Online tutoring for Grade 11 and 12 Physics (SPH3U, SPH4U)

Who this is for

• Grade 11 students in SPH3U this semester
• Grade 12 students in SPH4U who want each unit to make sense before the test
• Students who finished SPH3U and want grade 12 physics covered before September
• Students aiming at engineering or physical-science programs, which commonly require SPH4U

From SPH3U to SPH4U

Grade 12 physics expects grade 11 kinematics and Newton's laws to be automatic, then adds a second dimension, circular motion and fields on top of them.

When SPH4U goes wrong early, the cause is usually a grade 11 gap. The first lessons test that groundwork with problems and repair it before the new units lean on it.

Where students get stuck in Physics

• Resolving vectors in projectile motion

  Splitting a launch velocity into horizontal and vertical parts, and keeping the two motions separate while sharing one time, is where most projectile marks go.

• Free-body diagrams with friction and inclines

  A missing normal force or a friction arrow pointing the wrong way makes every later line wrong, even when the algebra is perfect.

• What supplies the centripetal force

  Students add an extra centripetal force to the diagram instead of asking which real force, tension, gravity, friction or the normal force, points to the centre.

• Momentum in two-dimensional collisions

  Conserving momentum separately along each axis, then recombining the components, takes careful bookkeeping that a one-dimensional habit does not prepare for.

• Field and potential calculations

  Field is a vector and potential is a scalar. Mixing them up, or dropping the sign of a charge, costs marks across the gravitational and electric units.

• Interference and diffraction patterns of light

  Choosing the right path-difference condition for bright and dark fringes, and which formula fits slits, gratings or thin films, is easy to blur under test time.