General Physics with Calculus I

Course Description

General Physics with Calculus I is the first half of the calculus-based physics sequence taken by engineering and physical-science majors. The statewide description is recent and specific: a calculus-based course covering kinematics, dynamics, energy, momentum, rotational motion, fluid dynamics, oscillatory motion and waves, designed for science and engineering majors and integrating critical thinking, analytical skills and real-world applications.

It is carried by 25 Florida public institutions as a lecture, with a further 14 running the integrated PHY2048C.

⚠⚠ The statewide title carries the (GE CORE) marker.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Solve analytical problems describing motion in one and two dimensions.
• Apply Newton’s laws to systems of forces, including friction and circular motion.
• Apply conservation of energy and momentum, including collisions.
• Analyse rotational motion: torque, moment of inertia, angular momentum.
• Apply the principles of fluid statics and dynamics.
• Describe oscillatory motion and waves, including simple harmonic motion.

Optional Outcomes

• Carry out laboratory measurement with uncertainty analysis (in the laboratory half).
• Use computational tools for modelling, where the institution includes them.
• Thermodynamics, where the institution places it in the first course.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Measurement, units and vectors.
• Kinematics in one and two dimensions.
• Newton’s laws and applications.
• Work, energy and conservation of energy.
• Momentum, impulse and collisions.
• Rotational kinematics and dynamics; angular momentum.
• Static equilibrium; fluids.
• Oscillations and mechanical waves.

Optional Topics

• Gravitation and orbital motion.
• Temperature, heat and the laws of thermodynamics, where placed here rather than in the second course.

Resources & Tools

• Halliday, Resnick & Walker; Serway; Young & Freedman are the widely adopted texts. OpenStax University Physics is free and in growing use.
• Online homework systems (WebAssign, Mastering Physics) are common and are often a required purchase separate from the text — check before the term.
• The laboratory half uses standard mechanics apparatus and data-acquisition software.

Career Pathways

Required by every engineering discipline and by physics, and named on the Mechanical Engineer path in this repository. Statics and dynamics are the direct successors of this course, and students who arrive there without fluency in free-body diagrams meet the gap immediately.

Special Information

A Florida General Education Core course

The statewide title carries the (GE CORE) marker, identifying a course on Florida’s limited General Education Core list (s. 1007.25, F.S.). It satisfies its general-education subject area at every Florida public college and university and carries that status in transfer. ⚠ The protection attaches to the subject area, not to a laboratory component — whether a programme’s “science with laboratory” requirement is met is a programme rule.

Two packagings, and they are equivalent

Florida teaches the calculus-based physics sequence both ways. 25 institutions run PHY2048 as a lecture alongside PHY2048L, a separate laboratory carried by 24; 14 run PHY2048C, one integrated course. The outcomes are the same and transfer works either way — lecture plus laboratory completes exactly as the combined course does. Institutions are given this latitude deliberately.

⚠ Get the registration right: where your institution splits the course, enrol in both halves. They are normally corequisites, and an engineering or science programme that requires a laboratory will not accept the lecture alone.

⚠⚠ Calculus-based, not algebra-based — and the two are not interchangeable

Florida runs both an algebra-based and a calculus-based general physics sequence, under different numbers. Engineering and physical-science degrees require the calculus-based version. The algebra-based sequence is a perfectly good course for health-science and general-education purposes and will not substitute for this one. If your programme names a number, take that number.

⚠ Credit values differ

Roughly 12 institutions carry the lecture at 3 credits and 15 at 4; the integrated form runs 4 or 5. Gulf Coast State College publishes 3 credits with 3 lecture hours, and 1 credit with 3 laboratory hours for PHY2048L. Check the value your degree audit expects.

⚠ Dual enrolment: the high-school credit runs opposite to expectation

Across this gateway the recently revised General Education Core entries record ELECTIVE high-school credit, while their unrevised second halves record the subject credit. Physics with Calculus I records ELECTIVE; Physics with Calculus II records SCIENCE. The same inversion appears in the anatomy sequence and in calculus. So the first course — the one most likely taken in high school — carries the weaker high-school credit. The college credit is unaffected. Confirm with your counsellor and district articulation agreement before relying on it.