nathanliow/atlas-of-physics

Atlas of Physics is an interactive web textbook covering AP Physics 1 and AP Physics C, spanning mechanics chapters 2–8 and electricity and magnetism chapters 9–15. Rather than showing apparatus, each chapter draws one simple motion in 3D with textbook-style paper diagrams, so learners can focus on the object, its vectors, axes and graphs. The live site is the quickest way to see it.

How it works

Each chapter is a static web page living in its own folder with a shared rendering and book engine. Scrolling turns pages and moves the camera; hovering highlights a part; clicking breaks it down, for example splitting a vector into components or a graph into slope and area. Chapter text follows the AP Physics graphic organizers, and Physics C pages are tagged accordingly. A practice tool adds AP-style questions per page, an equation section links each AP equation-sheet entry to the pages that show it, and cross-chapter "Compare" analogies appear on both pages involved.

The model definition for each chapter also ships with invariant checks, so the numbers driving a figure are tested separately from what is rendered. A suite of headless tools covers screenshots of every page, deep-link checks, phone-viewport taps, overflow scrolling, picking and performance.

What you need to run it

Reading the textbook only needs a browser: open any page of the hosted site, or serve the static files locally with any static server and load three.js from the CDN it references. On phones and tablets the figure stacks above the text, swipes snap to whole pages, a tap opens a breakdown, and resolution steps down automatically if frames run slow. Deep links like chapter/#4 jump to a specific page.

The developer tools are a separate path. That set requires npm install (puppeteer-core) and Chrome, with CHROME set if Chrome is not at the default macOS location, so Linux and Windows users must point it themselves.

Licensing and scope

The code is MIT licensed. The project carries the standard notice that AP® is a trademark of the College Board, which does not endorse the site, and the equation sheet follows the published AP Physics equation tables. These are course-aligned study materials, not an official College Board product. The repository description states support for AP Physics 1 and AP Physics C; the README's chapter listing is the concrete scope to check before relying on it for a particular exam. The rendering relies on three.js from a CDN, so offline use would need that addressed separately.

Project source and documentation