Welcome to Physics!

Your Course

in a Nutshell

Hello physics students! My name is Kelly Hicks and I am very excited to be your physics teacher for the 2024-25 school year. This is my first year at St. Andrew’s. Prior to moving to St. Andrew’s, I taught at Germantown High School for 13 years. Before that, I was a mechanical engineer primarily working in the aerospace field.

As a physics student, you will study the laws that govern our physical world while considering matter, motion and energy. Through physics we learn more about the world around us and hopefully come to understand that there are specific principles that help explain the behavior of objects when forces are applied and also the nature of gravitational, electromagnetic and nuclear force fields.

Remember that all of your grades for assignments, quizzes, tests, etc. can be found in MySA. This website is just for you to access content for the course.

Your Course Content by Unit

Unit 1

Newton’s Laws of Motion

Introduction to Physics

Newton’s First Law

Newton’s Second Law

Newton’s Third Law

Unit 2

Kinematics

Kinematics is all about learning

  • how objects move

  • how quickly objects move

  • which direction objects move.

Unit 3

Projectile Motion

We will learn:

  • apply kinematic formulas to solve two dimensional motion problems

  • use trigonometry to find horizontal and vertical components of velocity

  • solve projectile motion problems

Unit 4

Dynamics with Friction and Tension

In this unit we welcome back Isaac Newton to our physics classroom. We will learn more about forces and learn about specific types of forces such as friction and tension. Newton’s Laws of Motion will introduce new methods for investigating real-life situations by considering the external forces acting on an object.

Unit 5

Work and Energy

This unit focuses on the ideas of work and energy. We will learn what physicists mean by “work.” and how work changes the energy of an object though the Work-Energy Theorem we will use the Law of Conservation of Energy to show how energy is always conserved in a system but can change forms.

Unit 6