AP Physics C: Mechanics / E&M covers two semesters of college physics, including both AP Physics C: Mechanics and AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, with topics including motion, forces, momentum, energy, fields, circuits and electromagnetism. Before taking the class, students should have completed AP Calculus and AP Physics 1 or Physics Honors.
Senior Brandon Guo has taken AP Physics C: Mechanics / E&M, and considers it a simply-designed class. Every day, students learn through working on worksheets in class and are given tips on solving the problems.
“Through these worksheets you’re supposed to learn, but it feels like most of the learning happens at home the day before the test when you do all the practice tests before,” Guo said.
Before tests, Guo spends one to two hours looking through practice tests and an hour working on labs.
“My least favorite thing was the labs, especially the online labs,” Guo said. “A lot of the things we worked with were really abstract so we had to use computer simulations, which [weren’t] as cool as I would have hoped. So I felt the labs could have been better.”
Guo recommends students hone their calculator skills, as it makes solving many problems much easier.
“It’s not as hard as people make it out to be,” Guo said. “There’s actually a lot of people that don’t know calculus and pull up and do perfectly fine.”