About the IB Physics Compendium

This resource contains a summary of the required theory (plus a few small additions within []-signs here and there) for the Higher Level Physics in the IB. The Biomedical option is still partially under construction, as are some of the files with review problems. All rights to the Compendium are reserved by the author but it is free for anyone to use for non-commercial purposes.

Some advantages of an electronic compendium are:

• it never runs out of print
• the individual teacher can edit it before printing, to change the order of the sections, add own material etc.
• digital photos of the lab equipment used in your school can be inserted
• it can be constantly developed: every year the individual teacher can make new changes to the text, graphs or other
• when a major curriculum change occurs, more extensive revisions will be needed but all of the old version need not be thrown away
• prospective students in pre-IB-classes and/or junior high schools or middle schools can familiarize themselves with it or use parts of it
• after graduating from the IB, the student can have always have the IBPC near on a couple of diskettes or the computer hard drive if reviews are needed
• etc.

The files are made with MS Word 2000 and can regrettably not be opened in Word 97 as it is now. The sketches and graphs in the Compendium are (hastily!) drawn by hand and scanned as .jpg-files. If someone wants to improve them a quick method is to zoom in or out the screen so that 1 cm on the monitor precisely matches 1 cm on the paper printout and then fit hand-drawn sketches on paper (e.g. "Post-It"-pieces) onto the monitor, take a printout and attach or tape them onto it - and then off to the photocopier! It looks silly but works fine. The graph files are coded with x (measurement), m (mechanics), t (thermal physics), w (waves), e (electricity and magnetism), a (atomic, nuclear and quantum physics), r (relativiy) , s (astrophysics) o (Optics) or h (Historical physics). For example the graph called t03a is found at

http://www.vasa.abo.fi/vos/vosusers/tillman/2003/t03a.jpg

In addition to the theory summary a few other documents relevant for the IB system are included, plus some reflections on Theory of Knowledge and science education in general (which probably needs to be elaborated for those who do not have access to the relevant journals in a university library).

Comments and other contributions to future improved versions of the IB Physics Compendium 2003 can be sent to

Thomas Illman

tillman@abo.fi

(include the name of the capital of Germany in the subject line to pass my spam filter!)