PASA - FRQ

From page 61 of the 2019 AP Physics 1 Course Exam Description:

“Students will be asked to give a paragraph-length response to demonstrate their ability to communicate their understanding of a physical situation in a reasoned, expository analysis. For full credit, the response should be a coherent, organized, and sequential description of the analysis of a situation that draws from evidence, cites physical principles, and clearly presents the student’s thinking. Full credit may not be earned if the response contains any of the following: principles not presented in a logical order, lengthy digressions within an argument, or a lack of linking prose between equations or diagrams.”

The Paragraph-Length Response in AP Physics 1 and 2 A paragraph-length response to a question should consist of a coherent argument that uses the information presented in the question and proceeds in a logical, expository fashion to arrive at a conclusion.

AP Physics students are asked to give a paragraph-length response so that they may demonstrate their ability to communicate their understanding of a physical situation in a reasoned, expository analysis. A student’s response should be a coherent, organized, and sequential description of the analysis of a situation. The response should argue from evidence, cite physical principles, and clearly present the student’s thinking to the reader. The presentation should not include extraneous information. It should make sense on the first reading.

The style of the exposition is to explain and/or describe, like a paragraph, rather than present a calculation or a purely algebraic derivation, and should be of moderate length, not long and elaborate.

A paragraph-length response will earn points for correct physics principles, as does a response to any other free-response question. However, full credit may not be earned if a paragraph-length response contains any of the following: principles not presented in a logical order, lengthy digressions within an argument, or primarily equations or diagrams with little linking prose.

In AP Physics 1, the argument may include, as needed, diagrams, graphs, equations, and perhaps calculations to support the line of reasoning. The style of such a response may be seen in the example problems in textbooks, which are typically a mix of prose statements, equations, diagrams, etc., that present an orderly analysis of a situation.

In AP Physics 2, the requirement for full credit for a paragraph-length response is more rigorous, i.e., responses are expected to meet the standard of logical reasoning as described for AP Physics 1 but must also be presented primarily in prose form.

To reiterate, the goal is that students should be able to both analyze a situation and construct a coherent, sequenced, well-reasoned exposition that cites evidence and principles of physics and that make sense on the first reading.

(40% of Free Response Marks (12 points), 15 minutes) Paragraph Example 1

A student throws a small rubber ball at a brick wall. The ball is thrown, leaving the person’s hand at approximately shoulder height, at an angle above the horizontal. The ball strikes the wall at the moment when its velocity is horizontal. The ball bounces off the wall and strikes the ground some distance from the wall.

a.Is the object model appropriate for analyzing the motion of the ball for the entire time from when it leaves the thrower’s hand until it strikes the ground? Briefly justify your answer.

b. In a clear, coherent, paragraph-length response, describe the motion of the ball from the instant after it is released until it hits the ground. Take your system to be just the ball and neglect air resistance. Be sure to address the position, velocity, acceleration and energy of the system in your description and justify your description with reasoning based on physics principles.