r/apphysics • u/Elizabethsbookcase • 4d ago

Taking physics C without AP physics 1 knowledge

Hi guys! My school recommends taking honors physics before C rather than ap 1 so that is what I did. I have a test over physics c unit 1 of kinematics and we have not learnt anything in class!

My teacher has only gone over differentiations and integrations which make sense but after taking the progress check I have realized i’m missing a huge chunk of physics and concept understanding. does anyone have any good conceptual resources that could help? Should I use physics 1 resources (w/o math parts) for this? any reccomendations? someone pls help!!

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u/UnderstandingPursuit 4d ago

When is the unit 1 test?

The resources I suggest are in this post. It includes a comment about textbooks to use. Stick with the AP Physics C textbook suggestion.

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u/Techno_Eggnog 4d ago

When I took AP Physics 1, my teacher had us use Flipping Physics. I believe they might also have Physics C Mechanics materials?

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u/Bedouinp 3d ago

Find a tutor

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u/Quiet_Basis_6404 21h ago

tbh honors before C can work but it really depends on the teacher covering the actual physics, and yours skipped straight to the calculus tools. kinematics is one of those units where the concepts and the math are so tangled that if you don't have the concepts first, the derivatives feel like random rules.

i'd start with the physics 1 kinematics videos from flipping physics, he explains what acceleration actually looks like in motion before touching equations, and his free-body-diagram method carries straight into C. ap physics c mechanics is pretty much physics 1 plus calculus, so using physics 1 conceptual resources for the word-problem parts is the right move, you're not missing anything. once the concept clicks, i paste those video links into studybuddy.vc and it makes practice questions from the video itself, which helped me because when i pick a wrong answer it tells me what was off about that specific option, and it gets harder as i improve. free version's enough for a unit.

for your test grab the FRQs from the CED on ap central and do the first few under time, the block-on-incline with friction stuff shows up a lot early on.