VJOURNAL SMART BOOK · Volume I · How the world moves
Physics
Eight chapters, each with a live experiment beside the text: motion, falling, forces, pendulums, orbits, waves and light.
Start readingMost physics books show you a picture and ask you to imagine the rest. This one lets you watch it happen. Beside every paragraph there is a small experiment that plays the exact moment the text is describing: a train passing a platform, a hammer and a feather falling on the Moon, a pendulum in Paris turning with the Earth.
Each chapter has five moments. Read a block, press play, and the animation jumps to its moment; scrub back and the moment returns exactly as it was. Under the picture there is a sandbox with sliders, so you can change the speed, the length or the gravity and compare the result with the worked example in the text.
Contents
- 01Motion and speedKinematics: distance, time and speedSpeed tells you how far something goes in one second. If a runner covers 6 metres every second, her speed is 6 metres per second, and on a graph that looks like a straight line.
- 02Free fall and gravityGravity near the surface, from Aristotle to ApolloHeavy and light things fall at the same speed when nothing is in the way. A feather only drifts because air slows it down. On the Moon there is no air, so a feather drops as fast as a hammer.
- 03Newton's three laws of motionForces and motion, 1687Things keep doing what they are doing until a push changes it. A bigger push makes a bigger change, and a heavier thing changes less. And every push has an equal push back.
- 04Projectile motionTwo independent motions, one curveA ball thrown forward still falls down at the same pace as a ball you just drop. Together, the flight forward and the fall make a smooth curve. Throw at about 45 degrees to go farthest.
- 05How planes flyFour forces, one wingA plane stays up because its wings push air down, and the air pushes the wings up. Fly too slowly or tilt the wings too steeply and the lift suddenly fades. Then the nose must go down for the wings to fly again.
- 06The pendulumFrom Galileo's lamp to Foucault's proofA pendulum swings back and forth at a steady pace that depends on its length, not on how heavy it is. That steadiness made the first accurate clocks, and in 1851 a very long pendulum showed that the Earth turns.
- 07Gravity and orbitsFrom the falling apple to satellitesGravity pulls the Moon just as it pulls an apple. A satellite is something thrown so fast sideways that the ground curves away beneath it as it falls, so it never lands.
- 08Waves and soundFrom ocean swell to the earA wave is a moving disturbance. It carries energy from place to place, while the water or air only shakes on the spot. Sound is a wave in the air, and it reaches your ear as tiny pushes in the pressure.
- 09Light, reflection and refractionOptics: light as raysLight travels in straight lines, bounces off mirrors, and bends when it passes from air into water or glass. That bending is why a spoon looks broken and why a prism makes a rainbow.
VITON13 LAB
Keep studying on the LAB table
Open the chapter's experiment, timeline or map on VITON13 LAB, with your notes as a document beside it.
Open VITON13 LABAbout this book
How does the animated physics textbook work?
Every chapter pairs a text with an animated experiment. The text is split into blocks, and each block belongs to one moment of the animation. Scroll to a block or press its play button and the experiment shows that moment. You can pause, scrub the timeline, and use the sandbox under the picture to try your own numbers.
Do I need maths to follow it?
Only arithmetic and, in a few places, a square root. Every formula is explained symbol by symbol, and each one is followed by a worked example with real numbers. If a formula looks scary, read the plain-words sentence first: it says the same thing without symbols.
Who is this physics textbook for?
It is written for readers from about twelve years old: schoolchildren meeting kinematics for the first time, students who want a picture to go with the formulas, and adults who always wondered how it works. Each chapter also has a short version for younger readers.
Are the numbers in the experiments real?
Yes. The experiments use the real formulas, SI units and measured values such as g = 9.81 m/s² on Earth and 1.62 m/s² on the Moon. The sandbox results should match the examples in the text, and every chapter lists the sources behind its facts.