Cortland City School District offers an array of quality science classes for their high school students. For those students interested in the physical sciences, we offer Astronomy, General Physics, New York State Regents Physics, and Honors (Dual credit) Physics.

According the American Institute of Physics:

“Physics is an organized way of conversing with nature. Physicists ask questions; nature responds. For many questions, the answers are almost predictable, but when the question is a particularly good one, the answer can be unexpected and give us new knowledge of the way the world works. These are the moments physicists live for.

The fundamental ideas of physics underlie all basic science -- astronomy, biology, chemistry, and geology. Physics also is essential to the applied science and engineering that has taken our world from the horse and buggy to the supersonic jet, from the candle to the laser, from the pony express to the fax, from live smoke signals to live satellite transmission, from the beads of an abacus to the chips of a computer.

Today physics is as exciting as ever. The animated conversation between physicists and nature goes on and it shows no sign of stopping.”

Physics in Cortland High School isn't stopping either!  In our physics classes we put a strong emphasis on students as active learners. The students engage in more activities-oriented learning and less on traditional lecture note taking methods.  Labs are designed with a non-cookbook format and are presented to the students with a more problem solving, inquiry approach. 

The three Physics courses that are being offered currently are:

Regents Physics: a curriculum based on the New York State Learning Standards Core Guide for Physical Science: Physics. The course gives students experiences in mostly classical Physics and introduces them to some of the ideas in Modern Physics (Quantum Physics.).  Students in Regents Physics are required to take the New York State Regents Exam at the completion of the course and are required to perform 1200 minutes of laboratory activities during the course of the year.  

Honors Physics: a dual credit class.  Students successfully completing the course earn 8 credit hours from Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) for  General Physics (PHYSC 104 and PHYSC 105). The course follows the high school calender but is graded on the semester schedule of TC3. In addition to the college component of the class, students are required to perform 1200 minutes of laboratory activities and take the NYS Regents Exam in Physics in June.

General Physics: a non-Regents class.  Although it does not have the lab and Exam requirement fo NYS Regents Physics, Genreal Physics is aligned with the Commencement level NYS Standards for Phsyics Settings: Physics.  Concepts of the physics world are the primary emphasis and math formulas are used to support understanding of these concepts.