- The AP Survival Guide series (literally) -
- Abstract for AP Physics 1 -
Whether one is in AP Physics or going to be in one: this post was made to essentially point out the things that one must look forward to, take note off, look out for and must keep in mind while in an AP Physics 1 class. This post does not serve to hand the entire years worth of AP Physics 1 down like candy to children, take the class or look "Flipping Physics" on YouTube to have that education for free. Also, yes, this post is USA-centric, because AP (Advanced Placement) is an USA-only (for now) course unlike the IB (International Baccalaureate).
On a short excursion, assuming all schools and AP classes are created equal across the USA, AP Physics 1 will mainly cover the following items:
- Vectors (Id est: Linear motion at first with speed, distance, displacement, velocity and acceleration)
- Forces (Id est: Force of Gravity, Normal Force, Applied Force and Frictional force being your big four covered)
- Newton's Three Laws of motion
- Energy (Id est: as Work and Joules)
- Kinetic and Potential energies (with their constants)
- Momentum and Impulse
- Angular motion (Id est: Angular versions of linear motion with different symbols to come along with it)
- Waves (Id est: Transverse and Longitude Waves)
- Finally charges (Id est: Attraction-Repulsion, negative/positive charges and Coulomb's Constant)
- Multiple Choice-
The multiple choice portion will take up half of the time and will come in the stock-standard four possible answer format. The majority, if not all questions, of the test will usually consist of and can combine with the following:
- Number crunching (Id est: plug and chug numbers to find the missing answer)
- Equation derivatives (Id est: derive an equation for the missing answer)
- Picture analysis (Id est: self-evident)
Number crunching as a term would seem foreign to those outside the USA, so to explain away this crass: it's the repetitious work that one must continuously plug in numbers to get an answer, these can take forever to solve if you have to deal with the next item. That being, equation derivatives which should be universal but for those who haven't even heard the term of derivatives: you set about staring at one equation where if one were to think hard enough it will auto-transform itself, if only that were true; mainly one will spend a lot of time trying to fit an equation to set restrictions, doing it but realizing they got something off-kilter like someone incorrectly solving a Rubik's cube. Picture analysis, probably the easiest the do but the hardest to relate back to the problem, is just that; you better have studied those formulas and the scenarios they apply in!
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The other half of the test's time will consist of you solving FRQs which essentially will have you look at the scenario to then analyze the givens to come up with answers to the questions they ask you. (Which sometimes you have to compliment the College Board, company that owns AP, for creating questions that not even college students will find - or at least not stumble upon in that insidious form.) The following questions here are common:
- Lab-based FRQs (analyze the lab scenario and generate answers for such)
- Scenario-based FRQs (self-evident, look at the scenario and analyze it)
- Derivative questions (derive equations from Givens stated)
- Proportion questions (self-evident, analyze the scenario equations)
- Labs -
(For my school: this hadn't been used in tests, but some labs do count heavily on grades. And if you want the relative answer to that: compare a single feather to a bar of steel.) These are liken to that Chemistry labs or Biology labs if you've taken Chemistry/Biology beforehand in either a Standards ("Regular" version) or Honors ("Non-AP High standards" version) course. If you haven't been in a classroom lab, here's the general rundown for AP Physics 1 specifically:
- Pre-Lab questions that pertain to the topic at hand (philosophize, relate or hypothesize; all three intertwining at times which can be actually thought provoking).
- Background (like, the story of the thing for AP kids to not fall asleep when doing the lab), variable listings (controlled, independent and dependent variables) and the Procedure for one's conducting inside the lab as to minimize error and maximize safety.
- Conducting the lab and gathering the data (self-evident)
- Formatting the data and graphing it (self-evident, you may need a statistics nerd)
- Assessment of the data, conclusion and insight for better improvements (self-evident, last one basically being a self-critique session when auto/self-analyzing your and your group-mates contributions)
- Core concepts -
With the abstract out of the way, now let's get to the core concepts. These are the ones that will be useful when the hard times come in to wreck the place, usually in a lab or a test. For these need to be kept in mind at all times, like the usage of one's sword when being a knight or one's plow when being a farmer. Since these will be recurrent themes across the entire year of AP Physics 1.
- Givens and Symbolic Givens -
Givens are the things that the question, whether it be in your homework or your quizzes or your tests, that they outright state what unit/symbol has what quantity of such. So a scenario can be: "Find the displacement if velocity v and time t are this" where v and t are arbitrary numbers. Of course not many, if any at all, questions will ever be as simple as that, but that should get you to start understanding that behind all the mysticism* inside the question, there's this underlying simple question they really are asking... Which they never are interested in just directly stating as they are payed more for the quantity words per question they make than helping kids get around in life... Of course, that may have changed since then but who knows with College Board...
The same follows suit with Symbolic Givens. Essentially they are diagrams, pictures and outright symbols that tell you something about what they represent but don't have to be outright stated in the scenario. Whenever you are in possession of these you should annotate them somewhere in unit/picture form because:
- Easier to analyze and break-down as to help solve the problem which will help you find the right answer.
- Possibility of "pity" points from the teacher or the test scorer somewhere in those AP facilities.
- Easier to remember and makes it easier to find out what one is solving for, if you hadn't fallen into red-herrings.
- Graphs -
As a small excursion, graphs play a huge role when solving a problem and may be the only way to answer a problem correctly. These are liken to Symbolic Givens, but they act more like an answer than being something useful to yield the actual answer down the road. What must be taken to heart is how to format one: that is the title must represent what is being analyzed at hand, first item being the y-value, the second item being the x-value and that there's a clear relationship between the two that can be analyzed. Most of the time graphs act like the following:
- Literally anything vs. time (Usually a change in something over time)
- Derivative graphs (graphing using derived units to symbolize them in an empirical way)
- Area graphs (graphing the area of a graph that is useful for analysis)
- Vectors -
Vectors is the first and most major concept that an AP Physics student, hell even a mathematics student, has to grasp for their entire physics career. Since this core concept will manifest itself in a lot of subject areas covered by Physics in its Universality (entire range of all possible particularities). Vectors are easily explained as having both magnitude and direction. This concept is important to grasp because:
- Many units are vectors:
- Which that determines how one goes about solving a problem
- How one graphs a unit
- How one answers the original problem
- The denotation of the unit is crucial in any analysis of a problem/scenario
- Vector Components -
Equally as important as vectors are vector components. They come in all shapes and sizes and depend upon the theta (angle) of the object and/or its direction as to determine the relative quantity of the vector component. The following are four prime examples of vector components, followed by the general equation for the first two:
- Fx = FcosTheta (sometimes flip-flops with Fy based upon the scenario)
- Fy = FsinTheta (sometimes flip-flops with Fx based upon the scenario)
- Perpendicular force (based upon the scenario, usually related to Weight and Normal Force)
- Parallel force (based upon the scenario, usually related to friction)
- Force Body Diagrams (FBDs) -
Force Body Diagrams are as they sound. They are vector diagrams that display the forces that act upon the object, with magnitude and direction, and obeys the scenario with all the Givens and Symbolic Givens. Most FBDs are:
- Center of mass FBDs (where all the arrows point away from the center; assumes that the center of mass is in that centralized dot and center of gravity is there as well; which makes it easier to analyze how a force interacts with an object and evades the Calculus that such a question would usually invoke)
- Center of mass FBDs without the center of gravity being where the center of mass is (same as the case above)
- Incline plane FBDs (same as the first case, but force components will be broken up to parallel and perpendicular directions relative to the incline itself)
- Centripetal force FBDs (where a force is pointing, at any point of the circle, straight forward but the object will continuously revolving/rotating around the center of the circular/angular path it creates)
- Derivatives and Anti-Derivatives -
Derivatives and Anti-Derivatives are important in the fact of connecting equations together, variables linked with important equations and equations restructured around units for a variable. If one can derive an equation for a variable one way, then one can undo it to return back to the original equation. Regardless, Calculus students will be shamed out of the classroom if they try their wizardry and just follow the teacher's advise that one should study up their equation sheet and know the equations so one can easily connect a seemingly random variable with concrete equations. But do give respect to the students that are AP Calculus AB/BC, they might just give you enough tricks to make your physics test a whole lot easier without trying.
(This is considered a core concept since many questions and many variables can easily be explained away with just reshuffling equations to fit the overall problem in the first place.)
- Concrete -
Withal, this post should be remembered as a guide that is a living document and not the Absolute Law on this subject. As of 2019 Anno Domini, these are relevant and have been taught in this way. Yet in 2020 all of this could drastically change. But in consideration of practicality and the fact that "why to change it if ain't broken?" line seems to apply to the AP College Board, this post should serve well for the following years.
- Footnotes -
*Mysticism: purposeful vagueness, indirection and usage of red herrings that makes it difficult, but not impossible, to analyze the question correctly with all the statements listed in the problem/scenario.
Withal: "Even so" in the Middle English Context.
Calculus: A discipline of math dealing with the Dialectical (ever-changing and dynamic) progress of everything mathematical down to the Dialectical double of differentiation and integration as the core concept of such.
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Hot damn doggo!
Now I wonder.. will maths leave space for physics as an additional specific subject..? I could achieve the trifecta of science best friends, biology and chemistry are well covered <3 but physics, short of accosting Brian Cox at the pub, I should’ve known you’d have my back! Forces – check, energy - check, waves – check, lab etiquette – check, and the list just goes on - check check check! Holy perceptible reality!! I might finally have the team to build a Resonator and see the floaty floaty creatures just like From Beyond!! Make actual dreams come true!!
Joking aside, this is so interesting. I did a bit of looking at the closest equivalent here, and the direct one is relativity new still but it is more like part of one that we have had for a while. Physics was a subject I really thought a lot about studying at this level, but I come from a very strong science area, and the general comparison people make between others put me off doing something so excelled in locally. It is fascinating to see the areas covered in the US though, and how you were tested on them, always interesting how places chose to evaluate learning. What aspects did you enjoy most? I can see how this has given you building blocks for some aspects of the felixverse. I love that so many fiction lovers do love science, and the imagination and possibilities it sparks, hopefully now I will have an even greater appreciation for yours <3
So Victor, let’s get your opinion on my own humble little faux thought experiment (that is more just the pondering of my wayward mind, please humor me even if this is a stupid question). So space/time is a thing, and travelling through one involved travelling through the other, due to the wider motion of the universe, it is impossible to not move through space, just as it is impossible not to stop the passage of time. But what would happen to time outside the motion of the universe? To put it more explicitly, if a planet, stationary outside the reach of forces from other planetary bodies, wasn’t affected by the expansion of the universe (although I know, this is a whole other question in itself), but say somehow, a planet existed that did not in any way move through spacetime (regardless of the normal background propulsion observed), what would the passage of time be like on that planet? Everything moves in a linear direction through time, but then equally, that is tied into space/time motion, gravity distorting space and with it the passage of time, so something outside all the gravity distortions, and not moving at all, would it have time as we know it? Not that I think there is a set answer, just fun to wonder.
My workplace hates videos ~^^~
Hue hue hue hue!!!~
Oooo!~ Another physics person, yah really have gravitas on me, Ceratiola of Calluna. I enjoyed the mathematical aspects, but I wished I was taught the Calculus aspects to enjoy it even further - so I liked actually the "real" thing, the concepts as they are when we experience them. I love it even more when SFF can create alternative physics and material manipulations!!!!~ But dzieki Physics Cally!~
On the Vacuum planet: If we were to talk about the Vacuum Planet experiment, which will be flawed as an answer because we cannot imagine such successfully without being tainted by what we remove, on certain concepts, then I would say that the material flow of things (displacement of matter taken qualitatively, aka time) would highly dependent on how close you were to the core of the planet. Basically, since the observation of a very displacement of matter changes over time when we get affected by certain bodies of gravitas. Upon that note, even in the Vacuum World / Second World, we would have many varying speeds depending on one's magnitude to the core, material flow seemingly going faster as we integrate ourselves closer to the core.
(On my current philosophy on time: I humour our perception is linear bound or that we cannot materially exist what we were in the past when it had happened as it happened, yet we can with our memories since we can remember what had happened; yet everything moves spirally where we feel we can be cycles and other times linear, but we always advance as we do encounter farces of a tragedy [or an event repeating itself over at least twice] as we go through the motions.)
Time outside of matter: But if we imagine a Vacuum Universe with no matter other than undetermined Subject, we would have no understanding of time and be an amorphous blob floating about if that. Since time (all of our conceptions, no matter how Idealist instead of Materialist some are) is highly dependent on material flow / the displacement of matter, we wouldn't have an understanding of time. If undetermined Subject could theorize time, either it be something irrelevant, dependent on the material-lessness of the Universe they occupy or they have no way to prove other than solipsism.
its just the hotto dogu song
nope, wasn't talking about a vacuum planet, the planet itself doesn't matter for the purposes of the thought, it doesn't have to be a planet.
(i was thinking more about space time, and the fact that as you move through space, it changes how you experience time. Travelling fast through space distorts the passage of time, but we are are on a planet in orbit of a sun in orbit of a etc etc, we are constantly moving forwards through spacetime, our motion through space must affect our perception of time. therefore if we were able to get to a place in the universe where there was no distortion of spacetime from gravity, and be in a stationary position, what would the passage of time be like)
But thank you, you very clearly slapped that question down lol this is why i didn't study physics in the end, it makes me wonder
Hue!~
In the realm of philosophy, Vacuum means empty space or "isolated." Regardless, I was commenting on the example.
(<3)
Hue, this is after all my basic mental folly after years of studying philosophy.
ah yes, i get you, i didn't explain the example well enough... i'm sorry... i was only trying to rephrase my original question, the planet part of it wasn't supposed to be the focus, but i get it was a stupid question, but thank you for your consideration in telling me so <3
It wasn’t a stupid questions for there can never be stupid qs... only stupid answers!!!!~ Otherwise I apologize for not realizing the focus of your comment in the first part. And thanks for not beating me over the head for talking again~