<p>I took AP Physics: C next year and the course just cover mechanics. I briefly went through a semester of HS Physics in about 8 hours. Would I be capable for a 5 in AP Physics? How about self studying EM?</p>
<p>You should be fine. I had a year of intro physics as a freshman, but by the time senior year came around I remembered maybe two formulas. My teacher was pretty horrible, and I didn’t pay much attention in class and I got a 4 on the exam. This was an all year mechanics class, so I don’t know about E&M.</p>
<p>Both parts of Physics C is quite hard, actually… I doubt it’s doable, especially if you’re doing other AP’s as well</p>
<p>As long as you have a good understanding of calculus, doing well in a physics C mechanics class shouldn’t be too hard. But to do E&M, you really need to either already know the general concepts or have an actual class. I would not reccommend that you self-study it.</p>
<p>For Physics C, physics background isn’t the problem. The CALCULUS is. Half the kids in my AP Physics C class (which had first semester Mech and second semester E&M) were concurrently enrolled in AB Calc, whereas the other half of the class had finished BC Calc the year before (and were concurrently enrolled in Multivariable Calc). </p>
<p>The concurrent-calc kids found it very difficult because you use integrals and applications of calculus before you even learn them in the AB class. The people who had done BC, however, found it really easy.</p>
<p>So yeah, an 8-hr session of first-year HS physics should have prepared you well enough for Physics C (especially if its Mechanics only). But the calculus knowledge is the problem, imo.</p>
<p>8-hr session?? It should take way longer than that. Just doing the problems from one subsection would take longer than 8-hrs…</p>
<p>I would concurrently be taking Calc AB (trying to switch into Calc BC). But I think the calc won’t be much of a problem since I can just plug the equation into my Ti-89.</p>
<p>Its not about the equations, its about calculus concept applications. When to do what and all…you don’t have the equation. You have to come up with it, thats why you need the calc background.
Also, I wouldn’t recommend self-studying E&M if you’re not very comfortable with Mechanics yet.</p>
<p>Physics C is a very good example of why my calculus teacher banned Ti-89s from the class. When you have problems like “differentiate x^4 + e^x”, it’s easy to just put it into your calculator and get an answer. That doesn’t work so well when the problem is “Find the moment of inertia of a thin uniform rod with mass M and length x, with respect to an axis at a distance d from the end”.</p>
<p>Actually, it’s quicker to differentiate x^4 + e^x by hand than by calculator.</p>
<p>Well, the one good thing about the TI89 is that it works symbolically, so the calculator could do SOME, but very limited, calculus correctly.</p>
<p>but amarkov’s question (which is very common) would be hard to do on an 89</p>
<p>Differentiating x^4 + e^x by hand should literally take >2 seconds.</p>
<p>yeah, its 4x^3 + e^x</p>
<p>but you’re not going to find stuff like that on the Physics C exams</p>
<p>Yeah, I wish… if it shows up on a Physics exam (or even on a Calculus exam) I’d be jumping up and down on my chair</p>
<p>I took Physics C: Mechanics with no prior physics and no calculus. The calculus was pretty simple stuff, for the most part. And with the crazy curve, it doesn’t matter if you can’t solve the one free-response Calculus question on the test. Got a 4, by the way.</p>
<p>It depends on whether you are a “math” person, or I guess a “science” person. I never paid attention in class, honestly, although at the end our teacher did a comprehensive review of the entire year in a few days, and I did a bunch of practice tests. Pulled off a 5, and didn’t think it was too bad. Depends on what kind of person you are.</p>
<p>^ Also depends on if you take a year-long Mechanics course or a semester of Mech and a semester of E&M. Now I wish I had a year course for Mechanics so I could get the concepts better; instead, we rushed into E&M and that has a ton more calc-APPLICATIONS (not straightforward differentiation/integration) than Mech.</p>