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Exam Tips: Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism
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The following tips were taken from the AP Physics Course Description, the AP Physics Teacher's Guide, and the AP Physics Released Exam: - Concentrate on helping students know and understand concepts rather than just memorize equations, which are often just shorthand notation for expressing the concepts. Tables containing commonly used physics equations are provided to students for use during the free-response section of the exam. Students are, however, responsible for understanding the physical principles that underlie each equation and for knowing the conditions for which each equation is applicable. Although the equation tables are not available for use during the multiple-choice section, knowledge and understanding of the concepts will help students recall the corresponding relationships.
- Teach strategies. Students gain little or no understanding from memorizing specific problem solutions or even types of problems. Students must be able to synthesize solutions from fundamental concepts, and this ability can only be developed by a great deal of practice. As students solve more and more diverse problems, they will develop a keenness in their ability to synthesize solutions.
- For questions that give expressions in algebraic form, teach students to look at limiting cases; that is, what would happen to the expressions if one of the variables were very large or very small. If an expression predicts a result that could not be reasonably expected or that is physically impossible, then that choice can be eliminated as the correct answer. Encourage students to develop their skills not only in estimating answers but also in recognizing answers that are unreasonable or unlikely.
- Teachers should help students learn to work through problems involving multiple parts where the end solution will depend upon the result of the previous parts.
- Remind students to pay attention to directions. On the exams, phrases in the multiple-choice sections like "All the following are... EXCEPT" or "Which of the following does NOT..." contain critical words. Students must pay attention to them or they will not respond correctly to the questions. Sometimes there are also special directions in parts of the free-response questions. For example, there may be directions that specify what principles to use in deriving an expression or that tell you in what variables to express an answer. It's especially important to concentrate on all of the directions.
- Stress to students the importance of showing their work in the space provided. If they need more space, they should clearly indicate where they have continued their answers or they may lose credit. If they make a mistake, they should cross it out or erase it; crossed-out work and work shown on the green insert will not be graded.
- Credit for students' free-response answers depends on the quality of the solutions and the explanations they give. Another reason for students to show all their work: They can receive partial credit. Correct answers without supporting work may lose credit. This is especially true when a question asks students to justify their answers, because the Readers will be looking for a verbal or mathematical analysis that demonstrates how students arrived at their answers.
- All final numerical answers should include appropriate units.
- The best answers respond directly to the question asked. Students should pay special attention to directive words and phrases when reading the questions and only provide the information required by these terms:
- "Justify" and "explain" call for an answer supported by prose, equations, calculations, diagrams, or graphs. The prose or equations may refer to fundamental ideas or relations in physics, such as Newton's laws, conservation of energy, Gauss' law, or Bernoulli's equation. In other cases, the justification or explanation may take the form of analyzing the behavior of an equation for large or small values of a variable in the equation.
- "Calculate" means that students are expected to show work leading to a final answer, which may be algebraic, but which is more often numerical.
- "What is" and "determine" indicate that students do not need to show their work to obtain full credit. But, showing work leading to answers is a good idea because partial credit can be earned in the case of an incorrect answer.
- "Derive" is more specific and indicates that students need to begin their solution with one or more fundamental equations, such as those given on the AP Physics Exam equation sheet. The final answer, usually algebraic, is then obtained through the appropriate use of mathematics.
Call for Submissions
AP Central welcomes submissions of exam tips. If you have tips you would like to submit, please e-mail them to ExamTips@collegeboard.org.
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