Physics - Static Electricity for High School and AP Physics

This course is one of several Mousseau Physics courses designed for students in high school physics, AP Physics, and introductory college physics. In this course we focus on electrostatics, the study of electric charge and electric interactions when charges are not moving through circuits. Students will study charge, conductors and insulators, Coulomb's law, electric force, electric field, electric potential energy, voltage, and electric potential.

The videos and resources include clear lectures, diagrams, demonstrations, and worked out example problems. Students will learn how to organize electric force and electric field problems, how to interpret field direction, how to distinguish force, field, energy, and potential, and how to use units to keep the ideas straight. The course is designed to make abstract electric ideas more concrete through repeated visual models and problem solving practice.

This course is a strong fit for high school physics students, AP Physics students, and introductory algebra based college physics students. It does not require calculus. Students who find electricity confusing often benefit from slowing down and separating the vocabulary carefully before trying to solve multi-step problems.

By the end of the course, students should be more comfortable with the core ideas of electrostatics and better prepared for related topics such as capacitance, circuits, magnetism, and electromagnetism. Students should also be able to explain the difference between electric field and electric potential, one of the most important conceptual hurdles in this unit.

Students can work straight through the course as a full unit or use individual lessons as targeted support alongside a class. The videos are built to be paused, rewound, and practiced with pencil and paper, so the course works well for homework help, test review, exam preparation, or rebuilding a topic that did not fully click the first time.