Holton's talk was clearly not sanctioned by the good people of The College Board. But his expression of frustration and exasperation with AP1 resonated with me. Apparently my expression of frustration and exasperation resonated with him, too. (He cited my lament in his talk.) His critique was much more robust than mine was.
A small group of us had a combination perambulation, ventilation, brainstorm as we migrated to our next sessions.
We concurred that dropping AP Physics 1/2 from a school's curriculum constituted a marketing challenge for any school that would dare to try. We now advertise and market our schools on the basis of the breadth an scope of Advanced Placement offerings and performance.
AP courses are to be added to a school's course catalog; not removed. That other high school being visited by shopping 8th-graders and their parents is offering AP Physics, so your school must match.
One idea we tossed around was running a course that would prepare students for the SAT II Physics exam. Does anyone, anywhere run such a course? I'd love to hear from anyone teaching such a course. For now, it's just a thought. And The College Board still wins.
I know AP Physics C fans are happy with their exams. Abandoning AP1 and AP2 for an SAT II-based course is a different set of conversation. One might argue that outstanding performance on the SAT II Physics wouldn't get students out of any physics course at a college or university. I would hasten to add that outstanding performance on an AP Physics 1 or 2 exam doesn't necessarily exempt a student from intro physics courses at college, either.
Here's what the SAT II Physics exam covers. (A physics content-based assessment: how tantalizing!)
Mechanics 36%-42%
Kinematics, such as velocity, acceleration, motion in one dimension, and motion of projectiles
Dynamics, such as force, Newton’s laws, statics, and friction
Energy and momentum, such as potential and kinetic energy, work, power, impulse, and conservation laws
Circular motion, such as uniform circular motion and centripetal force
Simple harmonic motion, such as mass on a spring and the pendulum
Gravity, such as the law of gravitation, orbits, and Kepler’s laws
Electricity and magnetism 18%–24%
Electric fields, forces, and potentials, such as Coulomb’s law, induced charge, field and potential of groups of point charges, and charged particles in electric fields
Capacitance, such as parallel-plate capacitors and time-varying behavior in charging/ discharging
Circuit elements and DC circuits, such as resistors, light bulbs, series and parallel networks, Ohm’s law, and Joule’s law
Magnetism, such as permanent magnets, fields caused by currents, particles in magnetic fields, Faraday’s law, and Lenz’s law
Waves and optics 15%–19%
General wave properties, such as wave speed, frequency, wavelength, superposition, standing wave diffraction, and Doppler effect
Reflection and refraction, such as Snell’s law and changes in wavelength and speed
Ray optics, such as image formation using pinholes, mirrors, and lenses
Physical optics, such as single-slit diffraction, double-slit interference, polarization, and color
Heat and thermodynamics 6%–11%
Thermal properties, such as temperature, heat transfer, specific and latent heats, and thermal expansions
Laws of thermodynamics, such as first and second laws, internal energy, entropy, and heat engine efficiency
Modern physics 6%–11%
Quantum phenomena, such as photons and photoelectric effect
Atomic, such as the Rutherford and Bohr models, atomic energy levels, and atomic spectraNuclear and particle physics, such as radioactivity, nuclear reactions, and fundamental particles
Relativity, such as time dilation, length contraction, and mass-energy equivalence
Miscellaneous 4%–9%
General, such as history of physics and general questions that overlap several major topics
Analytical skills, such as graphical analysis, measurement, and math skills
Contemporary physics, such as astrophysics, superconductivity, and chaos theory
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