Physics: How Motion, Energy and the Physical World Work
Signature Course No. 391 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Physics: How Motion, Energy and the Physical World Work course, in the Personal Effectiveness & Well-Being category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
The physical world runs on a small set of laws — and most of what puzzles you about it is one of those laws meeting an everyday object. Why a loaded cart is hard to stop, why a shout echoes off one wall and not another, why a kettle costs what it costs to boil, why a thin wire gets hot — each is a quantity meeting a law. This course teaches the laws in the order you meet them in life: motion described exactly, forces as pushes and pulls, energy tracked without loss, then the same habits carried into waves, sound, light, heat, and electricity.
It starts with motion. Before any law, you will clear the ground it stands on: position measured from a stated origin, displacement against distance, velocity as displacement divided by time, and acceleration as the rate of change of velocity — three quantities kept in their ladder, each with its unit carried through every computation, and every answer checked against the world before it is believed.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Motion, Forces and Energy — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Cart Day Audit; then, Module 2 — Waves, Heat and Electricity — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Hall Audit.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a complete Cart Day Audit for the Hollowbrook Community Workshop's cart day: the delivery cart's motion account, its force ledger and a dropped toolbox's fall, momentum and energy reconciled through a coupling bump, and grip, spread, and curve judgments with their conditions stated; and a Hall Audit of the workshop's hall: its length proven by echo, a heating job costed to the joule and the honest second, the work lamps computed in both architectures, and purchasing claims passed or refused on their own printed figures.
The honesty standard is part of the course. Every worked computation in the course book carries its units, and a result whose units do not resolve to the unit of the quantity claimed is treated as wrong, however plausible the number looks. Every law is stated with the conditions that make it true — objects fall at 9.8 meters per second squared when air resistance can be ignored, and the feather in air is the standing reminder that sometimes it cannot. Where a model is an approximation, the book says so at the point of use. That discipline is not pedantry; it is the habit the course exists to build.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Physics: How Motion, Energy and the Physical World Work is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with describing motion. Rewrite a neighbor's vague trip description — “about twenty minutes, pretty quick, with a slow bit in the middle” — as position, velocity, and acceleration, saying what you would measure and from what origin; walk to a mailbox and back and explain why your distance and your displacement disagree; and judge two carts side by side, one steady and one gaining speed, on which is accelerating and which is moving faster at the end. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Cart Day Audit for Module 1 and The Hall Audit for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
One discipline, every concept. Name the quantity, carry the unit, state the condition, check the answer against the world. That discipline is not a preliminary topic to survive before the real course starts; it is the engine of everything after it. Velocity is a ratio with its unit. Energy is a ledger that must balance. Ohm's law is a lock among three quantities. Every later concept runs the same four moves, so the subject never dissolves into a bag of unrelated formulas — and every answer gets a second look, because in physics, verification is not extra work; it is half the skill.
Module 1 counts what moves. Describing Motion — Position, Velocity and Acceleration; Predicting Motion — The Constant-Acceleration Equations; Forces and Newton's Laws — Pushes That Change Motion; Falling, Gravity and Weight — The Pull You Live In; Momentum and Collisions — The Quantity That Is Hard to Stop; Work and Energy — Stores, Transfers and the Joule; Conservation, Power and Efficiency — Where Every Joule Goes; Friction and Pressure — Grip, Drag and Spread; Turning, Torque and Balance — Circles, Levers and Tipping.
Module 2 follows what travels. Waves — Disturbances That Travel; Sound — Waves You Hear; Light and Color — Waves You See; Heat and Temperature — Amount Versus Intensity; Moving Heat — Conduction, Convection, Radiation and Cost; Charge and Static Electricity — The Push Between Charges; Current, Voltage and Resistance — Circuits That Obey Ohm; Magnetism and Generation — Fields, Motors and Making Current; Checking a Physical Claim — The Unit-First Audit.
And it holds its boundary throughout. This is survey depth, honestly kept: every law stated correctly with its conditions, every computation the law supports at this level carried through in full — and the boundaries named where a deeper course would go further, from latent heat named but not priced to lenses recognized but not formula-driven. It teaches the physical laws themselves, applied to everyday phenomena — no software, no laboratory tooling. The course assumes no prior physics and no mathematics beyond everyday arithmetic to start; every algebraic step is taught where it is first used.
What you will learn
- Describe motion with position, velocity, and acceleration, and predict motion under constant acceleration
- Apply Newton's laws, gravity, and momentum to everyday pushes, falls, and collisions
- Track work, energy, power, and efficiency through a system without losing a joule
- Handle friction, pressure, circular motion, and balance with the right model and its limits stated
- Use the wave relation for water waves, sound, and light, and explain echoes, pitch, and color in law terms
- Explain heat, temperature, and heat transfer, and cost a heating job in joules and watts
- Analyze simple direct-current circuits with Ohm's law and power, and explain magnetism and generation at survey depth
- Check any everyday physical claim by naming quantities, carrying units, and testing the result for sense
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Physics: How Motion, Energy and the Physical World Work, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Cart Day Audit and The Hall Audit
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for learners who want to check the world's numbers
Curious adults with no science background — who want the physical world explained from the ground up, with no step skipped because “everyone knows that”; and practical problem-solvers — people who lift, build, wire, drive, heat, and fix — who want to predict rather than guess: how hard, how fast, how hot, how much.
Students preparing for further study — who need the survey-level foundations firm before a later course assumes them.
Anyone who has been bluffed by a number — a product claim, an efficiency figure, a stopping distance — and wants the means to check it on the spot. This course assumes no prior physics and no mathematics beyond everyday arithmetic to start. Every algebraic step the book needs is taught where it is first used. If you can multiply, divide, and keep track of a unit, you have everything this course requires to begin.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with Describing Motion
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Physics: How Motion, Energy and the Physical World Work is Signature Course No. 391. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.