Knowing the formulas isn’t the same as knowing what to do.
Your student can do the homework. Then the test looks different – and suddenly they have no idea where to start.
Maybe you’ve seen this before. Your student can follow the examples in class. They finish the homework. They might even understand the formulas. Then a test asks about the same physics in a slightly different way – and suddenly they don’t know where to begin. Or maybe physics hasn’t clicked yet, and every new topic feels like starting over. Either way, it’s not that your student can’t do physics. They haven’t yet built a reliable process for figuring out what to do when the problem isn’t familiar. That’s what we teach.
The result: greater understanding, confidence, and independence when they face problems they haven’t seen before.
AP · Honors · Regents · Homeschool · Early College
Robin DeMarco, M.Ed
Robin has spent 35+ years teaching students how to think about physics — not just how to pass it. Her award-winning teaching wasn’t built to sell a coaching program; it’s the same philosophy she’s used for three decades.
Sometimes the problem isn’t physics. It’s knowing what to do when the physics problem doesn’t look familiar.
A student can understand the formulas, complete familiar homework problems, and still freeze when faced with something new. That’s because solving unfamiliar problems takes more than remembering equations — it takes a process for observing, questioning, reasoning, and deciding what to try next.
There’s a difference. And it matters more than most people realize.
Traditional physics instruction often teaches students what to calculate before they’ve learned how to make sense of the situation. That works well enough when a problem looks familiar. But when the numbers change, the diagram looks different, or the equation isn’t obvious, students can suddenly find themselves without a place to start.
At Centripetal Education, I don’t start with equations. I start where physics actually lives — in what you can observe, question, and reason through.
Whether you’re in high school physics, Regents, or AP — homeschooling, heading into your first college course, or the parent who wants to actually understand what your student is up against — you’re in the right place.
Here’s how most physics classes work.
Physics class has a lot of ground to cover. So students are often taught a process that works well when the problem looks familiar: find the variables, find the formula, plug in the numbers, get the answer. There’s nothing wrong with that process — it’s efficient, and it’s necessary.
The gap shows up when the problem doesn’t look familiar. That’s when students need something more: a way to make sense of what they’re seeing and decide what to do next. That’s the gap Centripetal fills.
We start with what you can see.
Before we name anything, we observe it.
Before we measure it, we discuss it.
Before we explain it, we investigate it.
When it’s all put together, we understand it.
Observe. Discuss. Investigate. Understand
The Physics Thinking Method
Observe
Develop the habits of mind used by scientists and engineers.
Learn how to analyze unfamiliar situations, recognize patterns, and ask the right questions before reaching for an equation.
Discuss
In the real world you don’t work on a problem alone. You have a team.
The team brainstorms ideas, offers suggestions and support and provides direction when facing a problem.
Investigate
Physics comes alive through demonstrations, experiments, and inquiry.
Instead of simply reading about concepts, you’ll investigate them through carefully designed activities that connect theory to the real world.
Understand
Memorization fades.
Understanding lasts.
Every lesson focuses on the “why” behind the mathematics so students build lasting conceptual knowledge instead of temporary test preparation.
That’s the Physics Thinking Method — and it’s the same process physicists use in actual labs, on real research teams, solving problems that don’t come with an answer key.
The result isn’t simply a student who can solve more problems. It’s a student who has a process for approaching problems they haven’t seen before — and the confidence that comes with knowing they can.
“I don’t know where to start” to “I don’t know how to do this yet — but I know how to start figuring it out.” That’s the confidence we’re building. Not the confidence that comes from knowing every formula. The confidence that comes from knowing how to begin.
Real students. Real progress.
“He felt happy returning to his classes, with the sense that he might even have been ahead of his classmates…Thank you, Mrs. DeMarco, for a real boost to his confidence, as well as to his knowledge.”
Susan Vennari
Parent
“I found Ms. DeMarco’s tutoring sessions to be very wonderfully structured and designed to help teach me best in a way I would understand…The tutoring sessions helped me immensely and I found both my test scores and my overall grade improving.”
Colleen Campbell,
Ball State University
Meet Robin
Robin Christine DeMarco is a national award-winning physics educator who spent decades in the classroom doing something unusual: refusing to teach physics as a formula hunt.
She earned the Cable in the Classroom Crystal Apple Award for an interdisciplinary physics lab on the Genesee River — because that’s exactly the kind of teacher she is. One who believes learning happens best when you’re in the experience before you know what you’re learning.
Centripetal Education is the next chapter. Same teaching. No school board.
Choose your path
Use AI Wisely
Artificial intelligence is changing education.
Students should learn how to use AI as a thinking partner—not as a shortcut that replaces their own reasoning.
Our programs teach students how to evaluate, question, and improve AI-generated work using the habits of scientific thinking.
Not sure where to start?
Take the Physics Readiness quiz — ten short challenges that reveal how your student (or you) already approaches problems, and what to build before the first day of physics class.
It’s free. It’s fast. And the questions might surprise you.
What if your student didn’t freeze when the problem looked unfamiliar? What if they just started figuring it out? That’s what we build at Centripetal Education.
Physics isn’t about numbers. It’s about how the world interacts with everything.
Centripetal Education | Bringing Physics Home