What's in College Physics II: the 15 units, in order

College Physics 2 is the second half of the algebra-based sequence: electricity and magnetism, then light, then modern physics. It matches the second semester of a typical first-year physics course (C-ID PHYS 110 in California) and the electricity, magnetism, optics and modern physics parts of AP Physics 2. Encodr's College Physics 2 course is coming soon, and it follows OpenStax College Physics 2e chapters 18 to 34 unit by unit. Here is what each unit covers.

How the course is built

The order is deliberate. Charge and force come first, because every later electricity topic is built on them. Circuits come next, then magnetism, and induction ties the two together. Electromagnetic waves lead into optics, and optics leads into the quantum picture of light, which opens modern physics.

The math stays algebraic throughout. There is no calculus, but there is a lot of rearranging, scientific notation and sign bookkeeping, which is where most points are lost.

Part 1: electricity (units 1 to 4)

1. Electric Charge and Field (OpenStax ch 18)

Charge and its conservation, conductors and insulators, and charging by friction, conduction and induction. Coulomb's law, the electric field and field lines, and why a conductor in equilibrium has no field inside it. Coulomb's law and electric fields, worked examples covers the calculations.

2. Electric Potential and Capacitance (ch 19)

Potential energy and potential difference (voltage), the electron-volt, equipotential surfaces, capacitors and dielectrics, capacitors in series and parallel, and the energy a capacitor stores.

3. Current, Resistance and Ohm's Law (ch 20)

Current, Ohm's law (V = IR), resistivity and how it changes with temperature, electric power, the basics of AC versus DC, and electrical safety and the human body.

4. DC Circuits (ch 21)

Resistors in series and parallel, emf and internal resistance, Kirchhoff's rules, voltmeters and ammeters, RC circuits and the time constant, and bioelectricity (nerve conduction and the ECG). The series and parallel resistor calculator and series vs parallel circuits, explained go with this unit.

Part 2: magnetism and induction (units 5 to 7)

5. Magnetism (ch 22)

Magnets and magnetic fields, the force on a moving charge, the right-hand rules, the force on a current-carrying wire, torque on a current loop (how motors work), the fields that currents produce, and applications such as the mass spectrometer and MRI.

6. Electromagnetic Induction and AC Circuits (ch 23)

Magnetic flux, Faraday's law and Lenz's law, motional emf, generators and back emf, transformers, inductance, RL and RLC basics, and electrical safety.

7. Electromagnetic Waves (ch 24)

Maxwell's equations at a conceptual level, how EM waves are produced, the electromagnetic spectrum, c = f x wavelength, and the energy EM waves carry. It is a short unit, but it is the bridge into optics.

Part 3: optics (units 8 to 10)

8. Geometric Optics (ch 25)

The ray model, the law of reflection, refraction and Snell's law, total internal reflection and fiber optics, dispersion, thin lenses, mirrors, and the lens and mirror equations. The thin lens equation and magnification and the thin lens calculator cover the problem types.

9. Vision and Optical Instruments (ch 26)

The eye as an optical system, correcting nearsightedness and farsightedness, color vision, and how microscopes and telescopes combine lenses.

10. Wave Optics (ch 27)

Huygens's principle, double-slit interference, diffraction gratings, single-slit diffraction, resolution limits, thin-film interference, and polarization.

Part 4: modern physics (units 11 to 15)

11. Special Relativity (ch 28)

Einstein's two postulates, the relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, relativistic momentum and energy, and E = mc^2.

12. Quantum Physics (ch 29)

Quantization of energy, the photoelectric effect, photon energy and momentum, wave-particle duality, the de Broglie wavelength, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

13. Atomic Physics (ch 30)

How the atom and its nucleus were discovered, Bohr's model and line spectra, X-rays, lasers, and quantum numbers with the Pauli exclusion principle.

14. Nuclear Physics and Medical Applications (ch 31 to 32)

Radioactivity, nuclear stability, decay types and balancing decay equations, half-life and activity, binding energy, fusion and fission, medical imaging and radiation therapy, and the biological effects of radiation. Half-life works the same way here as in chemistry; see half-life and first-order kinetics.

15. Particle Physics and Frontiers (ch 33 to 34)

A short closing unit: the four fundamental forces, particles and antiparticles, quarks, the Standard Model, and the basics of cosmology.

Where students lose points

Signs. Charge signs in Coulomb's law, the direction of a field, negative image distances for virtual images. Most wrong answers in this course have the right size and the wrong sign or direction.
Series vs parallel. Adding parallel resistors like series ones (or capacitors the other way round, since their rules are reversed) is the classic circuits mistake.
Unit prefixes. Microcoulombs, nanocoulombs, millimeters, nanometers and electron-volts all show up. Convert to SI before you plug in. The unit converter helps with the awkward ones.
Treating modern physics as reading. Units 11 to 15 feel conceptual, but exams still ask for numbers: photon energies, de Broglie wavelengths, remaining amounts after several half-lives.

How to study it

Physics 2 is cumulative in a way that punishes cramming. Induction needs magnetism, which needs the idea of a field from unit 1. Optics needs the wave equation from unit 7. Short, spaced review of the core relationships through the semester works better than rereading before each exam; what spaced repetition actually does explains why, and how to study for a physics exam covers problem practice. If your final covers the whole book, read studying for a cumulative final vs a unit test.

If you are starting the sequence, what's in College Physics 1 covers the first semester, and first-year science courses: biology, chemistry and physics compares all six courses.

Encodr's free College Physics 2 course is coming soon; meanwhile, the other free courses are on the Encodr decks page.