The goal of this course is to lead you beyond the high-school level focus on “plug-and-chug” and into a deeper appreciation of the fundamental principles underlying all physical processes, as understood at the start of the 21st century. The most important of these principles are the “Momentum Principle” (i.e. Newton’s 2nd Law in its original form), the “Energy Principle”, and the “Angular Momentum Principle”. The first half of the course focuses on introducing these principles and applying them to analyze and predict the mechanical behavior of a wide range of real-world systems. The second half of the course introduces another fundamental principle, the “field” concept, which is used to explain electrical and magnetic phenomena, leading up to the realization that light itself is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
这门课程的目标是带领大家超越高中时的“套公式”，能够深入理解所有物理过程背后的基本原理（基于21世纪初的理解）。这些原理中最重要的包括”动量“；课程的前半部分会重点介绍这些原理并运用他们来分析和预测现实世界中一大类问题的力学特性。后半部分课程会介绍另一些基本原理：场的概念，以解释电磁现象，最终导出光本身就是电磁辐射的一种形式。
Throughout the course, the atomic structure of matter is explicitly taken into account, and other “modern” concepts such as the relativistic definitions of momentum and energy are integrated into the body of the curriculum. By the end of the course, you should be able to use the fundamental principles of physics as a starting point for independently analyzing many complex physical systems.
物质的原子概念将贯穿课程始终，其他现代物理的概念诸如动量和能量的相对论定义会放在选修内容中介绍。学完本课程，你将学会如何以基本物理原理为出发 点去独立分析复杂物理系统。
