Daniel Funch Wohns

Many people find Physics to be a difficult subject to approach. Well now, you have some tools to help you along the way. This handy list of physics equations organized by topic contains the most common equations you’ll run across:

The Carnot Cycle is an important concept in physics. No heat engine is 100 percent efficient. The amount of work you get out of a heat engine is always less than the heat that goes into the engine. The second law of thermodynamics says that the most efficient possible heat engine can’t convert all the input heat into work.

In physics, the potential energy of an object depends on its position. A boulder has more potential energy when it’s at the top of a hill than when it’s rolling down. In your physics class, you may be asked to interpret or draw an energy diagram. An energy diagram shows how the potential energy of an object depends on position and tells you all kinds of things about the motion of the object.

When you’re solving a physics problem with a bunch of forces pointing every which way, the easiest way to keep everything straight is to draw a free-body diagram. A free-body diagram is a diagram that depicts the directions and types of forces acting on an object. A Mona Lisa isn’t required — if you want to find the forces acting on a cow standing on the side of a hill, feel free to represent the cow as a square (you can add some spots to your square cow if you’re feeling particularly artistic).

Physicists love to go out and measure properties of the world around us. If you are hoping to get a better grasp on physics, these properties are useful information. Here are some of the most useful physical constants: Gravitational constant: Avogadro’s number: Boltzmann’s constant: Gas constant: Stef

Through the centuries, physics has had thousands of heroes — people who furthered the field in some way or another. In this chapter, you take a look at ten physics heroes who’ve done their bits to make physics what it is today. And just because age has its privileges, these are arranged in chronological order by birth date.