The AP Physics Exams are currently scheduled to take place Face to Face (in person) on or around May 12, 2022.
The AP Physics Exams are currently scheduled to take place Face to Face (in person) on or around May 12, 2022.
The College Board is very detailed in what they require your AP teacher to cover in your AP Physics 1 course. They explain that you should be familiar with the following topics:
Kinematics
Dynamics
Circular Motion and Gravitations
Energy
Momentum
Simple Harmonic Motion
Torque and Rotational Motion
The AP Physics 1 exam is three hours long and consists of two sections: a multiple-choice section and a free-response section.
AP Physics 1 Section Timing Number of Questions
Multiple Choice 90 minutes 45 single-select: discrete questions and questions in sets with one correct answer
5 multi-select: discrete questions with two correct answers
Free Response 90 minutes 1 experimental design
1 qualitative/quantitative Translation
3 short answer (requiring a paragraph-length argument)
TOTAL: 3 hours 55 questions
Note: The College Board has not yet announced if the 2021 digital version of the AP Physics 1 exam will be in place for future exam years. For updates on the digital test and its format, please visit the AP Physics 1 page on the College Board's website.
Single-select questions are each followed by four possible responses, only one of which is correct. Multi-select questions require two of the listed answer choices to be selected to answer the question correctly.
The free response section consists of five multi-part questions, which require you to write out your solutions, showing your work. Unlike the multiple-choice section, which is scored by a computer, the free-response section is graded by high school and college teachers. They have guidelines for awarding partial credit, so you may still receive partial points should you not correctly respond to every part of the question.
You are allowed to use a calculator on the entire AP Physics 1 Exam—including both the multiple-choice and free-response sections. Scientific or graphing calculators may be used, provided that they don’t have any unapproved features or capabilities (a list of approved graphing calculators is available on the College Board’s website).
A table of equations commonly used in physics will be provided to you at the exam site. Check out what the AP Physics 1 formula sheet looks like here.
AP scores are reported from 1 to 5.
Colleges are generally looking for a 4 or 5 on the AP Physics I exam, but some may grant credit for a 3.
Here’s how students scored on the May 2020 test:
AP Physics 1 Score Meaning 2020 Percentage of Test Takers
5 Extremely qualified 8.8%
4 Well qualified 17.9%
3 Qualified 24.8%
2 Possibly qualified 26.5%
1 No recommendation 21.9%
Source: College Board
Each test is curved so scores vary from year to year, but as we see above, in May 2020 around 50% of test takers earned scores of 1 or 2. You’ll want to study hard and prepare for this tough exam. (the hyperlink is to a Princeton Review paid tutorial website.)