The course covers almost exactly the topics recommended in the National Science Education Standards and the Project 2061 Benchmarks. The text is intended for a full-year course, but the first half begins with a discussion of topics from 20th century physics before turning to Newtonian mechanics, and is thus suitable for use in a single term. An instructor guide and a student laboratory manual complement the text.

A thorough grounding in contemporary physics while placing the subject into its social and historical context. Based largely on the highly respected Project Physics Course developed by two of the authors, it also integrates the results of recent pedagogical research. The text thus teaches the basic phenomena in the physical world and the concepts developed to explain them; shows that science is a rational human endeavour with a long and continuing tradition, involving many different cultures and people; develops facility in critical thinking, reasoned argumentation, evaluation of evidence, mathematical modelling, and ethical values. The treatment emphasises not only what we know but also how we know it, why we believe it, and what effects this knowledge has.

Part I. 1 Motion Matters. 2 Moving the Earth. 3 Understanding Motion. 4 Newton's Unified Theory. 5 Conserving Matter and Motion. 6 The Dynamics of Heat. 7 Heat--A Matter of Motion. 8 Wave Motion. 9 Einstein and Relativity. Part II. The New Physics 10 Electricity and Magnetism. 11 The Electric Age. 12 Electromagnetic Waves. 13 Probing the Atom. 14 The Quantum Model of the Atom. 15 Quantum Mechanics. 16 Solids Matter. 17 Probing the Nucleus. 18 The Nucleus and its Applications