AP Physics B

<p>I think my AP Physics B class is behind. We all know the material extremely well. I took a practice yesterday and of the stuff we have covered I got one question wrong. However, we are just about to start waves and stuff like that on Monday. Where are you in your AP Physics Class? Thank you in advance.</p>

<p>We are presently studying circuits and the application of Ohm’s Law, roughly two weeks into the electricity and magnetism portion of the course. We completed waves about four weeks ago.</p>

<p>does your teacher try to finish early or is my class a month behind?</p>

<p>I really do not have any concept of how much review time my teacher wishes to have after completing the material. But if you all have not yet started on the E & M portion, I would consider your class to be behind in the curriculum.</p>

<p>We just started electricity (Coulomb’s Law). We’ve finished Kinematics, Thermodynamics, Fluids, Waves, and Optics.</p>

<p>We’re now on Electricity and Magnetism. However, because I’m on the block schedule, my class skipped projectile motion, torque, and waves. Also we vaguely covered harmonic motion and pendulum and rushed through fluid and thermodynamics.</p>

<p>We are wrapping up our unit on electricity.</p>

<p>^I would assume that your instructor covers waves, optics, thermodynamics, and nuclear physics after electricity, right?</p>

<p>I took this class last year, and being on the block schedule meant that as of February we were still doing circuits (though we did cover Newtonian mechanics pretty extensively). The class ended up not getting to nuclear physics at all, and we barely spent any time (like one class period each) on thermodynamics and waves. It ended up being a lot of self-studying for the kids that cared.</p>

<p>@mifune- No, we’ve already covered waves and thermodynamics.</p>

<p>^Wow, you must be proceeding through the curriculum very quickly.</p>

<p>@Mifune- Maybe, but in all honesty I feel like I’m self-studying for this AP. We never go over homework problems. Usually it’s a powerpoint lecture and a few problems thrown here and there. We don’t use our textbooks at all because she doesn’t like it. I have a nice teacher, but I feel like collectively we aren’t retaining this information. Her philosophy is “I teach you the concepts and you have to apply them.” I mean that’s fine, but we don’t ever know if we are doing these problems right because they are solely graded upon effort.</p>

<p>How does your physics class work? Is it the same or different? Our homework is supposedly from the (ex?) AP Physics director of the Collegeboard. It’s basically a packet of problems every night. It always has a comic strip on it. Do you guys have the same homework?</p>

<p>Any of you guys have Giancolli for the textbook?</p>

<p>We don’t use a text book in my class. </p>

<p>Topics Covered so far (Our class is a B/C: Mech Compilation, and our teacher’s been awarded the Siemen’s AP Award for the state, so it works well)</p>

<ul>
<li>Kinematics and Projectile Motion</li>
<li>Circular and Rotational Motion</li>
<li>Dynamics (Circular and Rotational included)</li>
<li>Momentum</li>
<li>(Basically all of Newtonian Physics)</li>
<li>Energy</li>
<li>Simple Harmonic Motion (Including Waves)</li>
<li>Fluids</li>
<li>Thermodynamics (Just finished)</li>
</ul>

<p>We’ve finished mechanics and fluids, almost done with electric stuff, gotta do thermal, waves, optics and nuclear/atomic physics</p>

<p>Wow I knew my class was ahead. We just finished mirrors and lenses and are going into relativity next week. I guess we’ll just review for the AP test for the last month of the curriculum. Bear in mind that I’m taking a two period class so we move pretty quickly. Oh and we use Serway’s text I believe</p>

<p>Wow you people are sooo lucky. My class is reviewing Circular motion and is going to start E & M in a week or two (we are on block schedule). This means that on my own time, i am learning: thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, simple harmonic motion, optics, waves, and atomic & nuclear physics. People think i can still pull off a 5? (I consider myself the best student in my class and understand the physics i do know quite well.)</p>