The AP Physics Exams are currently scheduled to take place Face to Face (in person) on or around May 12, 2022.
AP Physics 2 Exam - The AP Physics 2 Exam is a college-level exam administered every year in May upon the completion of an Advanced Placement Physics 2 course taken at your high school. If you score high enough, your AP Physics score could earn you college credit!
Topics covered on the AP Physics 2 exam:
The College Board is very detailed in what they require your AP teacher to cover in your AP Physics 2 course. They explain that you should be familiar with the following topics:
Fluids (fluid systems, density, pressure and forces, fluid and free-body diagrams, buoyancy, conservation of energy in fluid flow, conservation of mass flow rate in fluids)
Thermodynamics (thermodynamic systems, pressure, thermal equilibrium, and the ideal gas law, thermodynamics and forces, heat and energy transfer, thermodynamics and collisions, probability, thermal energy, and entropy)
Electric Force, Field, and Potential (electric systems and charge, charge distribution, electric permittivity, electric forces and free-body diagrams, gravitational and electromagnetic forces, electric charges and fields, conservation of electric energy)
Electric Circuits (definition and conservation of electric charge, resistance and resistivity, resistance and capacitance, Kirchhoff’s loop rule, Kirchhoff’s junction rule and the conservation of electric charge)
Magnetism and Electromagnetic Induction (magnetic systems, magnetic permeability and magnetic dipole moment, vector and scalar fields, magnetic fields and forces, forces review, magnetic flux)
Geometric and Physical Optics (waves, electromagnetic waves, periodic waves, refraction, reflection, and absorption, images from lenses and mirrors, interference and diffraction)
Quantum, Atomic, and Nuclear Physics (systems and fundamental forces, radioactive decay, energy in modern physics, mass-energy equivalence, properties of waves and particles, photoelectric effect, wave function and probability)
The AP Physics 2 exam is three hours long and consists of two sections: a multiple-choice section and a free-response section.
AP Physics 2 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 54 questions
Note: The College Board has not yet announced if the 2021 digital version of the AP Physics 2 exam will be in place for future exam years. For updates on the digital test and its format, please visit the AP Physics 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 exam, but some may grant credit for a 3.
Here’s how students scored on the May 2020 test:
AP Physics 2 Score Meaning 2020 Percentage of Test Takers
5 Extremely qualified 14%
4 Well qualified 24.3%
3 Qualified 35%
2 Possibly qualified 21.3%
1 No recommendation 5.4%
Source: College Board
Each test is curved so scores vary from year to year. You’ll want to study hard and prepare for this tough exam.
Resources for Self-Study
AP®︎/College Physics 2 - Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org › science › ap-physics-2 )
Search for: Physics 2 topics - Sign-in and work toward Course Mastery at your own pace
AP Physics 1 and 2 Materials - by Richard White (this EXCELLENT website has many resources, including the following:)
LEARN AP Physics 1 & 2 - Excellent resource
MIT OpenCourseware - Physics 2 - Electricity and Magnetism - May not match topics exactly -
Includes quizzes , solutions and many course materials
MIT has other topics that will be of interest to PAP Physics 2 exam takers.
AP Physics 1 - Student Practice WORKBOOK from MIT (Note - this book covers most of the Physics 2 material, but not all, and also has the AP Physics 1 topics included.)
New Jersey Center for Learning - AP Physics 2 Materials (only some materials are available for free - still worthwhile)
AP Physics 2 Daily Video List from the College Board