Virginia State Standards for Science: Grade 12
VA.PH.1. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how to plan and conduct investigations in which a) the components of a system are defined; b) instruments are selected and used to extend observations and measurements of mass, volume, temperature, heat exchange, energy transformations, motion, fields, and electric charge; c) information is recorded and presented in an organized format; d) metric units are used in all measurements and calculations; e) the limitations of the experimental apparatus and design are recognized; f) the limitations of measured quantities through the appropriate use of significant figures or error ranges are recognized; g) data gathered from non-SI instruments are incorporated through appropriate conversions; and h) appropriate technology, including computers, graphing calculators, and probeware is used for gathering and analyzing data and communicating results.
PH.1.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that appropriate instruments are used to measure displacement, time, mass, volume, temperature, heat exchange, energy transformations, motion, fields, and electric charge.
PH.1.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that no measurement is complete without a statement about its exactness.
PH.1.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that experimental records, including experimental diagrams, data, and procedures, are kept concurrently with experimentation.
PH.1.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that tables and graphs are used to interpret, organize, and clarify experimental observations, possible explanations, and models for phenomena being observed.
PH.1.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the average for a set of data is a valid way to estimate the true value of the set.
PH.1.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the spread in a set of data is an indication of the error in the measurement: a large spread indicates a large error, and a small spread indicates a small error.
PH.1.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the difference between the accepted value and the measured value is the uncertainty or error.
PH.1.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to determine percent error from experimental and theoretical values.
PH.1.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to measure displacement, time, mass, volume, temperature, heat exchange, energy transformations, motion, and electric charge.
PH.1.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to follow safe practices in all laboratory procedures.
PH.1.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the measurements are always recorded with appropriate SI units.
PH.1.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the calculations are made using appropriate SI units.
PH.1.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the results of calculations or analyses of data are reported in appropriate numbers of significant digits.
PH.1.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the data are organized into tables and graphed when involving dependent and independent variables.
PH.1.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to calculate average values, and compare to theoretical values.
VA.PH.2. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how to analyze and interpret data. Key concepts include a) a description of a physical problem is translated into a mathematical statement in order to find a solution; b) relationships between physical quantities are determined using the shape of a curve passing through experimentally obtained data; c) the slope of a linear relationship is calculated and includes appropriate units; d) interpolated, extrapolated, and analyzed trends are used to make predictions; and e) analysis of systems employs vector quantities utilizing trigonometric and graphical methods.
PH.2.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that mathematics is a tool used to explain and describe phenomena.
PH.2.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that dimensional analysis is the verification of the appropriateness of the units. (This can be used as a consistency check in calculations as well as in experiments.)
PH.2.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that graphing is used to reveal relationships and other important features of data.
PH.2.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that predictions are made from trends based on the data.
PH.2.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that all experimental data do not follow a linear relationship.
PH.2.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that not all quantities add algebraically. Some must be combined using trigonometry. These quantities are known as vectors.
PH.2.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the shape of the curve passing through experimentally obtained data is used to determine the relationship of the plotted quantities.
PH.2.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a physical phenomena or events can often be described in mathematical terms (as an equation or inequality).
PH.2.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to recognize linear and nonlinear relationships from graphed data.
PH.2.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to draw the appropriate straight line through a set of experimental data points and determine the slope, using appropriate SI units.
PH.2.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to use dimensional analysis to solve problems.
PH.2.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to combine vectors and resolve vectors into components, using graphical methods that place scaled vectors head-to-tail.
PH.2.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to sketch a vector diagram, and trigonometrically solve for the components.
PH.2.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to sketch the components of a vector, and trigonometrically solve for the resultant.
VA.PH.3. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how to demonstrate scientific reasoning and logic. Key concepts include a) analysis of scientific sources to develop and refine research hypotheses; b) analysis of how science explains and predicts relationships; c) evaluation of evidence for scientific theories; d) examination of how new discoveries result in modification of existing theories or establishment of new paradigms; and e) construction and defense of a scientific viewpoint (the nature of science).
PH.3.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that experimentation may support a hypothesis, falsify it, or lead to new discoveries.
PH.3.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the hypothesis may be modified based upon data and analysis.
PH.3.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that a careful study of prior reported research is a basis for the formation of a research hypothesis.
PH.3.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that a theory is a comprehensive and effective explanation, which is well supported by experimentation and observation, of a set of phenomena..
PH.3.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that science is a human endeavor relying on human qualities, such as reasoning, insight, energy, skill, and creativity as well as intellectual honesty, tolerance of ambiguity, skepticism, and openness to new ideas.
PH.3.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that relativity and quantum mechanics are recent examples of paradigm shifts in theoretical physics.
PH.3.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the change from an earth-centered to a sun-centered model of the solar system is an example of a paradigm shift.
PH.3.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to Identify and explain the interaction between human nature and the scientific process.
VA.PH.4. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how applications of physics affect the world. Key concepts include a) examples from the real world; and b) exploration of the roles and contributions of science and technology.
PH.4.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that physics discoveries, both theoretical and experimental, result in advancements in communication, medicine, transportation, commerce, exploration, and technology.
PH.4.2. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that journals, books, the Internet, and other sources are used in order to identify key contributors and their contributions to physics as well as their impact on the real world.
VA.PH.5. Physics: The student will investigate and understand the interrelationships among mass, distance, force, and time through mathematical and experimental processes. Key concepts include a) linear motion; b) uniform circular motion; c) projectile motion; d) Newton's laws of motion; e) gravitation; f) planetary motion; and g) work, power, and energy.
PH.5.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that linear motion graphs include: displacement (d) vs. time (t); velocity (v) vs. time (t); acceleration (a) vs. time (t)
PH.5.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that position, displacement, velocity, and acceleration are vector quantities.
PH.5.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the concept of motion is described in terms of position, displacement, velocity, acceleration, and their dependence on time.
PH.5.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that graphical analysis is used as a representation of motion.
PH.5.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that horizontal and vertical components of the motion of a projectile are independent of one another.
PH.5.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that in a uniform vertical gravitational field with negligible air resistance, a projectile moves with constant horizontal velocity and constant vertical acceleration.
PH.5.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that an object moving uniformly along a circle moves with a constant speed and with acceleration directed toward the center of the circle.
PH.5.8. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that centripetal force is a 'true' force acting on a body in circular motion while centrifugal force is a 'false' force that describes the feeling experienced in centripetal acceleration.
PH.5.9. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that Newton's three laws of motion are the basis for understanding the mechanical universe.
PH.5.10. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation describes the force that determines the motion of celestial objects.
PH.5.11. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the total force on a body can be represented as a vector sum of constituent forces.
PH.5.12. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that energy is the capacity to do work. Work and energy are expressed in the same units, but are not identical.
PH.5.13. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that when work is done, energy converts from one form to another and energy is conserved.
PH.5.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that velocity is the change in distance divided by the change in time.
PH.5.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a straight-line, position-time graph indicates constant velocity.
PH.5.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a straight-line, velocity-time graph indicates constant acceleration.
PH.5.17. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a horizontal-line, velocity-time graph indicates zero acceleration.
PH.5.18. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the slope of a distance-time graph is the velocity.
PH.5.19. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the slope of a velocity-time graph is the acceleration.
PH.5.20. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that acceleration is the change in velocity divided by the change in time.
PH.5.21. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to construct and analyze displacement (d) vs. time (t), velocity (v) vs. time (t), and acceleration (a) vs. time (t) graphs.
PH.5.22. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems involving displacement, velocity, acceleration, and time in one and two dimensions (only constant acceleration).
PH.5.23. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to resolve vector diagrams involving distance and velocity.
PH.5.24. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to draw vector diagrams of a projectile's motion. Find range, trajectory, height of the projectile, and time of flight (uniform field, no air resistance).
PH.5.25. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to distinguish between centripetal and centrifugal force.
PH.5.26. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that an object with no force acting on it moves with constant velocity.
PH.5.27. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the acceleration of a body is directly proportional to the net force on it and inversely proportional to its mass.
PH.5.28. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that when one object exerts a force on a second object, the second exerts a force on the first that is equal in magnitude but opposite in direction.
PH.5.29. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that weight is the gravitational force acting on a body.
PH.5.30. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Fw = mg.
PH.5.31. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that friction is a force that acts in a direction opposite the velocity.
PH.5.32. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that for small angles of oscillation, a pendulum exhibits simple harmonic motion.
PH.5.33. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation can be used to determine the force between objects separated by a known distance, and the distance between objects with a known gravitational attraction.
PH.5.34. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to qualitatively explain motion in terms of Newton's Laws.
PH.5.35. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems involving force (F), mass (m), and acceleration (a).
PH.5.36. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems related to free-falling objects, including 2-D motion.
PH.5.37. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems using Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation
PH.5.38. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems using the coefficient of friction.
PH.5.39. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems involving multiple forces, using free-body diagrams.
PH.5.40. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that work is the product of the force exerted on an object and the distance the object moves in the direction of the force.
PH.5.41. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that power is the rate of doing work.
PH.5.42. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that work and energy are measured in Joules, which is a derived unit equal to a Nm or kgm to the power of 2/s to the power of 2.
PH.5.43. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that power is measured in Watts, which is a derived unit equal to a J/s.
PH.5.44. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems involving work, power, and energy.
VA.PH.6. Physics: The student will investigate and understand that quantities including mass, energy, momentum, and charge are conserved. Key concepts include a) kinetic and potential energy; b) elastic and inelastic collisions; and c) electric power.
PH.6.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that kinetic energy is energy of motion.
PH.6.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that potential energy is energy due to an object's position or state.
PH.6.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that for elastic collisions, total momentum and total kinetic energy are conserved.
PH.6.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that for inelastic collisions, total momentum is conserved and some kinetic energy is transformed to other forms of energy, such as heat.
PH.6.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that quantities such as energy and momentum are conserved when they are exchanged or transformed, and their total quantity remains the same.
PH.6.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that electrical charge moves through electrical circuits and is conserved.
PH.6.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to calculate potential and kinetic energy from theoretical and experimental situations.
PH.6.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to model conservation of energy and momentum, using elastic and inelastic collisions.
PH.6.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that electric power (watt) is change in electrical energy divided by corresponding change in time.
PH.6.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that current (ampere) is the amount of charge that moves through a circuit element divided by the elapsed time.
PH.6.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that electric potential difference (voltage) is change in electric potential energy per unit charge.
PH.6.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that in any system of electrical charge, electrical movement, or electrical interaction, both charge and energy are conserved.
VA.PH.7. Physics: The student will investigate and understand properties of fluids. Key concepts include a) density and pressure; b) variation of pressure with depth; c) Archimedes' principle of buoyancy; d) Pascal's principle; e) fluids in motion; and f) Bernoulli's principle.
PH.7.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that density of solids and liquids is measured using the same units.
PH.7.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the pressure of a fluid depends on the depth of the fluid and not on the shape or size of the container.
PH.7.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that in a moving fluid, internal pressure and speed are inversely related.
PH.7.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that floating objects displace a volume of fluid that has a weight equal to the floating object.
PH.7.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that submerged objects displace a volume of fluid equal to the volume of the submerged object.
PH.7.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the buoyant force on an object is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by that object.
PH.7.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to determine if a given object will float or sink in water, given its mass and volume or dimensions.
PH.7.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to explain phenomenon applying the appropriate principle: the flight of a curve ball; the flight of a golf ball; the factors that allow airplanes to fly; the fact that humans sink in water as they exhale.
VA.PH.8. Physics: The student will investigate and understand that energy can be transferred and transformed to provide usable work. Key concepts include a) transformation of energy among forms, including mechanical, thermal, electrical, gravitational, chemical, and nuclear; and b) efficiency of systems.
PH.8.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that energy can be transformed from one form to another. (Example: Falling water turns a turbine that generates electricity and produces heat and light in a classroom.)
PH.8.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that efficiency of a machine is the ratio of output work to input work.
PH.8.3. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to illustrate that energy can be transformed from one form to another, using examples from everyday life and technology.
PH.8.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to calculate efficiency by identifying the useful energy in a process.
PH.8.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to qualitatively identify the various forms of energy transformations in simple demonstrations.
VA.PH.9. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how to use models of transverse and longitudinal waves to interpret wave phenomena. Key concepts include a) wave characteristics (period, wavelength, frequency, amplitude and phase); b) fundamental wave processes (reflection, refraction, diffraction, interference, polarization, Doppler effect); and c) light and sound in terms of wave models.
PH.9.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that mechanical waves transport energy as a traveling disturbance in a medium.
PH.9.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that in a transverse wave, particles of the medium move in a direction perpendicular to the direction the wave travels.
PH.9.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that in a longitudinal wave, particles of the medium move in a direction parallel to the direction the wave travels.
PH.9.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that for harmonic waves, velocity equals the product of the frequency and the wavelength.
PH.9.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that frequency and period are reciprocals of each other.
PH.9.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that waves are reflected and refracted when they encounter a change in medium or a boundary.
PH.9.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the overlapping of two or more waves results in constructive or destructive interference.
PH.9.8. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that polarizing filters can transmit one direction of polarized light and block the other.
PH.9.9. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that when source and observer are in relative motion, a shift in frequency occurs (Doppler effect).
PH.9.10. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that sound is a longitudinal wave that travels through matter.
PH.9.11. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that light is an electromagnetic wave (transverse) that can travel through matter as well as a vacuum.
PH.9.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that period, wavelength, and frequency are measured in seconds, meters, and Hertz.
PH.9.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to identify examples of longitudinal and transverse waves.
PH.9.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to differentiate between transverse and longitudinal waves, using simple models (slinky, stadium waves).
PH.9.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to illustrate period, wavelength, and amplitude on a graphic representation of a harmonic wave.
PH.9.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve problems involving frequency, period, wavelength, and velocity.
PH.9.17. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to distinguish between waves that are in-phase and those that are out-of-phase.
PH.9.18. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that reflection is the change of direction of the wave in the original medium.
PH.9.19. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that refraction is the change of direction (bending) of the wave in the new medium.
PH.9.20. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that diffraction is the spreading of a wave around a barrier or an aperture.
PH.9.21. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the pitch of a note is determined by the frequency of the sound wave.
PH.9.22. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the color of light is determined by the frequency of the light wave.
PH.9.23. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that, as the amplitude of a sound wave increases, the loudness of the sound increases.
PH.9.24. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that , as the amplitude of a light wave increases, the brightness of the light increases.
PH.9.25. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to graphically illustrate reflection and refraction of a wave when it encounters a change in medium or a boundary.
PH.9.26. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to graphically illustrate constructive and destructive interference.
PH.9.27. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to identify a standing wave, using a string.
VA.PH.10. Physics: The student will investigate and understand that different frequencies and wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum are phenomena ranging from radio waves through visible light to gamma radiation. Key concepts include a) the properties and behaviors of radio, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays; and b) current applications based on the wave properties of each band.
PH.10.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that frequency, wavelength, and energy vary across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
PH.10.2. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the long wavelength, low frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is used for communication (e.g., radio, TV, cellular phone).
PH.10.3. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that medium wavelengths (infrared) are used for heating and night-vision-enhancing devices.
PH.10.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that visible light comprises a very narrow portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
PH.10.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that ultraviolet wavelengths (shorter than the visible spectrum) are responsible for sunburn.
PH.10.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that x-rays and gamma rays are the highest frequency and shortest wavelength and are used primarily for medical purposes.
VA.PH.11. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how light behaves in the fundamental processes of reflection, refraction, and image formation in describing optical systems. Key concepts include a) application of the laws of reflection and refraction; b) construction and interpretation of ray diagrams; c) development and use of mirror and lens equations; and d) predictions of type, size, and position of real and virtual images.
PH.11.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the ray model of light can be used to understand the behavior of optical systems.
PH.11.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that light incident on a smooth plane surface is reflected such that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.
PH.11.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that light incident on a smooth surface is refracted (transmitted) in such a manner that the ratio of the sine of the angle of incidence and the sine of the angle of refraction equals a constant.
PH.11.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the mirror and thin lens equation can be used to calculate the position of the object or image based on the focal length of the mirror or lens.
PH.11.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that for a converging lens, the focal point is the point at which a beam of light parallel to the principal axis converges.
PH.11.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that for a diverging lens, the focal point is the point from which a beam of light parallel to the principal axis appears to originate.
PH.11.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a real image is formed by converging lights rays and can be displayed on a screen.
PH.11.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that a virtual image can be seen by an observer but cannot be projected on a screen because the light does not actually emanate from the image.
PH.11.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the focal point is the point at which rays converge or from which they appear to diverge in a lens or mirror.
PH.11.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the index of refraction is the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light in the medium.
PH.11.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to graphically investigate propagation, refraction, and reflection, using the ray model of light.
PH.11.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to graphically construct ray diagrams to verify the laws of reflection and refraction.
PH.11.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to graphically solve problems dealing with object and image distance, object and image size, and focal length, using the lens and mirror equations.
PH.11.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to graphically illustrate characteristics of real and virtual images, using examples (lens and mirror).
PH.11.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to graphically identify the type (real and virtual) and size of image formed by concave lenses and by convex lenses when the object is located at various locations including inside the focal point, at the focal point, at twice the focal point, and beyond twice the focal point.
VA.PH.12. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how to use the field concept to describe the effects of gravitational, electric, and magnetic forces. Key concepts include a) inverse square laws (Newton's law of universal gravitation and Coulomb's law); and b) operating principles of motors, generators, transformers, and cathode ray tubes.
PH.12.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the force found from Newton's law and Coulomb's law is dependent on the inverse square of the distance between two objects.
PH.12.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the electrostatic force (Coulomb's law) can be either repulsive or attractive, depending on the sign of the charges.
PH.12.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the gravitational force (Newton's law) is always an attractive force.
PH.12.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the interaction of two particles can be described as a two-step process: the creation of a field by one of the particles and the interaction of the field with the second particle.
PH.12.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation states that every particle in the universe attracts every other particle in the universe. F = G (m1m2)/r to the power of 2. (F is the force, G is the universal gravitation constant, m is the mass of the two particles, and r is the distance between them.)
PH.12.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that Coulomb's law states that the magnitude F of the electrostatic force exerted by one point charge on another point charge is directly proportional to the magnitudes of q1 and q2 of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance r between them: F = k (q1q2)/r to the power of 2.
PH.12.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that The rotation of the coil of a motor or a generator through a magnetic field is used to transfer energy.
VA.PH.13. Physics: The student will investigate and understand how to diagram and construct basic electrical circuits and explain the function of various circuit components. Key concepts include a) Ohm's law; b) series, parallel, and combined circuits; and c) circuit components including resistors, batteries, generators, fuses, switches, and capacitors.
PH.13.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that current is the flow of electrical charge.
PH.13.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that voltage in a circuit provides the energy that drives the current.
PH.13.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that elements in a circuit are positioned relative to other elements either in series or parallel.
PH.13.4. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that according to Ohm's law, the resistance equals the voltage divided by the current.
PH.13.5. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that voltage difference is change in electrical potential energy per unit charge.
PH.13.6. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to recognize a series and a parallel circuit.
PH.13.7. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to apply Ohm's law to a series and a parallel circuit.
PH.13.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to assemble simple circuits composed of batteries and resistors in series and in parallel.
PH.13.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students should be able to solve simple circuits using Ohm's law.
VA.PH.14. Physics: The student will investigate and understand that extremely large and extremely small quantities are not necessarily described by the same laws as those studied in Newtonian physics. Key concepts include a) wave/particle duality; b) wave properties of matter; c) matter/energy equivalence; d) quantum mechanics and uncertainty; e) relativity; f) nuclear physics; g) solid state physics; h) superconductivity; and i) radioactivity.
PH.14.1. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that for processes that are important on the atomic scale, objects exhibit both wave characteristics (e.g., interference) as well as particle characteristics (e.g., discrete amounts and a fixed definite number of electrons per atom).
PH.14.2. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the special theory of relativity predicts that energy and matter can be converted into each other.
PH.14.3. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that the motion of objects traveling near or approaching the speed of light does not follow Newtonian mechanics but must be treated within the theory of relativity.
PH.14.4. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that nuclear physics is the study of the interaction of the protons and neutrons in the atom's nucleus.
PH.14.5. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that natural radioactivity is the spontaneous disintegration of unstable nuclei.
PH.14.6. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that atoms and molecules bind together in regular arrays to form crystals. The structure of these crystals is important in determining the properties of these materials (appearance, hardness, etc.).
PH.14.7. Essential Understandings: All students should understand that certain materials at very low temperatures exhibit the property of zero resistance called superconductivity.
PH.14.8. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that electrons rotating around the nucleus of an atom can be treated as standing waves in order to model the atomic spectrum.
PH.14.9. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the dramatic examples of the mass-energy transformation are the fusion of hydrogen in the sun, which provides light and heat for the earth, and the fission process in nuclear reactors that provide electricity.
PH.14.10. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that quantum mechanics requires an inverse relationship between the measurable location and the measurable momentum of a particle. The more accurately one determines the position of a particle, the less accurately the momentum can be known, and vice versa. This is known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
PH.14.11. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that objects cannot travel faster than the speed of light.
PH.14.12. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that the nuclear force binds protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
PH.14.13. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that alpha, beta, and gamma are different emissions associated with radioactive decay.
PH.14.14. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that fission is the breakup of heavier nuclei to lighter nuclei.
PH.14.15. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that fusion is the combination of lighter nuclei to heavier nuclei.
PH.14.16. Essential Knowledge and Skills: Students are expected to know that many substances in the natural world have a crystal structure, including most metals and minerals.
VA.PH. Physics
PH.1. The student will plan and conduct investigations in which
PH.1.b) Instruments are selected and used to extend observations and measurements of mass, volume, temperature, heat exchange, energy transformations, motion, fields, and electric charge;
PH.1.c) Information is recorded and presented in an organized format;
PH.3. The student will investigate and understand how to demonstrate scientific reasoning and logic. Key concepts include
PH.3.d) Examination of how new discoveries result in modification of existing theories or establishment of new paradigms; and
PH.4. The student will investigate and understand how applications of physics affect the world. Key concepts include
PH.4.b) Exploration of the roles and contributions of science and technology.
PH.5. The student will investigate and understand the interrelationships among mass, distance, force, and time through mathematical and experimental processes. Key concepts include
PH.5.a) Linear motion;
PH.5.d) Newton's laws of motion;
PH.5.e) Gravitation;
PH.6. The student will investigate and understand that quantities including mass, energy, momentum, and charge are conserved. Key concepts include
PH.6.a) Kinetic and potential energy;
PH.6.b) Elastic and inelastic collisions; and
PH.9. The student will investigate and understand how to use models of transverse and longitudinal waves to interpret wave phenomena. Key concepts include
PH.9.a) Wave characteristics (period, wavelength, frequency, amplitude, and phase);
PH.9.b) Fundamental wave processes (reflection, refraction, diffraction, interference, polarization, Doppler effect); and
PH.10. The student will investigate and understand that different frequencies and wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum are phenomena ranging from radio waves through visible light to gamma radiation. Key concepts include
PH.10.a) The properties and behaviors of radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays; and
PH.10.b) Current applications based on the wave properties of each band.
PH.11. The student will investigate and understand, in describing optical systems, how light behaves in the fundamental processes of reflection, refraction, and image formation. Key concepts include
PH.11.a) Application of the laws of reflection and refraction;
PH.14. The student will investigate and understand that extremely large and extremely small quantities are not necessarily described by the same laws as those studied in Newtonian physics. Key concepts include
PH.14.b) Wave properties of matter;
PH.14.d) Quantum mechanics and uncertainty;
PH.14.e) Relativity;
PH.14.g) Solid state physics;
PH.14.i) Radioactivity.