Should I take AP Physics C: Mechanics without previous physics courses and concurrent Calculus BC?

Test Preparation AP Sciences
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I’m currently a freshman and soon to be rising sophomore and I’ve always been extremely interested in physics and already have a concrete foundation in a lot of algebra based physics and I’ll be Calculus BC next year. My question is if I should be taking Physics C: Mechanics,which will be a 2 period course (90 minutes everyday, yearlong) without a previous course in physics. I have enough passion and a strong enough work ethic to be able to do the course and the main reason why I want to do the course is not for the college credit but more for the rigor and the challenge it could impose on me. I also plan to major in physics (as I want to become a physicist) so its not like I’m just taking the course to take the course, it genuinely is appealing to me intellectually.

My other question is how much of the course involves knowledge of calculus and what topics of calculus are used most frequently or are most stressed. I’m already pretty firm with derivatives and their applications and I’m currently starting to learn integrals and I should already know most Calculus AB topics before my sophomore year starts. Would it be alright to take the two courses concurrently (AP Physics C and Calculus BC).

My counselor doesn’t know me very well and is very insistent that I shouldn’t even be taking Calc BC and has literally laughed at my idea of taking Physics C because she doesn’t think I could handle the rigor (mainly because I’m a freshman). If you do think I could handle the rigor of the course (which I believe I could) then do you think it is worth it to take the Honors level physics 1 final so I can at least prove that I’m capable with the subject. (I’m already pretty close with the physics teacher so he would probably allow me to take it and I’m also taking the honors level chemistry 1 final so I can take AP Chem next year).

According to most sources I’ve seen, Physics C courses are meant for physics or engineering related majors and physics 1 and 2 are more for someone who is just trying to take it so they don’t have to in college but my school tries to enforce the four courses to be taking sequentially (which would be impossible for me to take all of them now since I wasn’t able to start physics this year and all the courses are yearlong).

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Take a mock AP Calculus AB exam (online) and take your school’s Honors Physics final. If you get a 5 and an A, you are more than capable.

Physics C requires integration, separation of variables, and taking derivatives. Those are mostly the Calculus topics required. However, they are trickier than their Calculus variants simply because you have to have a good Physics intuition as to when to do those techniques. Typically, a Calculus problem will be to simply do those operations, not have to think of doing them as part of solving a whole problem.

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@Pheeziks This is a bit late, but I honestly think that you are capable of taking AP Physics, even as a sophomore. I didn’t have any prior physics knowledge before taking AP Mechanics last year and was taking Calculus AB concurrently. I took the AP test and was able to make a 5.

Like what the previous poster said, you will need to know integration and derivatives and all that for AP Physics, but if you aren’t really adept in these topics, ask either your math or physics teacher to give you a brief overview of the topics. The first week of class, my physics teacher showed us how to take basic integrals and derivatives (without all the conceptual stuff you learn in math) so that we had the basic knowledge necessary to complete the problems. As I progressed in my calculus class, I learned all the special cases for integrals and derivatives, but I found that these cases weren’t really necessary until we got to some of the later topics in physics.