Physics Coursework

It is much easier to study literature than physics. Being in a literature class, I can offer and defend my own interpretation or vision of a book or a poem, while there is no place for personal interpretation or personal explanation in physics class. Physics coursework writing can become a real nightmare for students who are not physics geniuses. It is hardly possible to avoid physics coursework writing. I have posted a short physics coursework sample here to give you some practical tips on qualitative physics coursework writing. In addition, you may take a look at Level Biology Coursework sample and History Coursework writing tips in our free blog.

Physics Coursework Sample

Substance has been defined as the permanent in phenomena in the sense of the embodiment of invariable attributes. On the basis of observation of bodies we describe them as possessing certain attributes. One or more attributes may be invariable; if we view a body as something having an invariable attribute the body is substance.

In physics an invariable attribute of a body is represented by a constant measure. In classical physics a constant measure expresses the property (magnitude) of a quantity, such as the quantity of matter, which may also be called quantity of material substance and was called the mass of the body. In the mechanical conception of nature the essential property of a body is inertia which is the invariable property of matter. Material substance was the hypostatization of the invariable property of matter. Matter was also viewed as objective and independent.

Substance in the foregoing version of the concept is the permanent, the objective, and the self-determining or independent. In seventeenth century physics the concept was interpreted in terms of a dualistic metaphysics. Galileo, Descartes, Locke, etc., made a distinction between primary qualities, which are objective, and secondary qualities which are subjective, from the physical point of view the distinction being essentially that between measurable and non-measurable properties. However, seventeenth century physicists and philosophers viewed the primary qualities as objective and the essence of a permanent and independent substance. As Professor Lamprecht has remarked, "Descartes and Locke turned this methodological dualism of scientific thought into a metaphysical dogma." Thus the concept of substance in classical physics combined the Scholastic concept of substance with the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.

Material substance was considered to be an independent reality which produces the aspects directly experienced by the mind. The concept of material substance thus furnishes a realistic interpretation of the invariable mechanical properties of bodies. The preceding method of interpretation was then extended to the theory of electricity and the theory of heat. Electricity, or electrical substance, is an indestructible fluid which is the cause of observed electrical actions; it is the hypostatization of constancy of electric charge. Similarly heat, or caloric, is an indestructible fluid whose presence in a body is the cause of the sensation of hotness; it is the hypostatization of the constancy of the measure of heat in thermal interactions. However, in the mechanical theory of heat the concept of heat substance was abandoned.