Most physics tutoring goes like this:

"Today we're going to learn about gravity. Gravity is the force that pulls objects towards the centre of the Earth. It accelerates all objects equally, regardless of mass. So if I drop a tennis ball and a bowling ball at the same time, they hit the ground together. Now let's do some questions."

The student writes that down. The student understands the words. The student goes into a Year 8 quiz a week later and answers, with confidence, that the bowling ball hits first because it's heavier.

This happens because the student arrived with a wrong intuition (heavier things fall faster) and the lesson didn't dislodge it. It just added a fact on top.

Professor Newton's whole design exists to fix this.

The core move: Predict-Observe-Explain

Newton runs every physics topic through POE — Predict, Observe, Explain:

  1. Predict. Newton sets up a scenario. The student commits to a prediction and explains why. No prediction, no proceeding.
  2. Observe. Newton reveals what actually happens — through a calculation, a real-world reference (the Apollo 15 hammer-feather drop is a favourite), or a thought experiment the student can do at home.
  3. Explain. The student reconciles the prediction with the observation. If they were right, they articulate the physics. If they were wrong, they figure out where their intuition broke.

The point is the commitment. Without a prediction, there's no cognitive conflict when the observation doesn't match. With a prediction, the student's brain has to repair something — and repaired models stick.

There's a dedicated article on POE — see predict-observe-explain-physics.

Newton's other obsession: units

Physics is the subject where every number has a unit. m/s. N. J. W. Pa. m/s². And it's the subject where students lose the most marks to bare numbers — writing "speed = 5" or "force = 20" and stopping.

Newton has a non-negotiable rule: a bare number is never accepted. If a student says "the speed is 5", Newton says "5 what?". Every single time.

The reason for the obsession isn't pedantry. It's that units are a built-in error-checker. If you multiply 150 metres by 30 seconds and get 4500, the units tell you you got the wrong thing: 4500 m·s, not 4500 m/s. The units catch the mistake before the answer does. Newton teaches dimensional analysis as a debugging tool from Year 7.

What a Newton session looks like

A Year 7 student arrives with a homework question about whether a heavier ball falls faster. Rough flow of a 25-minute session:

  1. Energy check. Green, amber, or red — affects how challenging the prediction is.
  2. Set up the prediction. "I drop a tennis ball and a bowling ball at the same time from the same height. Which hits the ground first?" Newton waits for a committed prediction with reasoning. "Same time because they're both balls" is rejected — why the same time? "Bowling ball first because heavier" is accepted as a real prediction.
  3. Observe. "Actually, they hit at the same time. Watch this clip from Apollo 15 — a hammer and a feather, dropped on the Moon, hit the dust together."
  4. Explain. "So what does this tell us about gravity? Why doesn't mass matter?" Guide to: gravity accelerates all objects equally; mass affects weight (force), but not acceleration.
  5. Cross-check. "Now, here on Earth — does a feather actually hit the ground at the same time as a hammer? Why does air resistance matter?" Connect to the homework.
  6. Confidence check + session log.

That's it. One prediction, one observation, one reconciliation. The student walks away with a model they own — not a fact they copied.

Where Newton fits in the faculty

Newton is part of the science triangle — Darwin (biology), Newton (physics), Curie (chemistry, coming next term). They share a teaching philosophy but each has its own first principle:

  • Biology (Darwin): "What's your variable? Why control that?"
  • Physics (Newton): "What's the unit? Do the units work out?"
  • Chemistry (Curie): "What do you think happens to the particles?"

Mentor (the gatekeeper) routes the student to whichever scientist matches the day's homework. Newton hands off to Pi (maths) when a calculation needs algebraic rearranging, and to Darwin when a topic blurs (energy, particle motion).

The curriculum sequencing Newton uses

Physics has an order-of-operations question that nobody talks about. What do you teach first? Forces, energy, motion, electricity, waves — they're all interrelated, and most schools just do them in textbook order.

Newton uses a deliberate sequence: forces first (intuitive, you can feel them), energy second (more abstract but built on forces), motion third (mathematical, requires forces and energy already in place). Then electricity, waves, space. There's a dedicated article — see force-energy-motion-sequencing.

What Newton is not good at

A short honest list:

  • He's not a substitute for a lab. Real demonstrations matter. Newton can describe them, reference them, and help the student think through them — but watching a trolley roll down a ramp once in real life beats reading about it five times.
  • He won't solve a homework question without a prediction. This frustrates students initially. They want the answer. He insists on the predict step. After two weeks, they stop fighting it.
  • He doesn't currently do GCSE. Year 10 will get its own tutor; Newton stays in KS3.
  • He won't write the working out for the student. He'll guide each step, but the student writes.

Why I built him this way

Honestly? Because I am married to someone who loved physics at school and then froze in the GCSE exam because she'd been taught everything backwards. Every concept arrived as a definition and a formula. Nobody had ever asked her to guess what would happen before showing her. Nobody had drawn out, deliberately, the intuitions she had to correct.

POE is the antidote. It's not invented — Richard White and Richard Gunstone published it in the 1990s and it's been quietly used by good physics teachers ever since. What's new is that we now have AI that can run a POE conversation with one child at a time, patiently, every evening, for £14 a month.

That's what Newton is.

A note on tone

Physics has a reputation for being intimidating. Newton is the opposite. He's methodical, curious, patient with wrong predictions, and explicitly celebrates them. Tone modes — challenge / normal / gentle / minimal — adapt to the student's energy. On a tired Wednesday evening, Newton runs gentle: one prediction, one observation, one explanation, twelve minutes total. Some sessions look like physics, some look like a chat about why a roller-coaster works.

The longer-term goal isn't to make every Year 8 fall in love with physics. It's to keep enough of them from quietly closing the door on it before GCSE choices come round.

FAQ

Why does Newton refuse to explain things first?

Because explaining first is the standard teaching move that doesn't work. The student listens, nods, and goes home with the same wrong intuition. Forcing a prediction first surfaces the wrong intuition into the open, where it can be tested and revised.

What if my child gets the prediction wrong? Won't that be discouraging?

The opposite — Newton explicitly celebrates wrong predictions. He tells the student up front that wrong predictions are where learning happens. After a few sessions, students start enjoying the prediction step.

What KS3 physics topics does Newton cover?

All of them: forces, motion and speed, energy, electricity and circuits, magnetism, waves, sound, light, density and pressure, the solar system. He routes back to Pi (maths) for calculation skills when needed.

How does this work without a physical demonstration?

Three ways: calculations the student works through, references to well-known demonstrations (Apollo 15 hammer-feather), and household predictions (drop a coin and a piece of paper). The household ones are the best.

Jason runs aitutors.me. His Year 8 once predicted a heavier ball would fall faster, then watched a YouTube clip of the Apollo 15 drop, then sat very quietly for a minute. That's the moment Newton is built around. Updated 21 May 2026.