Surviving AP Physics

I can say that without a doubt that AP physics is one of the hardest science courses that I have taken during my high school career. Let’s just get one thing straight, this entire course is applied mathematics. It deals with a lot of concepts that require careful thought and can at times be very tedious. Don’t get me wrong, I think the class is very interesting and I like the challenge. But, it is definitely not for everyone. To succeed in this class you are going to have to be willing to work hard to understand the difficult problems or concepts.

The biggest issue I have with this class is the tests. My teacher designs his tests like the AP exam, so that we get practice with the time constraint.  This is especially difficult because each problem requires you to think and a lot of math work with equations in order to answer. So basically if you don’t know it, just skip it and move on because otherwise you will not finish.

However, you do get an equation sheet that will be on the AP exam that you can use. This takes some of the pressure off because you don’t have to memorize the many complex equations. But, when you do you math ALWAYS check your units and make sure they are the right ones. There are many times that the question will give you multiple different units and you will have to convert it before you even start solving the problem.

None of the concepts you will learn are too out there; you should be able to understand everything and everything seems to make sense. So this class is for someone who really likes complicated math problems that you will have to use both logic and mathematics to solve. I don’t want to scare anyone away from taking this class but I am just warning you what you are getting yourself into. This class is completely manageable but it is by no means an easy science course that you take to boost your GPA.

When solving complicated physics problems always be careful and double check your work when you are done. It is really easy to make a stupid mistake and get an answer that is way off. Even something as simple as rounding can change your ending answer by a lot.

This class is definitely very challenging and something that you shouldn’t take lightly.

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