Welcome to AP Physics 1!
I am very glad you are interested in physics, and I look forward to investigating motion, energy, matter, and the universe with you this year. We will be spending most of the year investigating relationships among various properties of objects, what we call variables (because they can constantly change). We need to have a tool to describe these relationships and to apply them to other situations. That tool is mathematics. In fact, one of the most famous physicists, Sir Isaac Newton, developed calculus along with his scientific work so he would have a way to describe these relationships and make predictions. Even though AP Physics 1 doesn’t require that you know any calculus, it does require that you have mastered the fundamentals of Algebra and Geometry. In the links below you will find review questions on mathematics and the basics of science, which you should be familiar with. The "pre-course worksheets" below are not assignments, and you won't turn them in for grades. Instead, they are intended to be gauges of your mathematical abilities. If you do not know how to complete a section or know what all of the symbols mean, do not worry. This does not mean that you are not cut out for AP Physics, rather that you may need to do a little review on that mathematical topic and refresh your mathematical skills. Check out the Mathematics Review sites under the Useful Resources tab if you need some help. Ultimately, if you know how to work the algebra, the unit conversions, and the geometry in the worksheets, you will be a good fit in AP Physics 1. E-mail me or come to me with any questions.
Course Information
Pre-Course Worksheets - see above for how to use these
For some reason, the first page of Pre-course WS1 is blank, scroll down.
Note: we will not use Significant Figures in AP Physics at all, so you can ignore the Significant Figures page completely. We won't even talk about Sig Figs at all this year and they are not on the AP Physics exam. The concept is good to review from Chemistry, so that's why I left that part of the pre-course worksheets there.