammer and the feather, three chapters earlier.
GMm / r² = mv² / r → v = √(GM / r)
The speed of a circular orbit depends on nothing about the thing in it.
Then the argument starts. NASA’s public pages describe the station as
travelling at 17,500 miles per hour. That is 7.82 km/s. Put
420 km into the equation above and you get 7.66 km/s. The public
figure is a rounded one, and there is nothing wrong with rounding — but a
student who notices the difference, checks it, and can say which number the
physics requires has crossed the line this entire page is about.
What the student leaves with
The habit of testing a published number against a derivation, politely, and
being right.
Find the one that does nothing.
A pendulum is on the practical list of almost every board in the world,
because it is the cheapest way to measure something to three decimal places.
Three things about it could plausibly change how long a swing takes. Drag all
three and find out which.
T2 = 4π2Lg
The same statement as T = 2π√(L/g), squared — which is
exactly why the school practical asks for a graph of T2
against L. The gradient of that line is 4π2/g, so a
student with a stopwatch and a piece of string has just measured gravity.
Here g = 9.81 m/s² is assumed. The amplitude figure uses the standard
classical correction, T = T₀(1 + θ²/16 + 11θ⁴/3072),
which is accurate to better than a twentieth of a percent across this whole
slider. Air resistance and the mass of the string are ignored, as every
school laboratory ignores them.
2.006PERIOD T, SECONDS PER SWING
20.06TIME FOR TEN SWINGS, AS YOU WOULD ACTUALLY MEASURE IT
+0.19%ADDED BY THE AMPLITUDE
0.000ADDED BY THE MASS, AT ANY SETTING
06 What is actually made
Every term ends in something measured, plotted and written up.
Not a certificate. Not a slideshow. A result the student obtained themselves,
with an uncertainty beside it, reviewed together line by line, and kept.
K-Grade 4 · one investigation per term
A measurement, and a page in their own words
Ramps, balls and stopwatches: does it always take the same time?
Circuits built, broken on purpose, and repaired with a reason
Shadows and mirrors, predicted before they are tested
A cooling curve, taken by the child, minute by minute
An observation journal, in their own handwriting
Grades 5-8 · two investigations per term
Data, plotted, with the uncertainty stated
A pendulum timed properly, and g extracted from the gradient
Current against voltage for three components, one of which misbehaves
Specific heat capacity, measured, and compared with the book value
Half-life from a decay curve, read off and justified
A short laboratory report, and a defence of its conclusion
Grades 9-12 · one full investigation
Work a university would recognise
An investigation written to IB scientific-investigation standard
Every required practical on your board’s list, done and written up
Uncertainty propagated properly, with error bars that mean something
A linearised graph, chosen so the relationship falls out of the gradient
A folder of past-paper work with the examiner’s report read alongside it
07 The timing
Which physics is reachable at seventeen is decided by a mathematics placement at thirteen.
The College Board asks that a student entering AP Physics 1 has finished
Geometry and is taking Algebra II alongside it, and that a student entering
either AP Physics C has taken calculus or is taking it concurrently. Nobody
announces it at the time, but the middle-school mathematics track therefore
decides whether the calculus-based physics course is still on the table three
years later — and in the UK the door is stated outright: Cambridge requires
Mathematics and Physics A-Levels of every applicant for Engineering.
Open now
While they are still in middle school
Science Olympiad Division B, for Grades 6 to 9. The Department of
Energy’s National Science Bowl runs a middle-school division. eCYBERMISSION
is free and open to Grades 6 to 9.
Open in high school
The first doors that check a record
The F = ma exam, twenty-five mechanics questions in seventy-five minutes, is
the entry to the US Physics Team; it is sat in February and registration
closes in January, so it is planned in the autumn. PhysicsBowl runs in March
and is open internationally.
Open at application
The doors that decide a course
Engineering and the physical sciences, everywhere. Cambridge requires
Mathematics and Physics outright; Illinois’ Grainger College states that
physics is expected of engineering applicants. Physics is also a full-year
college prerequisite for medicine.
08 The curriculum, board by board
Every physics examination a family is likely to sit, and exactly what is in it.
Below is the actual topic list of each specification, in the awarding
body’s own words, with the paper structure beside it. It is here because a
parent deciding on a tutor should be able to see the map rather than be told
that one exists. Examinations are taken seriously and prepared for properly,
and they are still not the point. They are the floor.
Examinations covered
Cambridge IGCSE 0625 & 0972Edexcel International GCSE 4PH1AQA GCSE Physics 8463IB Physics SL & HLAP Physics 1AP Physics 2AP Physics C: MechanicsAP Physics C: E&MA-Level AQA 7408A-Level OCR A H556A-Level Edexcel 9PH0Cambridge AS & A Level 9702Co-ordinated Sciences 0654US school science, NGSS-based
Two things worth knowing before a family spends a year preparing for the wrong
thing. The SAT has no science section at all, and College Board retired the SAT
Subject Tests, including Physics, in 2021. The ACT’s science section is now
optional and sits outside the composite score; it is a data-and-reasoning test
built on charts and experiment descriptions rather than a physics content
examination. Physics earns its place on a transcript through the course and
the grade, not through a separate admissions test.
Cambridge · 0625 / 0972
Cambridge IGCSE Physics
For examination in 2026, 2027 and 2028. Core route (Papers 1 and 3, grades
C–G) or Extended route (Papers 2 and 4, grades A*–G), plus Paper 5,
a laboratory practical test, or Paper 6, the Alternative to Practical.
Practical work carries 20% of the grade. 0972 is the
same syllabus reported on the 9–1 scale.
Motion, forces and energy
Thermal physics
Waves
Electricity and magnetism
Nuclear physics
Space physics
Pearson Edexcel · 4PH1
International GCSE Physics
Untiered, grades 9–1. Paper 1 runs two hours for 110 marks and
61.1% of the grade; Paper 2 runs one hour fifteen for
70 marks and 38.9%, and carries the additional bold and “P” content.
Practical skills are assessed inside the written papers.
Forces and motion
Electricity
Waves
Energy resources and energy transfers
Solids, liquids and gases
Magnetism and electromagnetism
Radioactivity and particles
Astrophysics
AQA · 8463
GCSE Physics
Foundation or Higher tier. Two papers of one hour forty-five, 100 marks each:
Paper 1 covers topics 1–4, Paper 2 covers topics 5–8. There are
ten required practicals, and AQA states that at least
15% of the marks draw on them.
Energy
Electricity
Particle model of matter
Atomic structure
Forces
Waves
Magnetism and electromagnetism
Space physics
IB Diploma · first examined 2025
IB Physics, SL and HL
150 teaching hours at Standard Level, 240 at Higher. Paper 1 (multiple choice
plus a data-based section) and Paper 2 carry 80%; the
scientific investigation is the other 20%. A data
booklet is supplied for every paper, and this syllabus has no Options.
A. Space, time and motion
B. The particulate nature of matter
C. Wave behaviour
D. Fields
E. Nuclear and quantum physics
Higher Level adds rigid body mechanics, Galilean and special relativity, thermodynamics, induction, and quantum physics, and extends seven further sub-topics.
College Board · algebra-based
AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2
Three hours each: multiple choice, then four free-response questions, with a
calculator and the equation sheet permitted throughout. In the 2024–25
redesign fluids moved out of Physics 2 and into Physics 1,
and Physics 2 gained the full treatment of waves.
Physics 1: kinematics; force and translational dynamics; work, energy and power; linear momentum; torque and rotational dynamics; energy and momentum of rotating systems; oscillations; fluids
Physics 2: thermodynamics; electric force, field and potential; electric circuits; magnetism and electromagnetism; geometric optics; waves, sound and physical optics; modern physics
College Board · calculus-based
AP Physics C: Mechanics and E&M
Calculus is taken beforehand or alongside. Since the 2024–25 redesign each
is a full three-hour examination in its own session,
rather than two ninety-minute halves of a single afternoon, and each has four
free-response questions.
Mechanics: kinematics; force and translational dynamics; work, energy and power; linear momentum; torque and rotational dynamics; energy and momentum of rotating systems; oscillations
Electricity and Magnetism: electric charges, fields and Gauss’s law; electric potential; conductors and capacitors; electric circuits; magnetic fields and electromagnetism; electromagnetic induction
AQA · 7408 / OCR A · H556 / Edexcel · 9PH0
A-Level Physics
All three carry a separate practical endorsement,
reported pass or not classified against the CPAC criteria and assessed by the
school: twelve required practicals at AQA, twelve practical activity groups at
OCR, sixteen core practicals at Edexcel. At least 15% of the written marks
assess practical skills.
Measurements and their errors
Particles and radiation
Waves
Mechanics and materials
Electricity
Further mechanics and thermal physics
Fields and their consequences
Nuclear physics
That is the AQA core; one option is chosen from astrophysics, medical physics,
engineering physics, turning points in physics or electronics. OCR runs the
same ground as six modules and Edexcel as thirteen topics, and the plan follows
whichever specification the school teaches.
Cambridge International · 9702
AS & A Level Physics
For examination 2025–2027, with an identical successor syllabus already
published for 2028–2030. Five papers, and unusually
Paper 3 is a real laboratory practical examination
rather than a teacher-assessed endorsement, with Paper 5 on planning, analysis
and evaluation.
AS, topics 1–11: physical quantities and units; kinematics; dynamics; forces, density and pressure; work, energy and power; deformation of solids; waves; superposition; electricity; d.c. circuits; particle physics
A Level adds, 12–25: motion in a circle; gravitational fields; temperature; ideal gases; thermodynamics; oscillations; electric fields; capacitance; magnetic fields; alternating currents; quantum physics; nuclear physics; medical physics; astronomy and cosmology
United States · NGSS-based standards
School science, where no examination is involved
Most US states now work to standards built on the same national framework, and
it is organised around four physical-science core ideas
that run from kindergarten to Grade 12, taught through eight science and
engineering practices and seven crosscutting concepts rather than as a list of
facts.
PS1 Matter and its interactions
PS2 Motion and stability: forces and interactions
PS3 Energy
PS4 Waves and their applications in technologies for information transfer
Work is aligned to whichever standards a school actually follows, and to its own scheme of work.
And then it is customised
The specification is the map. The plan is written for one student.
No two students arrive at the same specification in the same condition. One is
two years ahead in mechanics and cannot rearrange an equation; another
understands the physics perfectly and loses a third of the marks to the way
they write it down. The plan below is the same for every family. What goes
inside it never is.
Step one
The assessment
Seventy-five minutes: forty-five with your child working real problems out
loud, and thirty with you. Nothing is sold in it. The purpose is to find out
how the student actually reasons when a question is unfamiliar.
Step two
The written plan
Within forty-eight hours: what they understand, what they only appear to
understand, and what would be done about it — mapped onto your board’s
own topic list and your school’s order of teaching. Yours to keep, whatever
you decide.
Step three
The term
Weekly, one to one, live on Zoom on your time zone, recorded, with a written
note on progress after every class and one investigation carried through to a
written result.
Step four
The revision of the plan
At the end of every term the plan is rewritten against what actually happened.
A plan that never changes was never a plan; it was a syllabus with a covering
letter.
Immediately
The grade the family came for
Past papers, mark schemes and examiner reports, used properly rather than endlessly.
By senior year
Courses that stay open
Physics taken at the higher level rather than at whichever level was on offer.
At application
A transcript that reads as intent
Engineering, physics, materials, medicine, architecture: every one of them wants this subject.
After that
The part that does not expire
Estimating an answer before calculating it, and knowing what you have assumed.
Why an engineer, and not a physicist
A physicist is trained to find out whether something is true. An engineer is
trained to find out whether it will hold, at what margin, and what happens when
it does not. School physics is full of results that are quoted as though they
were laws and are in fact approximations with a stated range — the small-angle
pendulum a few paragraphs above is one, and the whole of school mechanics
pretends air does not exist. A student who is told which parts are exact, which
are approximations, and where each one stops being true is being taught the
subject as it is actually used.
Used, not just taught
Orbits, structures, thermal margins and materials are things I have had to get right, not chapters I have read.
Honest about difficulty
Some of it is hard. A student is told which parts, and why, rather than left to conclude that the problem is them.
Connected to the mathematics
The same student can carry one idea across physics, mathematics and space in the same week, with one teacher.
09 How it runs
Weekly, one to one, on your time zone, and written down afterwards.
Weekly, one to one
Live on Zoom, taught personally every session by a Master’s-qualified
aerospace engineer. Never a group. Never a stand-in tutor.
On your time zone, recorded
Scheduled after school or at weekends, wherever the family is. Every class is
recorded, with a written note on progress after each one.
Measured, not just heard
Each term ends in something measured, plotted and written up, and reviewed
together, line by line.
Taught by
“The students I take are rarely behind. They are usually ahead, and unchallenged.”
Abhishek Dabas, MSc Astronautics and Space Engineering
Teaching one to one since 2015; every class taught personally
A deliberately small practice, by design
Mathematics, physics, space exploration, flight theory, Six Sigma and project management, Kindergarten through Grade 12
My child already takes physics at school. What is this for?
School physics is taught to thirty students at the pace of the median one,
and the syllabus is finished whether or not it was understood. This is one
student, one plan, and no reason to move on until the reasoning is sound.
Most students who come here are not behind. They are ahead, and
unchallenged, and have quietly learned to pass by matching questions to
formulas rather than by understanding situations. That works until it
abruptly does not.
Which examination board do you follow?
Yours. Cambridge IGCSE 0625 and 0972, Edexcel International GCSE 4PH1, AQA
GCSE Physics 8463, IB Diploma Physics at SL and HL, AP Physics 1, 2 and C,
A-Level with AQA, OCR or Edexcel, and Cambridge International AS and A Level
9702 are all covered, and the full topic list of each is set out above.
After the assessment you receive a written plan built around your
board’s own topic list, your school’s order of teaching, and what the
assessment actually found. Where no examination is involved, the plan
follows the eight branches on this page and whatever standards the school
works to.
Is this really just a mathematics course?
No, but the two are taught as one thing rather than two, which is the point.
Physics is where the mathematics acquires a reason: a gradient becomes a
velocity, an area under a curve becomes a distance actually travelled, and a
logarithm becomes the only way to answer a question about a rocket.
Where the mathematics itself is the obstacle — and about half the time it
is — it is repaired directly, in the same hour, by the same teacher, rather
than referred to somebody else.
My child is in third grade. Is that too early for physics?
Stage One is not early physics. It is the habit physics is built on: watch
carefully, describe honestly, predict out loud, and then check. It is
answered with string, water, a torch, a ball and a stopwatch.
Nothing is memorised, because nothing needs to be memorised yet. What is
being protected is the willingness to be wrong in public, which is cheap to
protect at eight and very expensive to rebuild at sixteen.
Can practical work really be done over Zoom?
Yes, and it has to be, because every board examines it. Cambridge assesses
practical skills in a paper of its own. AQA states that at least 15% of GCSE
marks draw on the required practicals. The IB’s scientific investigation
is worth 20% of the Diploma grade. A-Level carries a separate practical
endorsement.
Experiments a family can safely run at home are run at home, with the
equipment list sent in advance; the rest are run on screen with real
apparatus or with published data sets. And the skills the papers actually
test — designing a fair test, handling uncertainty, plotting properly,
spotting the systematic error — are taught deliberately rather than
absorbed by accident, which is more than most school laboratories manage.
Do you teach to the examination?
Past papers, mark schemes and examiner reports are used properly rather than
endlessly, and the marks look after themselves.
Consider what the boards themselves do: they hand the student the equations
in the examination room. That tells you what is actually being assessed. Not
whether a student remembers the formula, but whether they can work out which
situation they are in. That is what is taught here, and it happens to be the
thing that raises the grade.
What does our family receive after each class?
A recording of the session, and a written note on progress. Each term ends
in something measured, written up or designed, and reviewed together, line
by line. The written record is the point: it is what lets you watch the
reasoning improve rather than take my word for it.
How does a family begin?
With a seventy-five minute assessment: forty-five minutes with your child
working real problems, and thirty with you.
Within forty-eight hours you receive a written assessment of your
child’s reasoning: what they understand, what they only appear to
understand, and what I would do about it. Yours to keep, whatever you
decide.
How every family begins
Begin with an assessment.
Seventy-five minutes: forty-five with your child, working real problems, and
thirty with you. Within forty-eight hours you receive a written assessment of
your child’s reasoning: what they understand, what they only appear to
understand, and what I would do about it. Yours to keep, whatever you decide.
