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AP Physics Syllabus
Mr. Sorensen
[email protected]
Room 213
215-862-2028 ext 1213
Goals of an AP Physics Course

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To build upon a student’s fundamental understanding of physics from earlier courses for a
more rigorous treatment of topics
Use of labs to gain practice in inquiry, application of theoretical concepts, and analysis of
concepts.
Train students in the application of calculus in real world uses.
Text
Currently we use Physics: For Scientists and Engineers 7th Ed by Raymond Serway1,
Students are required to read the text for a given topic prior to class discussion of this topic.
Quizzes will be given on the readings.
Materials Required for Class:
The students will need to provide a notebook for class and homework. Also, a separate,
bound notebook is required for labs. This notebook will periodically be collected to grade your lab
work. A graphing calculator is recommended. I can lend you one during class, but do not have
enough to lend them out for the year.
Prerequisites:
Precalculus, Chemistry and concurrently enrolled in Calculus or higher.
Scheduling
The class meets for all thirty-six weeks of the school year. There are five meetings per week.
There will be two or three double periods per week, depending on how A/B day falls. These extended
classes are not always used for lab work, but they are helpful in that they allow for the opportunity for
extended labs to be done without interruption. This course is a bundle including AP Physics C –
Mechanics and AP Physics C – Electricity and Magnesium; providing a true full year of college level
physics. Approximately half of the year is spent on each part of the course.
A schedule will be provided at the start of each month. It will be available online at
http://rsorensen.wikispaces.com/AP . This will be a general guideline for due dates and test dates.
Exams
There will be an exam at the conclusion of each unit. These will be both assessment tools for
the teacher and practice for the AP exam for the student. The tests will contain some problems from
released AP exams and some that are teacher generated. This will aid the students in seeing the shape
and form of the AP test so that they are prepared for the types of questions that will be asked of them.
1
Serway, Raymond. Physics: For Scientists and Engineers 7 th Edition. Philadelphia: Saunders College Publishing, 2007.
Problem Sets
At the commencement of each chapter, the students will be given a set of 5-10 critical thinking
questions and 10-20 problems to work that are chosen in order to illustrate and give practice in the
fundamentals of the unit being worked on. They are used with the idea that while lecture and lab
work are the proper tool for the students to gain a basic understanding of the concepts, extra practice
is always needed in the methods and techniques of problem solving. These are difficult problems and
it is expected that it will take more than an hour for each problem set. The problems for the entire
year are available on the wiki at http://rsorensen.wikispaces.com/AP .
AP Test Preparation
The final few weeks prior to the AP test will be devoted to preparation. This will involve
taking full AP Tests from previous years under timed test conditions. It will also involve working on
Free Response Questions from old AP tests for homework and then discussing grading as done by the
AP graders. The goal of this time is not just extra practice with problem solving and the types of
multiple choice questions asked by the AP test, but also to gain an understanding of how the Free
Response Questions are graded during the exam.
General Lab information
Labs are a prime part of the physics experience. For this reason we spend between one and
two class periods a week involved in lab. Students are required to keep a bound notebook of their lab
work.
The format of labs will vary as necessary, but one of the primary formats that will be used is
where the students are asked a generic question (for example, is this spring/mass system undergoing
simple harmonic motion) and then asked to use the tools they have at their disposal to come to a
conclusion and then offer proof based on data. They are also required to offer an explanation behind
their decision that is not only based on data, but also on theory, which they have at their disposal from
lecture and problem work. Other types of labs include, but are not limited to problem solving labs,
labs meant to illustrate a given point, and labs to give the students practice in a certain area. Below is
a demonstration of the different labs for each unit.
Topics
Unit I – Kinematics – 3 weeks
 Topics
o Introduction
o One Dimensional Motion
o Vectors
o Two Dimensional Motion
o Freefall (both one dimensionally and two dimensionally)
 Potential Labs
o Motion Maps Lab
o Vector Lab – application of velocity vectors.
Unit II Dynamics – 2 weeks
 Topics
o Forces
o Applications of Forces
 Potential Labs
o Friction
o Centripetal Motion
Unit III – Energy and Linear Momentum – 3 weeks
 Topics
o Work
o Kinetic and Potential Energy
o Power
o Conservation of Mechanical Energy (with and without non-conservative forces)
o Linear Momentum and Impulse
o Collisions (one and two dimensional) and Conservation of Momentum
o Center of Mass
 Potential Labs
o Projectiles Revisited – looking at energy lost as a ball rolls down a ramp. Forces the
students to examine what is happening to missing energy.
o Energy in a spring lab – use of motion detector/range finders to examine the energy of a
mass hanging from a spring. Requires multiple days of work due to use of inquiry and
student design.
Unit IV – Rotational Motion – 3 weeks
 Topics
o Rotational Kinematics.
o Moments of inertia.
o Rotational Energy and its connection to work and power of a system.
o Torque.
 Its relationship to work and to angular acceleration.
 Calculation using Cross (Vector) Products.
o Rolling motion.
o Angular momentum and its conservation.
o Systems in rotational and translational equilibrium.
 Potential Labs
o Measurement of Moment of Inertia – student designed lab procedure to determine the
moment of inertia of common objects. Analysis involves discussion of relation of
inertia to speed down a ramp from rest. Comparison of inertias and speeds of varying
objects is done.
o Balance the Meter stick – calculation of forces necessary to create equilibrium. This is a
lab that is just as much about error analysis and appropriateness as it is practice of the
concepts involved.
Unit V – Gravity – 1 week
 Topics
o Newton’s Law of Gravitation
o Kepler’s Laws and Planetary Motion under Newton’s Law
o Potential Energy in a changing gravitational field
o Conservation of energy in satellite motion.
 Potential Labs
o Modeling orbits
 Software will be employed to model the orbit of a planet. Newton’s law will be
assumed and they will attempt to derive Kepler’s laws through the use of data
gathering.
Unit VI – Simple Harmonic Oscillations – 1 week
 Topics
o Simple Harmonic Motion
o Pendulums and horizontal Spring/Mass systems
o Differential Equations of harmonic systems
o Energy in systems undergoing Simple Harmonic Motion
 Potential Labs
o Hanging Spring/Mass System revisited – using data gathering techniques and
knowledge of simple harmonic motion prove that this system undergoes simple
harmonic motion. The students are responsible for designing the method of testing
and being able to explain how their evidence acts as proof.
Unit VII – Electric Fields and Potentials – 3 weeks
 Topics
o Electric fields
o Electrostatics
o Coulomb’s Law
o Interaction of electric fields and charged particle – motion
o Gauss’s Law and Flux of an electric field through a surface
o Conductors in electric fields
o Electric Potential/Potential Difference – definition and source
o Relationship between Electric Fields and Electric Potentials
o Continuous charge distributions
 Potential Labs
o Electroscope Investigation.
 This lab entails a look at electroscopes, how they work and how they are
charged. The students are involved first with a discussion of how charges affect
the electroscope. This also leads to a discussion of the activity of free electrons
in a conductor.
o Equipotential surfaces and their accompanying electric fields
 Use of conductive paper and ink, along with a DC power supply and voltmeter
to find lines of equal electric potential and then apply knowledge of electric
fields and forces and potential energy to determine the direction of the electric
field in the given space.
Unit VIII – Circuits – 3 weeks
 Topics
o Capacitance
o Equivalent capacitors
o Dielectrics in capacitors
o Current, resistance, and Ohm’s Law
o Power of a current
o Conductance of a wire
o Electromotive force
o Equivalent resistors
o Kirchhoff’s Rules
 Potential Labs
o A test for Ohmic or non-Ohmic materials.
o RC Circuits – fast and slow
 Examine the effect of the time constant of a simple RC circuit on the voltage
across a capacitor (and by V=q/C the charge present on the capacitor) by
creating circuits with known resistors and capacitors.
 Predict effects of modifying resistors/capacitors through addition of more
resistors or capacitors in series and parallel.
 The second half of the lab is not just a repeat of previous work but an attempt to
introduce the students to tools and techniques not usually encountered, such as
the oscilloscope and function generator.
Unit IX – Magnetism – 2 weeks
 Topics
o Dynamics of motion of a moving charge in a magnetic field.
o Magnetic fields
o Affect of magnetic forces on currents
o Torque on a current carrying loop due to magnetic forces
o Causes of magnetic fields
o Biot-Savart Law
o Ampère’s Law
o Gauss’s Law for magnets
o Magnetic Moments
 Potential Labs
o Determine the Magnetic Field Due to A Current
 The students are asked to determine the direction of the magnetic field at all
locations around the wire with the current both on and off.
o Strength of a Solenoid
 The students are given a length of wire and a current source (equal for every
student) and asked to create the strongest magnetic field possible.
 The test for completion is holding static a given weight. The strongest field will
be able to hold the most weight. There is no acceleration.
Unit X – Interaction between Electricity and Magnetism – 2-3 weeks
 Topics
o Induced currents caused by changing flux of magnetic fields.
o Lenz’s Law.
o Induced electric fields.
o Faraday’s Law.
o Eddy currents.
o Self induction and Back-EMF.
o Resistor-Inductor (RL) circuits.
o Potential energy in the magnetic field of an inductor.
o Mutual inductance.
o Inductor-Capacitor (LC) circuits and their energy oscillations.
o Resistor-Inductor-Capacitor circuits (RLC).
o Alternating Current
o Implications for Inductors, Capacitors and RLC Circuits due to Alternating Current.
o Resonance in RLC Circuits
o Transformers, Rectifiers and Filters
o Conduction and Displacement currents
o Maxwell’s Equations
o Electromagnetic Waves

Potential Labs
o RLC Circuits and Resonance
 Like a previous lab on RC circuits there will be construction of a circuit
using components of known values.
 There are three main parts to this lab.
 Examination of the resonant properties of the system. There is a
comparison done between the expected resonance (due to the time
constant of the circuit) and what is actually observed. There is a
look at the reaction of the circuit to being driven by a non resonant
frequency.
 A look at the decay of the circuit when being driven by a very low
frequency so as to examine the circuit’s own reaction to it’s design.
 When possible the students will be introduced to virtual circuit design software.