GENERAL PHYSICS 1

SECTIONS: STEM A,B,C

TTh: 7:00AM-4:30PM

Elaisa S De Paz, Teacher

 Week No. 1
SECTIONS: 12 STEM A,B,C
TTH: 7:00AM-4:30PM

Elaisa S De Paz, Teacher

• What is Physics?
• What is your impression about this field?
• What are the three laws of motion?
• What is light?
• What is matter?
• How do you understand physical processes.
• Quantum mechanics?
• Physics is science.
• Physics is fun.
• It is an exciting adventure in the quest to find out
patterns in nature and find means of understanding
phenomena through careful deductions based on
experimental verification.
• In order to study physics, you should have a sense
of discipline.
 Physical
Quantities

Physical quantities are a characteristic or property of an object that can

be measured or calculated from other measurements.
UNITS
• Unit Units are standards for expressing and
comparing the measurement of physical
quantities. All units can be expressed as
combinations of four fundamental units.
• The four fundamental units we will use in this text
are the meter (for length), the kilogram (for mass),
the second (for time), and the ampere (for electric
current). These units are part of the metric system,
which uses powers of 10 to relate quantities over
the vast ranges encountered in nature
• Since 1960 the system of units used by scientists and engineers is the
“metric system”, which is officially known as the “International
System” or SI units (abbreviation for its French term, Système
International).
• To make sure that scientists from different parts of the world
understand the same thing when referring to a measurement,
standards have been defined for measurements of length, time, and
mass.
• Length – a measurement of the physical quantity of distance. The
basic unit of length as identified by International System of Units (SI)
is the meter.
• Time – time is change, or the interval over which change occurs. The
SI unit for time is the second, abbreviated s.
• Mass – a fundamental property of matter. The basic unit of
measurement for mass is the kilogram.
Conversion of
units
It is often necessary to convert from one type of unit to another.
For example, if you are reading a European cookbook, some
quantities may be expressed in units of liters and you need to
convert them to cups. Or, perhaps you are reading walking
directions from one location to another and you are interested in
how many miles you will be walking. In this case, you will need to
convert units of feet to miles.
Conversion of
units
Let us say that we want to convert 80 meters (m) to kilometers (km).
 SIGNIFICANT FIGURES AND
SCIENTIFIC NOTATION

• The number of significant figures refers to all digits to the left of the
decimal point (except zeroes after the last non-zero digit) and all digits
to the right of the decimal point (including all zeroes).
• Scientific notation is also called the “powers-of-ten notation”. This
allows one to write only the significant figures multiplied to 10 with
the appropriate power. As a shorthand notation, we therefore use
only one digit before the decimal point with the rest of the significant
figures written after the decimal point
 PRACTICE # 02

• How many significant figures does 0.368 have?

• 13005
• 21.0 x10^2
• 890.0
 Rounding off numbers
Rules of rounding off numbers:
• Know which last digit to keep.
• This last digit remains the same if the next digit is less than 5.
• Increase this last digit if the next digit is 5 or more.

540
457
Remember!
• Read text
• Attend class
• Ask questions
• Equals success in this class!