<p>I was planning my courses for Junior/Senior year and I wanted your guys' opinions. We have to option for science at my school.</p>
<p>A) Take honors physics junior year and then take AP ES/Bio/Chem/Physics senior year.
B) Take AP Physics junior year and take AP Bio/Chem/ES senior year</p>
<p>My question is, would you recommend taking AP Physics without taking honors first. The only prerequisits for AP Physics is honors chem and bio which I will have taken.</p>
<p>I took honors of the sciences before each AP of them, and found it MUCH better than my son’s situation, where he has to take the AP without having taken honors first.</p>
<p>I recommend option A therefore. </p>
<p>Though what we did is that we had Honor Bio freshman year, then AP Bio and Honor Chem sophomore year, then AP Chem and Honors Physics junior year, then AP Physics senior year, which I think is best and should be mandated by the College Board - one year of the science before you can take the AP.</p>
<p>@skieurope I will check with my counselor because our school’s course catalog only says AP Physics</p>
<p>@rhandco Our school does not allow us to take AP Sciences before junior year and we are required to Honors bio and chem freshman and sophomore year. I could however study Honors Physics the summer before AP Physics</p>
<p>If it’s AP Physics 1, which I guess is sort of like AP Physics B, you can definitely take it without any prior prep, that’s what I did last year. Even with one of the worst teachers I’ve ever had - and hopefully will ever have - I did alright in the class and got a 5 on the test. Just keep up your work ethic and don’t get pre-mature Senioritis!! Sorta kinda happened to me </p>
<p>Btw I followed your Plan B, I’m taking AP Bio this year</p>
<p>The relevant comment on the college board site says: “the imaginative teacher can design approaches that best fit the needs of his or her students. In some schools, AP Physics has been taught successfully as a very intensive first-year course; but in this case there may not be enough time to cover the material in sufficient depth to reinforce the students’ conceptual understanding or to provide adequate laboratory experiences. This approach can work for highly motivated, able students…Independent study … supplemented with extra work for individual motivated students are also possibilities that have been successfully implemented.”</p>
<p>Well I would say it depends on your affinity for physics and whether or not you’re comfortable with some basic calculus. Personally, I found the biggest difference to be the level of math required - in honors physics, you get the concepts and formula that only involve a little bit of basic arithmetic. In AP, you’ll need basic calculus and a lot more complicated math - i.e. larger expressions, how to manipulate or solve for the right things, etc.</p>
<p>If you’re not too good with physics (i.e. the material doesn’t seem to “click” instantly for you, things take time to learn), I would recommend honors first. There’s no point in stressing yourself out by going into an AP course without being able to process the material well. If you can’t get the honors stuff lodged in your mind and understood well, the AP material will be much more difficult to process. It’s better to take your time to learn the basics well before going on to the more advanced topics. Also, prior knowledge of calculus would help a lot with AP, so if you aren’t at least taking calculus concurrently, avoid the AP.</p>
<p>If you’re a fast learner, you’ll probably find yourself pretty bored in honors and the following year, almost as bored in AP (2/C/whatever), especially since in physics, it’s all about whether you get the concepts or not (not if you can memorize the formulas). The few problems that skipping into AP would be are that you’d be expected to know the stuff from honors (it’ll be like a normal course but they only do the second half and make it twice as long) and that calculus is required (or at least immensely helpful since otherwise you’d just be throwing up formulas) for the AP. </p>
<p>This noted, the fact that AP classes start with assuming prior knowledge (in most cases) is quite annoying. Personally, I took both (bored to death), but I think I would have been very confused if I just took the AP, so if you do choose this option, make sure to study up the basics (Newton’s laws and gravitation, Coulomb’s force). But also do note that the AP class has much more interesting content than the honors class (problems are a lot more fun and not boring to do).</p>
<p>Well I would say it depends on your affinity for physics and whether or not you’re comfortable with some basic calculus. Personally, I found the biggest difference to be the level of math required - in honors physics, you get the concepts and formula that only involve a little bit of basic arithmetic. In AP, you’ll need basic calculus and a lot more complicated math - i.e. larger expressions, how to manipulate or solve for the right things, etc.</p>
<p>If you’re not too good with physics (i.e. the material doesn’t seem to “click” instantly for you, things take time to learn), I would recommend honors first. There’s no point in stressing yourself out by going into an AP course without being able to process the material well. If you can’t get the honors stuff lodged in your mind and understood well, the AP material will be much more difficult to process. It’s better to take your time to learn the basics well before going on to the more advanced topics. Also, prior knowledge of calculus would help a lot with AP, so if you aren’t at least taking calculus concurrently, avoid the AP.</p>
<p>If you’re a fast learner, you’ll probably find yourself pretty bored in honors and the following year, almost as bored in AP (2/C/whatever), especially since in physics, it’s all about whether you get the concepts or not (not if you can memorize the formulas). The few problems that skipping into AP would be are that you’d be expected to know the stuff from honors (it’ll be like a normal course but they only do the second half and make it twice as long) and that calculus is required (or at least immensely helpful since otherwise you’d just be throwing up formulas) for the AP. </p>
<p>This noted, the fact that AP classes start with assuming prior knowledge (in most cases) is quite annoying. Personally, I took both (bored to death), but I think I would have been very confused if I just took the AP, so if you do choose this option, make sure to study up the basics (Newton’s laws and gravitation, Coulomb’s force). But also do note that the AP class has much more interesting content than the honors class (problems are a lot more fun and not boring to do).</p>
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