#physics study tips

[365text]

That's great advice! Thanks. I took Physics 1 Honors over the summer, just to give me some background knowledge. I genuinely enjoy physics, and I'd love to have a career that utilizes it. The only other thing I heard about AP physics is that the AP exam is pretty hard.

oooh i see! yeah i think that’ll help a lot then ^-^ if you already have a background in physics, i feel like it’ll help quite a bit during the upcoming school year. also, hmmmmm yeah i mean (are you taking ap physics 1? or c?) they switched up ap physics 1 and 2 this year to include a lot more concepts in the FRQ, so it was pretty different from previous years. it requires more thinking and using words to explain/answer, instead of the straight math responses of the past. 

honestly though, i was most scared for multiple choice, because the sample practice problems they gave on collegeboard were insAne. but i’m happy to report that they were not that bad and were actually pretty similar compared to previous ap physics B questions (in comparison to the prep books i’ve seen) i believe. i walked out of that test feeling better than i thought i would haha

honestly i feel like as long as you really put in the effort during the school year, are able to do well normally, and truly understand the course material, you’ll be fine :)

[365text]

Hi :) I'm entering 11th grade, and I'll be taking AP physics. I saw in one of your posts that you took it, so do you have any pointers? Was it difficult overall?

HI! i wrote a post about how i studied for physics here if you want to check that out~

as for difficulty, personally i think physics is one of those subjects with a steep learning curve, but it gets better after you get over that initial bump! after you understand the concepts, it gets a lot easier ^-^ imo, if you don’t have any previous experience with physics, then the concepts might be kind of hard to grasp at first, especially once you get into the more vague/theoretical concepts (like magnetism/electricity - because wtf is a “potential” and how do you visualize it e_e). 

also i feel like some things in physics may seem almost counterintuitive, and i think some of that is due to the fact that most of AP physics 1 or 2 will be simplified to the point when they would never occur in our day to day lives (ie: “what if air resistance didn’t exist???? what if friction wasn’t here??? WAT IF GRAVITY IS GONE!??!?!”) they do this so that the calculations aren’t as complex, but this means that a lot of the scenarios are really hard to imagine/visualize, and if you don’t really know the information, then the conceptual multiple choice will be a pain in the b u t t 

i didn’t find the math portion that difficult, because i took ap physics 1 and it was just basic algebra. it’s more of understanding the problem/what’s going on and figuring out how to use the basic math skills to solve for the answer!

i hope i answered your questions! if you have anything else you’re curious about that i didn’t address i gotchu :’)