Hi, I’m taking AP Physics 1 this year and I’m wondering what to expect. I’m also taking Calc AB if that helps.
I took AP Physics 1 last year and can offer my thoughts on the course, although it will probably be better this year since teachers have a better idea of what to expect on the exam.
Last year, the course was a mess. There were very limited resources available to us besides the College Board’s “sample” exam. There were AP books available (Barron’s, 5 Steps to a 5, Princeton Review, etc.) but some of them just took their old AP Physics B questions, which were heavily calculation-based, in topics that were covered by the course. At my school, the teacher heavily focused on actually doing the math and solving for a number.
Then, when the exam came, it turned out we didn’t even need calculators. The most difficult calculation was single-digit multiplication. (Disclaimer: I’m an international student, so the exam I took was different from the one College Board posted. I didn’t look at the one posted.)
There is practically no actual math involved in Physics 1, a fundamental mistake I think a lot of teachers and even companies made. It’s all based on understanding concepts and relationships between them. Honestly, you could just be handed the formula sheet and, if you understood what each variable stood for, you could answer a lot of the questions. That is not to say it was easy, though. It had one of the lowest pass rates (over 60% failed, I believe) because the concepts and relationships can get very confusing, and because what we intuitively think would happen simply doesn’t. You can expect to do a lot of labs since one of the 5 free response question is lab design. You will also need to be extremely well rehearsed in all aspects of each concept in order to answer all parts of the free response questions correctly. And even though physics can seem straightforward since it’s math-based, expect to get a few multiple choice questions wrong anyway.
^There’s more math than that. The course/exam includes factoring, graphing, some geometry(area and volume of different shapes), sine/cosine/tangent,etc. It’s still, however, mostly concept-based. On the free response, you will mostly get points for stating correct physics principles to justify your answer, This year, only part a of frq 1 was calculation-based. There will barely be any equations on the actual test, mostly writing/explaining.
Will me taking Calc AB also help?
Not really because there’s not that much math involved. It’s just algebra/geometry that’s required.
Actually, it had THE lowest pass rate with 63% failing.
As mentioned above, the exam is very conceptual based. So if the instructor is teaching the course with plug 'n chug math concepts, you will have issues. As mentioned above, the course is algebra based, so calculus won’t help you (nor will it hurt you).
^ That is what happened to me. Teacher basically taught it like Physics B with removed content. You have know a lot of background knowledge.
I will say though that Calculus does help a little. Only for when you are concerned about slope and going between position, speed and acceleration or with rotational kinematics. I mean if you haven’t taken calculus nothing is wrong, but if you do it helps open your eyes to see where the concepts come from.