MS Physics — the one page for James (16 October 2026)
Where the build stands. Topic 16, "Temperature, heat and thermal equilibrium", joins Topic 14 as ready for your read; ten topics are on the scripts page. Six lessons: temperature as how fast the particles move (MS Chemistry's wording recalled); the hotter thing heats the colder thing, never "cold flows in"; two things left together reach one temperature, between their starts; temperature is not thermal energy, the amount matters; and the two reasoning atoms it hosts, coined as "A result counts for more when someone else gets the same answer" and "A scientific answer can change when new evidence is found". "Heat" is coined once as the energy the hotter thing transfers, with one summary sentence translating the test's "heat flows" into the course's words. Its review caught an intro line that had a girl's hands reach room temperature overnight; its cold readers caught one wrong key on an order item, which an earlier review pass had shuffled. Both fixed; closed on keys after three cold reads of 79 items. Topic 14 is as described below. Topic 19 (waves), the last of your five video topics, is in review; then every remaining topic in order. Videos: Topics 2, 6 and 14 are at the pipeline (Topic 2's ten await one audio edit each); Topic 16's batch is being built.
What to read: Topics 1 to 8, 14 and 16's scripts on one page, with Fine / Change this under each video, and the seven cards below. The student pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14, 16.
Decisions — Topic 2
1. Does Lesson 2 tell students once that a test reference sheet writes the speed equation as s = d/t?
The course says: the equation is coined in words, "speed equals distance divided by time", with its key as a labelled list; the letters s, d and t are not used in any script or working line. The author proposes one told line in Lesson 2's diagram article only: "A test reference sheet may write this as s = d/t, where s is the speed, d is the distance and t is the time."
Why it is a question: - Released STAAR grade 8 forms give students a reference sheet with the equation in letters; a student who has only met the words may not recognise it. - Your rule: a term the released items use is taught at least as a told line; the depth follows the standards. - The lessons stay in words either way; this is one sentence a student reads, never hears.
Cost of changing it: one article line.
My recommendation: tell it once, in the article, as proposed.
A: Tell it once in the article / B: Leave the letters out of this course
Decisions — Topic 3, "Velocity and acceleration" (key teaching decisions, before its videos)
2. Is acceleration never drawn as an arrow in this course?
The course says: velocity is drawn as a blue arrow on the mover whose length tracks the speed (said once, in the lesson that coins velocity); acceleration is never an arrow, only a verdict ("accelerating" / "not accelerating") on a teaching figure, because the direction of an acceleration is high-school content and a drawn arrow would plant a picture the student cannot yet read.
Why it is a question: - Textbooks for this grade often draw a second arrow for acceleration; a student who has seen one may expect it. - Drawing it right needs the vector idea (acceleration toward the centre on a bend) that TEKS 8.7A does not ask for and HS Physics teaches. - Leaving it out keeps the three lessons on acceleration qualitative, as the register's cross note to the Forces strand wants.
Cost of changing it: every acceleration figure and script cue in Topics 3, 11 and 12.
My recommendation: no acceleration arrow anywhere in this course.
A: No acceleration arrow in this course / B: Draw an acceleration arrow where the direction is simple
3. Do Topic 3's maps keep north, south, east and west, where you prefer left and right?
The course says: every Topic 3 scene is a map seen from above with a compass, so the direction words are north, south, east and west throughout; you ruled "left and right most of the time rather than east and west" on Topic 1's number lines.
Why it is a question: - Velocity needs a direction that left and right cannot carry once movers turn: a bend from north to east has no left-right telling. - A plan view with a compass is the one picture in which "same speed, different direction" and "turning changes velocity" can be drawn honestly. - Topics 1 and 2 use left and right on their number lines, as you asked; Topic 3 is the first topic where the scene is a map.
Cost of changing it: redraw 27 figures and reword the scripts and items that name a compass direction.
My recommendation: keep compass words on Topic 3's maps; left and right stay the words wherever the scene is a line.
A: Compass words on Topic 3's maps / B: Left and right here too
Decisions — Topic 6, "What a force is" (key teaching decisions, before its videos)
4. Where does a force arrow start: the object's centre, or the point where the push or pull touches it?
The course says: the arrow's tail sits at the centre of the object the force acts on (your ruling of 29 September on the Grade 3 videos: "ideally … the tail of the arrow is at the center of the object the force is acting on"); it moves only when the frame is busy, and then still starts on the object. Topic 6's drawing lesson teaches "start the arrow at the center of the object", and every figure in the topic draws it so.
Why it is a question: - Your Grade 3 Forces corrections asked for the push arrow to "begin at the point where his hands make contact with the door" and to "originate from the girl's hand on the ball"; the vault note records the two rulings as a tension you have not been asked about. - A grade-6 student who draws the arrow from the hands has done something defensible, so no quiz item in this course scores that drawing wrong; the two items that did have had that option removed. - High-school free-body diagrams draw every force from the centre, so the centre is the version that later courses sharpen rather than unteach.
Cost of changing it: Topic 6's drawing lesson script and closing bullets, about ten figures across Topics 6 to 9, and the vault note's default.
My recommendation: keep the centre as the taught rule; treat the Grade 3 contact-point drawings as the busy exception.
A: Tail at the centre, as taught / B: Tail where the push or pull touches the object
A note on Topic 6, decided and recorded, not a card: two of your Grade 3 Forces items (the direction pair, Q4.1 and Q4.2) sit in Lesson 6's quiz; asked back to back, the first answers the second. Q4.1 stays in the quiz; Q4.2 is held in the lesson's reserve, unchanged because it is yours, and returns on your word.
Decisions — Topic 4, "Drawing and reading a distance-time graph"
5. Does Topic 4's first lesson keep a short article when no question needs its picture?
The course says: every lesson in this graph topic has a short diagram article beside its video, because a graph is a picture that must stay on screen; the first lesson's article shows the finished axes and nothing more.
Why it is a question: - Your rule for this course: video-led, an article only where a static picture must stay on screen. - The first lesson's picture (empty axes, labelled and numbered) is on screen through the whole video, and no quiz item after it carries a figure; the reviewer asked whether the article earns its place. - The other four articles each carry a plotted graph a quiz item reads from, so they stand on the rule.
Cost of changing it: delete one article; nothing else moves.
My recommendation: drop the first lesson's article; keep the other four.
A: Drop Lesson 1's article / B: Keep all five articles
Decisions — Topic 5, "What the shape of a distance-time graph tells you"
6. What does the y-axis of every distance-time graph say: "Distance from start (m)", or "Distance (m)"?
The course says: Topic 4's graphs are labelled "Distance (m)" (every trip there is one way, so the distance covered and the distance from the start are the same number). Topic 5's graphs are labelled "Distance from start (m)", because a line that comes back down can only mean the distance from the start is falling; the distance a mover has walked never falls. Topic 5's lesson on the downward line says so in one sentence.
Why it is a question: - One graph should look one way across the course; two labels for the same picture is a cost. - "Distance from start" is the only label true of every graph once lines come back down, and it is the idea the released tests' "Distance from home" graphs rely on. - "Distance (m)" is what most test papers print, so a student will meet it; one told sentence can cover that.
Cost of changing it: relabelling Topic 4's 51 graphs is a one-line default change and a re-render; no key or stem moves. Relabelling Topic 5 the other way would make its downward-line lesson false.
My recommendation: one label for the course, "Distance from start (m)", with Topic 4 relabelled to match and one told sentence that papers often shorten it to "Distance".
A: One label, "Distance from start (m)", Topic 4 relabelled / B: Keep "Distance (m)" in Topic 4 and the longer label from Topic 5 on
Decisions — Topic 7, "Spotting the forces on an object"
7. Where does the mass-versus-weight bridge go, now that "weight" is coined fresh in this course?
The course says: your ruling this morning for Grades 3 to 5 means students arrive knowing "the force of gravity" and "gravity pulls it down", and no longer knowing "weight". So Topic 7's first lesson now recalls "the force of gravity" as the phrase they know and coins "weight" as its name: the force of gravity on an object, measured in newtons. It stops there. Mass is first measured against force in Topic 11, Newton's second law.
Why it is a question: - Olivia suggested the bridge "weight comes from mass and gravity: your mass stays the same on the Moon, your weight changes", and research puts that framework in middle school. - Topic 7's atom is "spot Earth's pull: the object's weight"; mass is not in it, and a Moon case in the coining lesson would add a second idea to a one-idea lesson. - Topic 11 has mass as a measured quantity beside force, which is where "same mass, different weight" can be shown with numbers rather than told.
Cost of changing it: one told sentence and one item in Topic 7's first lesson, or one case in Topic 11; nothing else moves.
My recommendation: coin weight in Topic 7 without the Moon; put the mass-versus-weight bridge in Topic 11, where mass is in hand.
A: Bridge in Topic 11, with mass / B: Tell the Moon case in Topic 7's coining lesson
Proposed checks, not applied until you say so
Three observations from Topic 4's reviewer. Each would become a mechanical check in the shared tools. None is a rule yet; the Topic 4 defects they describe were fixed as defects.
- A set of graph-reading questions must include at least one read between the plotted points. Otherwise a student who finds the cross and reads its row scores every read without using the line. Adopt as a check / Leave as reviewer judgement
- A bar chart whose axis is a count prints "Number of …" with no unit bracket. "(count)" is not a unit. Adopt as a check / Leave as reviewer judgement
- A bank's freshness check compares each easy item's move against the lesson quiz, not its nouns. Five of seven easy items in Topic 4's bank were lesson items with the nouns changed. Adopt as a check / Leave as reviewer judgement
- A distractor about a charged object must not be a true claim. A charged comb pulls every nearby uncharged thing, coin included; the coin is only too heavy to move. A wrong option says "lifts" or "moves", never "pulls". From Topic 7's cold read. Adopt as a physics-checklist line / Leave as reviewer judgement
Your rulings of 15 October, and what happens next
- Card 1, the speed equation in letters (Topic 2): you said yes, mention the letters, but never "a test reference sheet"; just "you can write the equation in words like this: speed = distance ÷ time, or in letters, like this: s = d/t". Applied to Lesson 2's script in those words.
- Card 2, the acceleration arrow (Topic 3): you ruled the other way from my recommendation. Acceleration IS drawn, as a double-headed arrow, for middle school and above including high school, and the course keeps one colour per kind of arrow: speed one colour, acceleration another, force another, current another, and field lines a fifth. This is a course-wide convention, so: it goes into the shared rulebook today for every physics course; Topic 3's figures and scripts are being reworked to draw the acceleration arrow; the force arrows of Topics 6 to 9 are checked against the palette. Topic 3 comes back to this page for your read when its rework is done.
- Topic 7, "applied force": you asked whether the lesson is strictly necessary and recommended deleting it. Deleted. One fact beside the ruling: TEKS 6.7A lists "applied forces" by name, which is why the course had coined it; a push or pull from a person or machine stays in plain words, and the sort lesson keeps it as a contact force. If a released test item turns out to use the term, the cut reverses in one step.
- Topic 6, Lessons 4 to 7 (your taps of 12:52 to 12:56): Lesson 4 fine. Lesson 5 opens with your line ("… is called a force meter. It's what we use to measure how strong forces are."). Lesson 6's two obvious items become your shopping-cart diagram item (four arrows, which one shows the direction of his push). Lesson 7 loses the drawing task, the second item and the fifth, and gains one more of the kind you liked. Its videos were held before these landed; they render after.
- No separate mixed practice (your ruling in the Grade 3 chat): done across Topics 1 to 8. Every practice item now sits in its topic's PP100 bank with its text and key unchanged (102 items moved; the banks grew from 314 to 416), each topic keeps a map from the old practice ids to the bank ids, and the pages run last lesson quiz, then the summary video with its questions, then the PP100. Reserve items stay with their lessons.
- Card 3, compass words on Topic 3's maps: you said compass is fine but you want to see the scripts first. They are on the scripts page now (Topic 3, seven lessons); the card stays open until you have read them.
Your Topic 1 rulings, applied
All applied as above and recorded in topic01_build/records/RULINGS_APPLIED_T01_2026-10-14.md. One small call made for you: in the displacement lesson, "the start is the reference point" is shown on screen (the pin and the working panel) rather than spoken, to keep the script at the 180-word cap with the rule sentence in; say if you want it spoken. Displacement is one lesson, the word coined at once. Number lines are sign-free, left and right preferred (compass words kept only where the scene is a map). Lesson 3 keeps its answer-first opening. The strand opener is deleted. Lesson 2 is deleted and its atom rides in the contrast lesson. Lesson 1 and the distance lesson get three questions; every quiz is capped at five, extras kept in reserve. The summary is one video. Your "T01 intro video" tap was "Other" with a link to the AP Chemistry duration review page; I have asked in chat what you meant by it.
Applied without asking
Every text finding of Topic 2's review (45 applied, one line each in the adjudication record); the practice item where averaging two speeds happened to score was re-valued; instruments now read their real units; the worked blocks' last working line carries its unit; the attached question that asked the order of the routine was replaced by an easy calculation; the quiz cap and the one-video summary from your rulings today; every question carries its atom (register kept in records/).
Topic 16, decided and recorded: "heat" is coined once, as the thermal energy the hotter thing transfers to the colder one, and never used for the energy IN a thing (that stays "thermal energy"); the register's own atom titles ("Heat flows from hot to cold"; "Heat is not the same as temperature") and TEKS 7.8C name the noun, so your rule to use the standard's term decides it. Everywhere else the course keeps your verb: the hotter thing heats the colder thing.
Topic 3's rework, decided and recorded: your select-all item's fourth option "moving at a steady speed" now reads "moving at a steady speed in a straight line", because the lesson before it teaches that a steady speed round a bend is accelerating, so a strong student could tick it; the key is still the first three. Nineteen item drawings came off where the stem states every value, under your rule that an item either needs its diagram or does not mention one; the six map items keep theirs.
Topics 3 to 6, decided and recorded: every text finding of their reviews and cold reads (one line each in the adjudication records); Topic 6's screen directions drop the force arrow the instant contact ends; Topic 6's two quiz items that scored "at the boy's hands" wrong lost that option (see card 4); Topic 7 coins "applied force" because TEKS 6.7A lists "applied forces" by name and your rule is to use the standard's term where one names it (your Grade 3 ruling that a child's push is "a contact force, never the applied force" stood where no standard named it; Topic 7's sorting lesson keeps "contact force" as the class name).