Hello everyone. It has been my dream ever since I was little to pursue a career and education in Astrophysics. The world outside our own has always interested me. However, I have made it to high school and I’m now a sophomore (in Precalc) and AP Physics 1. Let me tell you I have never had a more hard class than AP Physics 1. The only reason I keep a good grade in that class is test corrections and I’m going to 2 next year. The outlook for the exam doesn’t look good either. What do I do? Does physics get easier from here? I have an amazing teacher whose students have gotten 5s a lot and he explains everything thoroughly, and I understand all the forces acting, I just can’t seem to know how to calculate anything in the hypothetical situations the AP gives. SOS!
I think that you might have taken the class when you were too young. You really will get stronger as you get older.
Is there any way that you can take a W, and then retake the class as a senior?
As you progress in math, physics will get easier.
The other option is to seek out more help from your teacher, or to get a tutor to help you in the class.
In the future, be aware that there really are classes that you are not ready for, but that you will be ready for in a year or two. A lot of things in math and physics depend upon things that you have not learned yet.
As I said, I am in precalculus and the corequisite to take the class is Algebra 2. I passed all previous math classes with A’s so I was supposed to be more than prepared.
Physics 1 is the most difficult AP out there - it has the lowest number of students who get scores of 5 of all AP test. In a large part this is because it isn’t easy to make sense of physics if you use algebra, as opposed to using calculus. So learning physics using only algebra is difficult.
This means two things. A, you may need more algebra training than Algebra 2 to be able to use algebra for physics, and B, not doing well on Physics 1 does not mean that you will have a difficult time with physics in college, since physics is taught in college using calculus.
On the other hand, if you have a difficult time getting at least a B on Calc BC, you may find physics extremely challenging.
You definitely should not be taking AP Physics 1 while in Algebra 2. Precalc is the minimum math you need to get by in that class so luckily you are taking that. Physics 1 is one of the hardest AP courses (in fact it has one of the lowest 5 rates). It is typically a junior year course and knowing calculus helps a lot (but isn’t required) so it would have been nice if you waited until junior year to take it alongside calc.
But that is in the past, it doesn’t make sense to withdraw this late in the year (unless you can drop to honors WITHOUT it showing up on your transcript). As for what you can do now is to do a lot of practice problems, see if you are making recurring mistakes or if there is a concept that you do not understand. Then go to the teacher to help explain that specific concept/recurring mistake. I know you are given an equation sheet but in order to succeed on the AP exam, you should have done more than enough practice to have most of them memorized to use on the spot, flipping back and forth takes up precious time on this fast-paced test.
Here is a tip: pull up some old AP practice problems and try to figure out what unit/concept they use but DON’T write any math or attempt to solve at all. Since you say you “can’t seem to know how to calculate anything,” this will help you in at least figuring out which set of equations will be usable and they are probably all proofs/derivations of each other anyway. Once you can figure out which concept to use, the math will flow naturally but you need to understand what is going on and what the problem is looking for before you can jump into computing a value. Also, doing this might help for the Physics subject test if you plan on taking it (I would strongly recommend you to because you plan on taking AP Physics 2 which covers the remaining concepts).