Applied Physics

Environmental science students study physics to understand energy, forces, fluids, and thermodynamics—core principles behind climate systems, renewable energy, pollution control, and sustainable technologies. This course begins with fundamentals such as measurement, units, and scientific reasoning, then moves into vectors, motion, and Newton’s laws to explain how objects move and interact. Students build on these concepts through topics like energy, work, and conservation laws, followed by gravity and orbital motion. The course also explores fluid mechanics, oscillations, waves, and sound to describe flow and energy transfer in natural and engineered systems. It continues with thermodynamics to explain heat, molecular motion, and energy transformations in environmental processes, and concludes with optics, introducing light behaviour and spectral analysis used in environmental monitoring. Prerequisites: MATH105 Algebra and Trigonometry & MATH201 Applied Calculus.