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NGSS High School Physics

Partially released · 53%
A conceptual high-school physics course organized around NGSS physical science performance expectations. It is currently ~53% published, with the rest planned for release throughout summer 2026. The course emphasizes phenomenon-based reasoning: students build models, analyze evidence, explain forces and interactions, track energy through systems, and connect waves and electromagnetic radiation to information technologies. Use this path when the goal is NGSS-aligned physics understanding without turning the course into a traditional algebra-heavy mechanics sequence.
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Aligned to NGSS high-school physical science physics strands: forces and interactions, energy, waves and electromagnetic radiation, plus science and engineering practices.

NGSS alignment: Coverage follows NGSS HS-PS2, HS-PS3, HS-PS4, relevant disciplinary core ideas, and science and engineering practices.
NGSS HS Physical Science: Official high-school physical science topic framework.

NGSS Physics Learning Outcomes

NGSS HS-PS2

Forces and Interactions

Students explain motion and interactions by defining systems, analyzing forces, and using evidence from data and models.

Newtonian forces

  • Analyze data that supports Newton's second law relationship between net force, mass, and acceleration.
  • Draw and revise force models that identify systems, interaction pairs, and the forces acting on an object.
  • Use mathematical and graphical evidence at a conceptual high-school level rather than relying on advanced algebra.

Momentum and collisions

  • Use conservation of momentum when the net external force on a system is zero.
  • Explain collisions by comparing force, time, impulse, and momentum change.
  • Evaluate design choices for reducing collision forces, such as increasing stopping time or spreading out energy transfer.

Fields and electromagnetic interactions

  • Compare gravitational, electric, and magnetic interactions as forces that can act across distance.
  • Use models to predict how changing distance or object properties changes interaction strength.
  • Connect electric currents to magnetic fields and changing magnetic fields to induced currents.
NGSS HS-PS3

Energy

Students track energy in systems, explain transfer and conservation, and analyze examples of devices that transform energy.

Energy in systems

  • Model energy as motion energy, stored energy from relative position, thermal energy, and energy crossing system boundaries.
  • Use diagrams, graphs, and computational models to represent where energy is stored and where it moves.
  • Explain how fields can store energy and transfer energy when objects interact.

Conservation and transfer

  • Use conservation ideas to explain why energy totals stay consistent while forms and locations change.
  • Analyze thermal transfer as a process that moves systems toward more uniform energy distribution.
  • Connect work, heating, and radiation to energy flow across system boundaries.
  • Analyze simple energy-conversion examples, such as a solar panel or a heat pump, without requiring a full design project.
NGSS HS-PS4

Waves and Electromagnetic Radiation

Students use wave models to explain radiation, information transfer, and interactions between waves and matter.

Wave properties

  • Use wavelength, frequency, period, amplitude, and wave speed relationships to describe wave behavior.
  • Represent waves with graphs, diagrams, and mathematical relationships.
  • Use models to explain interference, diffraction, resonance, absorption, and other wave-matter interactions at an appropriate conceptual level.

Electromagnetic radiation and matter

  • Evaluate when electromagnetic radiation is best modeled as a wave and when particle-like models are useful.
  • Explain how different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation interact differently with matter.
  • Use evidence to evaluate claims about radiation, materials, and safety.

Information transfer technologies

  • Explain how wave behavior supports communication, imaging, and sensing technologies.
  • Compare advantages and tradeoffs of digital transmission and storage.
  • Communicate technical information about how devices use wave behavior to transmit, capture, or encode information.

Related courses

Easier versions
Conceptual Physics
General conceptual physics with fewer standards constraints.
Harder versions
High School Physics (TEKS)
More algebra-based high-school physics.
AP Physics 1
AP algebra-based mechanics.
Physics I (algebra-based)
College-style algebra-based mechanics.
Similar courses
Conceptual Physics
Similar low-math physics coverage.
What's next
AP Physics 1
AP mechanics after conceptual foundations.
Physics I (algebra-based)
College mechanics after conceptual foundations.

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