United States · College BoardSyllabus
Physics 2 syllabus, dot point by dot point
Every dot point in the United States Physics 2syllabus, with a focused answer for each one. Click any dot point for a worked explainer, past exam questions, and links to related dot points. Written by Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic's latest AI.
Unit 10: Electric Force, Field, and Potential
Module overview →- How does a capacitor store charge and energy, and what sets its capacitance?Topic 10.6 Capacitors: relate charge, voltage and capacitance, find the capacitance of a parallel-plate capacitor, and calculate the energy stored.11 min answer →
- How do objects become charged, and why is charge never created or destroyed?Topic 10.2 Conservation of Charge and the Process of Charging: apply conservation of charge to charging by friction, conduction and induction.10 min answer →
- How does energy conservation link the voltage a charge crosses to the kinetic energy it gains?Topic 10.7 Conservation of Electric Energy: apply conservation of energy to charges moving through potential differences, relating qV to kinetic energy.10 min answer →
- What is electric charge, and how strong is the force between two charged objects?Topic 10.1 Electric Charge and Coulomb's Law: describe electric charge and apply Coulomb's law to the force between point charges.11 min answer →
- What is an electric field, and how does it tell a charge which way to move?Topic 10.3 Electric Fields: define the electric field, calculate the field of a point charge, and represent fields with field lines and superposition.12 min answer →
- What is voltage, and how is it related to the electric field and to energy per charge?Topic 10.5 Electric Potential and its Relation to the Electric Field: define electric potential, relate potential difference to field and to potential energy, and use equipotentials.12 min answer →
- How much energy is stored when charges are pushed together or pulled apart?Topic 10.4 Electric Potential Energy: calculate the electric potential energy of a system of point charges and relate it to work done.11 min answer →
Unit 11: Electric Circuits
Module overview →- How do capacitors combine in circuits, and how does an RC circuit charge and discharge over time?Topic 11.8 Capacitors in Circuits and RC Circuits: combine capacitors in series and parallel and describe charging and discharging through a resistor.12 min answer →
- What is electric current, and how does charge actually flow through a wire?Topic 11.1 Electric Current: define electric current as the rate of charge flow and relate it to drift of charge carriers.10 min answer →
- How fast does a circuit deliver and dissipate energy, and what sets a device's power?Topic 11.4 Electric Power: calculate the power delivered or dissipated in a circuit using P = IV, P = I squared R and P = V squared over R.10 min answer →
- Why must all the current arriving at a junction equal all the current leaving it?Topic 11.7 Kirchhoff's Junction Rule: apply conservation of charge to the currents at a junction in a circuit.10 min answer →
- Why must the voltage changes around any closed loop in a circuit add to zero?Topic 11.6 Kirchhoff's Loop Rule: apply conservation of energy to the voltage changes around any closed loop of a circuit.11 min answer →
- What determines a conductor's resistance, and when does current grow in step with voltage?Topic 11.3 Resistance, Resistivity, and Ohm's Law: apply Ohm's law and relate resistance to resistivity, length and cross-sectional area.11 min answer →
- How do resistors combine in series and parallel, and how does that change the current and voltage?Topic 11.5 Resistors in Series and Parallel: find the equivalent resistance of series and parallel combinations and the resulting currents and voltages.12 min answer →
- What makes a circuit complete, and what does a battery actually supply to drive a current?Topic 11.2 Simple Circuits: interpret circuit schematics and explain the role of emf, the complete circuit and the conventions for open and short circuits.11 min answer →
Unit 12: Magnetism and Electromagnetic Induction
Module overview →- How does a changing magnetic field create a voltage, and which way does the induced current flow?Topic 12.4 Electromagnetic Induction and Faraday's Law: apply Faraday's law and Lenz's law to find the emf and current induced by a changing magnetic flux.12 min answer →
- What is a magnetic field, and why do magnetic field lines always form closed loops?Topic 12.1 Magnetic Fields: describe magnetic fields, their sources, the dipole nature of magnets, and the representation of fields with field lines.10 min answer →
- How does a current create a magnetic field, and what force does a field exert on a current?Topic 12.3 Magnetism and Current-Carrying Wires: relate currents to the magnetic fields they create and the forces they experience in a field.12 min answer →
- What force does a magnetic field exert on a moving charge, and why does it make charges move in circles?Topic 12.2 Magnetism and Moving Charges: calculate the magnetic force on a moving charge and describe the resulting circular motion.12 min answer →
Unit 13: Geometric Optics
Module overview →- How do converging and diverging lenses form images, and what does the thin-lens equation predict?Topic 13.4 Images Formed by Lenses: apply the thin-lens equation and magnification to images from converging and diverging lenses.12 min answer →
- How do curved mirrors form images, and what does the mirror equation predict?Topic 13.2 Images Formed by Mirrors: apply the mirror equation and magnification to images from concave and convex mirrors.12 min answer →
- How does light reflect off a surface, and why does a mirror produce an image?Topic 13.1 Reflection: apply the law of reflection and the ray model of light to plane surfaces.10 min answer →
- Why does light bend when it enters a new medium, and when does it reflect entirely?Topic 13.3 Refraction: apply Snell's law and the index of refraction, and find the critical angle for total internal reflection.12 min answer →
Unit 14: Waves, Sound, and Physical Optics
Module overview →- What happens when a wave meets a boundary, and what does polarization reveal about light?Topic 14.3 Boundary Behavior of Waves and Polarization: describe reflection and transmission of waves at boundaries and the polarization of transverse waves.10 min answer →
- How does light's wave nature produce bright and dark fringes through slits and thin films?Topic 14.7 Diffraction and Interference of Light: apply double-slit interference, diffraction gratings and thin-film interference using path difference.12 min answer →
- What is an electromagnetic wave, and how is the spectrum organized?Topic 14.4 Electromagnetic Waves: describe electromagnetic waves, their speed in vacuum, and the electromagnetic spectrum.10 min answer →
- What happens when two waves overlap, and how do standing waves form on a string?Topic 14.6 Wave Interference and Standing Waves: apply superposition to interference and find the harmonics of standing waves.11 min answer →
- What is a wave, and how do its speed, frequency and wavelength relate?Topic 14.1 Properties of Wave Pulses and Periodic Waves: describe transverse and longitudinal waves and apply v = f lambda to periodic waves.11 min answer →
- Why does a siren's pitch rise as it approaches and fall as it recedes?Topic 14.5 The Doppler Effect: explain the shift in observed frequency when a wave source and observer move relative to each other.10 min answer →
Unit 15: Modern Physics
Module overview →- Why does a hot object glow, and why does its color shift from red to white as it heats up?Topic 15.4 Blackbody Radiation: describe the thermal radiation spectrum of a hot object and how its peak shifts with temperature.10 min answer →
- How do unstable nuclei decay, and where does the huge energy of fission and fusion come from?Topic 15.7 Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity: describe alpha, beta and gamma decay, half-life, and the energy of fission and fusion through mass-energy equivalence.12 min answer →
- How can light behave as both a wave and a stream of particles?Topic 15.1 Quantum Theory and Wave-Particle Duality: relate photon energy to frequency and describe the wave-particle duality of light and matter.11 min answer →
- Why do atoms emit and absorb light at only specific wavelengths?Topic 15.2 The Bohr Model and Atomic Spectra: relate quantised energy levels to the emission and absorption spectra of atoms.11 min answer →
- What experiments prove that light delivers its energy and momentum as particles?Topic 15.5 The Photoelectric Effect and Compton Scattering: apply the photoelectric equation and describe Compton scattering as evidence of the photon.12 min answer →
Unit 9: Thermodynamics
Module overview →- Why does heat flow only from hot to cold, and what does entropy say about the direction of natural processes?Topic 9.6 Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: relate entropy to disorder and apply the second law to the direction of energy transfer.10 min answer →
- How does energy conservation apply to a gas, and how do you read the work done from a PV diagram?Topic 9.4 First Law of Thermodynamics and PV Diagrams: apply the first law to track internal energy, heat and work, and read work as the area on a PV diagram.12 min answer →
- How does the random motion of countless atoms produce the measurable pressure and temperature of a gas?Topic 9.1 Kinetic Theory of Gases: relate the pressure and temperature of an ideal gas to the average kinetic energy and motion of its atoms.11 min answer →
- Why do different materials need different amounts of energy to heat up, and how fast does heat conduct through a slab?Topic 9.5 Specific Heat and Thermal Conductivity: apply Q = mc(delta T) for heating and the conduction rate equation for steady heat flow.11 min answer →
- How are the pressure, volume, temperature and amount of a gas tied together in a single law?Topic 9.3 The Ideal Gas Law: apply PV = nRT (and PV = N k_B T) to relate the state variables of an ideal gas.11 min answer →
- What does temperature really measure, and why does heat always flow from hot to cold until equilibrium?Topic 9.2 Thermal Equilibrium and Temperature: define temperature through average kinetic energy and explain heat transfer and thermal equilibrium between systems in contact.10 min answer →