The ModernEncyclopedia Est. 2026 · A living curriculum · Regularly updated
PHY-25 · Sciences · Fully written

Learn Physics with any AI

Mechanics to cosmology

Physics is the attempt to describe the fundamental workings of reality in the language of mathematics — from the smallest particles to the whole cosmos. It is the most reductive of the sciences and, at its edges, the strangest.

To learn it is to see how a handful of deep principles account for an astonishing range of the world — and where, honestly, our best theories still contradict each other. Set your level below.

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PHY-25 · Physics
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§02

A map of Physics

From everyday motion to the cosmos

Roughly from the classical to the modern and the very large:

  • Classical mechanics — motion, force and energy; the physics of the everyday world.
  • Electromagnetism — electricity, magnetism and light, unified in four equations.
  • Thermodynamics & statistical mechanics — heat, entropy, and order emerging from chaos.
  • Quantum mechanics — the counterintuitive rules of the very small.
  • Relativity — space, time and gravity, special and general.
  • Particle & nuclear physics — the fundamental constituents and forces.
  • Astrophysics & cosmology — stars, black holes, and the history of the universe.
§03

The canon

The physicists who saw furthest

Real people, real revolutions.

  • Galileo (1564–1642) — turned motion and the heavens into things you measure.
  • Isaac Newton — the Principia (1687): the laws of motion and universal gravitation.
  • Faraday & Maxwell — the field concept, and Maxwell's equations unifying light with electromagnetism.
  • Ludwig Boltzmann — entropy and statistical mechanics.
  • Albert Einstein — special relativity (1905) and general relativity (1915), remaking space and time.
  • The quantum founders — Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac built the theory of the small.
  • Marie Curie — radioactivity, and two Nobel Prizes in two sciences.
  • Richard Feynman — quantum electrodynamics, and the century's greatest physics teacher.
§04

The live debates

The unresolved edges

Physics has genuine open wounds — a good tutor won't paper over them.

  • What does quantum mechanics mean? Copenhagen, many-worlds, pilot-wave: the maths works, the interpretation is genuinely unsettled.
  • The measurement problem. Why does a definite outcome ever appear from a haze of possibilities?
  • Quantum gravity. Relativity and quantum theory are both superb and mutually incompatible; reconciling them is unfinished.
  • Dark matter and dark energy. Most of the universe is stuff we can't identify.
  • Is the universe fine-tuned — and is the multiverse an explanation or a cop-out?
§05

Where to start

A route in

A route in — everything runs from the panel above.

  1. Run Orientation on classical mechanics for firm ground, or on "what quantum mechanics really says" for the deep end.
  2. Use Great Debates on the interpretations of quantum mechanics — it's honestly unresolved.
  3. Work real problems with the Exam engine; physics is learned in the doing.
  4. Read the Feynman Lectures or a good popular book alongside a proper textbook.

Physics rewards intuition and maths — build both together.