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Home > AP Courses and Exams > Course Home Pages > Physics B Course Requirements

Physics B Course Requirements

AP Course Audit

The AP Program unequivocally supports the principle that each individual school must develop its own curriculum for courses labeled "AP." Rather than mandating any one curriculum for AP courses, the AP Course Audit instead provides each AP teacher with a set of expectations that college and secondary school faculty nationwide have established for college-level courses. AP teachers are encouraged to develop or maintain their own curriculum that either includes or exceeds each of these expectations; such courses will be authorized to use the "AP" designation. Credit for the success of AP courses belongs to the individual schools and teachers that create powerful, locally designed AP curricula.

The AP Physics B course should be designed by your school to provide students with a learning experience equivalent to that of an introductory yearlong algebra-based college course in physics that includes a laboratory component. Your course should include topics in both classical and modern physics as indicated in the Course Description.

Schools' AP Physics B courses are typically designed to be taken by students after the completion of a first-year high school physics course. Knowledge of algebra and trigonometry is necessary. Graphing calculators are recommended (but not required) for use during the course and during the free-response section of the exam. Students are encouraged to keep copies of their laboratory work for use in determining college credit or placement.

All students who are willing to accept the challenge of a rigorous academic curriculum should be considered for admission to AP courses. The College Board encourages the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP courses for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the AP Program. Schools should make every effort to ensure that their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population.

High schools offering this exam must provide the exam administration resources described in the AP Coordinator's Manual.


AP Physics B Curriculum Alignment
The AP Program has embarked on an ambitious effort, funded by the National Science Foundation, to align the AP Physics B course and exam with introductory college courses that research identifies as best facilitating deep learning. The AP Program is concerned that the amount of content included on the AP Physics B Exam is putting inappropriate pressure on teachers to sacrifice depth of study to breadth of coverage, and is not sufficiently fostering inquiry-based science learning. We anticipate that changes will be announced in 2007 but not implemented until, at earliest, the May 2010 AP Physics B Exam, providing several years for raising awareness and building an understanding of these changes before they are implemented.

In the meantime, teachers are encouraged to review the scoring formula for the most recent AP Physics B Released Exam, which shows the relative weight assigned to the different types of questions and the actual number of questions that need to be answered correctly to earn an AP Exam grade of 3, 4, or 5. Increased awareness of the relatively insignificant weight assigned to any one question may relieve some of the pressure teachers feel to cover every topic that could be assessed on the exam, and may help teachers see the amount of flexibility the current exam provides them to reduce content coverage. The current AP Exam is deliberately designed to be more broad than any one college (or AP) physics course so that it can measure a variety of different schools' selection of physics content. Accordingly, the exam assigns minimal weight to each individual question, so that students whose teachers choose to provide them with a deeper exploration of some topics over others will not be disadvantaged on the AP Exam. So long as the "Curricular Requirements" listed below are fulfilled, teachers should use their own discretion when determining the amount of content to include in an AP course, and can be selective without jeopardizing a student's likelihood of earning a high AP Exam grade.
  2004 AP Physics B Released Exam Scoring Formula (.pdf/47KB) 


Requirements
To request authorization to label a course "AP," complete the following two steps:

  1. Complete and submit an AP Course Audit form, on which the teacher and principal attest that their course includes or exceeds the following curricular requirements delineated by college and university faculty.
  2. Submit an electronic copy of the course syllabus that demonstrates inclusion or improvement on the curricular requirements (see Syllabus Preparation Guidelines). If your course does not include one or more of the curricular requirements but merits designation as a college-level course, see Instructions for Submitting Materials for the process for describing alternate approaches to the course.
      Syllabus Preparation Guidelines
      Instructions for Teachers
Instructions on how to submit AP Course Audit materials via the Web will be posted on AP Central and mailed to principals in January 2007.

Curricular Requirements
  • The teacher has read the most recent AP Physics Course Description, available as a free download on the AP Physics B Course Home Page.
      AP Physics B Course Home Page
  • The course provides instruction in each of the following five content areas outlined in the Course Description:
    • Newtonian mechanics
    • Fluid mechanics and thermal physics
    • Electricity and magnetism
    • Waves and optics
    • Atomic and nuclear physics
  • The course utilizes guided inquiry and student-centered learning to foster the development of critical thinking skills.
  • The course includes a laboratory component comparable to college-level physics laboratories, with a minimum of 12 student-conducted laboratory investigations representing a variety of topics covered in the course. A hands-on laboratory component is required. Each student should complete a lab notebook or portfolio of lab reports. Note: Online course providers utilizing virtual labs (simulations rather than hands-on) should submit their laboratory materials for the audit. If these lab materials are determined to develop the skills and learning objectives of hands-on labs, then courses which use these labs may receive authorization to use the "AP" designation.*
Resource Requirements
  • The school ensures that each student has a college-level physics textbook (supplemented when necessary to meet the curricular requirements) for individual use inside and outside of the classroom.
  • The school ensures that students have access to scientific equipment and all necessary materials for students to conduct hands-on, college-level physics laboratory investigations as outlined in the teacher's course syllabus.
* This requirement was revised on July 13, 2006.  
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