Course Syllabus

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A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.——Albert Einstein        Course Description:

This course is an advanced placement physics course with access to college level resources and content.  Core topics include:  the math of physics, kinematics, dynamics, circular and rotational motion, work and energy, momentum, waves and sound, simple harmonic motion, electrostatics and electric circuits. 

The desired outcome of this course is for students to be better prepared for success in a college level physics course.  Also, students will take the AP Physics 1 exam in April.  A score of a 3 or higher on this exam will allow students to earn 3 hours of college credit from many universities.

Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

  1. Predict the future trajectory of an object in two dimensions with uniform acceleration.
  2. Analyze a physical situation with multiple constant forces acting on a point mass using Newtonian mechanics.
  3. Analyze a physical situation using concepts of work and energy.
  4. Analyze static and dynamic extended systems using the concepts of torque and angular acceleration.

Laboratory Course Objectives: At the conclusion of the laboratory component of this course, the student should be able to:

  1. Analyze real-world experimental data, including appropriate use of metric units and significant figures.
  2. Relate the results of experimental data to the physical concepts discussed in the lecture portion of the class.

Course Content:

Click on the link to see the Physics 1 Pacing Guide for content with target completion time.

Textbooks:

Great news:  one textbook for this class is available for free online!
College Physics for AP Courses from OpenStax, ISBN 1-947172-17-4

You have several options to obtain this book:

    Additional Text Resources: 

    Hardcopy textbooks available in class, etexts available in WebAssign

    • Physics Principles with Applications, AP Edition, 7th Edition - Douglas Giancoli
    • College Physics, AP Edition, 11th Edition - Raymond Serway, Chris Vuille

    Academic Honesty:

      • Academic dishonesty and plagiarism will result in a failing grade on the assignment. Using someone else's ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness, is a serious offense known as plagiarism. "Ideas or phrasing" includes written or spoken material, from whole papers and paragraphs to sentences, and, indeed, phrases but it also includes statistics, lab results, art work, etc.  

      Course Summary:

      Date Details Due