Understanding Modern Physics is a three-course series that takes you through the major conceptual revolutions of 20th-century physics: relativity, quantum mechanics, and the physics of complexity. You'll build a rigorous understanding of how physicists model space, time, matter, and information.
The first course covers special and general relativity and cosmology, showing how space and time unify into spacetime and how gravity emerges from its curvature. The second course introduces quantum mechanics, atomic physics, and quantum information, covering the Schrödinger equation, atomic structure, and the basics of quantum computing. The third course extends this foundation to the action principle, particle physics, entropy and information theory, and the mathematics of complex and chaotic systems.
Throughout the series, you'll work through derivations and calculations rather than descriptive overviews alone, using tools such as Lorentz transformations, the Schrödinger equation, matrix representations of spin, and entropy and fractal-dimension calculations.
Who this is for: Physics students and science enthusiasts who want to build a rigorous, technical understanding of modern physics. Course I states this audience directly, and the technical depth of Courses II and III — deriving the Schrödinger equation, using matrix representations of quantum spin, and calculating entropy and fractal dimensions — points to the same level of learner throughout the series.
Applied Learning Project
This program builds your skills through hands-on problem-solving throughout each course. You'll work through weekly quizzes and derivation-based assignments that require you to calculate quantities like time dilation, tunneling rates, and entropy changes, apply the Schrödinger equation and Lorentz transformations to concrete scenarios, and construct spacetime diagrams and simple simulations such as the logistic map. These exercises test calculation and derivation skills rather than memorization alone.
