What Happened to Physics Class? Why It Feels Like a Different Subject Now
The first sign was a long sigh from the kitchen table. My son, a sophomore, was staring at a physics worksheet like it was written in a language he’d never seen. There were diagrams of ramps and blocks, yes, but also a dense block of formulas at the top. He wasn’t trying to understand the problem. He was trying to match numbers to letters.
“What’s this one about?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Friction, I guess. I don’t know.”
I pointed to the first question. “Okay, so what’s happening in the picture?”
“There’s a box on a hill.”
“And what do you think will happen when you let go?”
Another shrug. “I just need to find the coefficient. It says here in the notes.”
That was the moment I realized something had changed. When I took physics in high school, we spent a whole day rolling marbles across the floor and timing them with a stopwatch. We built little paper bridges and broke them with weights. We argued about whether a heavier object really falls faster. The teacher used to start every unit with a question: “What do you think happens when you flip a light switch?” Then we spent weeks figuring it out.
My son’s physics class is not that class. His teacher posts video lectures, assigns online homework that grades itself, and runs a tight schedule to keep up with the district pacing guide. There are no marbles. There is no arguing. There is a formula sheet, a calculator, and a nightly assignment that asks him to plug numbers into equations he doesn’t fully believe in.
At first I blamed the teacher. But after talking to other parents and actually sitting down with my son’s textbook, I started to see the bigger picture. Physics class has become a gatekeeper subject. It’s the course that separates students who “get” math from students who don’t. And because so much rides on test scores and college transcripts, the goal has shifted from understanding how the world works to demonstrating that you can follow a procedure.
The deeper problem is that modern physics instruction often skips the messy, intuitive part of learning. Years ago, a good physics lesson started with a phenomenon. You saw something strange happen, you felt confusion or surprise, and then you spent time trying to explain it. The math came later, as a way to sharpen your ideas. Now, many classes start with the math. Students learn that acceleration equals force divided by mass the same way they learn that the capital of France is Paris—as a fact to be repeated. But physics isn’t a collection of facts. It’s a way of reasoning about what we observe. When you strip away the observation, the reasoning has nothing to grab onto.
I saw this clearly when I tried to help my son with a problem about a ball thrown straight up. He found the maximum height in two seconds using a formula. I asked him, “If you throw a ball up, what does it do at the top?”
“It stops for a second,” he said.
“And then?”
“It comes back down.”
“Okay, so how fast is it moving at the very top?”
He looked at the formula sheet again. “I think zero? But we don’t need that for this problem.”
“Right, but the problem is about that ball. The formula is just describing what the ball does. If you didn’t have the formula, you could still reason about it. What would you say the height is if you threw a ball as hard as you could?”
He didn’t know. Not because he wasn’t smart, but because his class had trained him to expect that every answer comes from an equation. The physical intuition—the feel of throwing a ball, the sight of it rising and falling—was completely disconnected from the math. And without that intuition, physics becomes a kind of arbitrary puzzle. You memorize the rules of an abstract game you’ve never actually played.
It’s not just my son’s school. More and more, physics is taught as a set of problem-solving strategies, with an emphasis on standardized test formats. Teachers are under real pressure to cover a certain number of topics by a certain date. Demos take time. Open-ended questions take time. Mistakes take time. And time is exactly what isn’t available. So we get a class that moves fast but lands shallow. Students can calculate the force on a moving car, but they can’t tell you how a seatbelt helps them in a crash.
What can a parent do about this? I’m not a physics teacher myself, but I’ve found a few small things that make a difference.
First, I stopped asking, “Do you understand the homework?” and started asking, “What do you think would happen if…?” For example, instead of asking about the coefficient of friction, I asked, “What would happen if you pushed the box on ice instead of carpet?” That forced him to use his own mental model of ice and carpet. He still struggled, but at least he was thinking about actual experiences he’d had. That’s where physics begins.
Second, we started noticing physics in ordinary life. The arc of a basketball shot. The way water swirls down a drain. The reason the car slides on gravel if you brake too hard. These aren’t lectures. They’re just comments while we’re doing something else. It builds a mental library of real-world examples he can hang equations on later.
Third, I encourage him to draw the problem before doing any math. His teacher actually allows this, but he never bothers because the online system doesn’t require a drawing. When I sit next to him and make him sketch the ramp, the box, and the direction of movement, the formulas start making more sense. The drawing forces him to slow down and physically imagine the situation. It’s a low-tech fix, but it works.
Fourth, I’ve told him it’s okay to get the wrong answer. The online homework only gives credit for correct answers, so he’s naturally afraid of being wrong. I remind him that in real physics—like the kind Newton and Galileo did—being wrong was part of the discovery. I don’t say this in a cheesy motivational way. I just say, “If you weren’t wrong sometimes, you wouldn’t be thinking. You’d just be repeating.” He’s not entirely convinced, but it takes the edge off.
For teachers reading this, I know you don’t have much flexibility. But if you can manage even one simple demo per unit, it changes the atmosphere. A two-minute video of a rocket launch is better than nothing, but a real object moving across a real desk is better still. When you’re teaching projectile motion, roll a ball across the floor and ask students to predict where it will land. When you’re teaching forces, drag a heavy book across a table and ask students why it’s harder to push when there are more pages pressing down. These moments don’t need to be polished. They don’t need to take a full class period. They just need to remind students that physics isn’t scribbles on paper—it’s the world doing its thing.
I’m not saying we should go back to the old free-form physics class of the 1990s. There was a lot of wasted time and plenty of confusion. But somewhere along the way, we overcorrected. We made physics precise and efficient and thoroughly uninspiring. We traded curiosity for coverage. And now we have high schoolers who can solve for the velocity of a falling object but have never once dropped something from a balcony and watched it speed up.
Last week, my son came home with a problem about a pendulum. He sighed, opened his laptop, and started to search up the formula. I gently closed the laptop.
“Let’s just watch one first,” I said.
We found a video of a pendulum swinging. Nothing fancy—just a weight on a string, moving back and forth. I asked him, “Where is it moving the fastest?” He pointed to the bottom. “Why?” He thought for a moment. “Because it’s been falling for the longest time?” He was half right. He still reached for the equation afterward. But for a few seconds, he was thinking like a scientist instead of a test taker.
I don’t know if this will change his grade or his score on the final exam. The pendulum problem is still due tomorrow, and he’ll probably use the formula eventually. That’s okay. We live in the system we have. But the small moments of noticing, sketching, and questioning add up. They keep the door open. And maybe that’s enough for now.
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