Cracking AP Physics C with a Peer Tutor

This article was part of a series by the Board of Student Academic Support Services (SASS) that interviewed OHS course peer tutors about the courses they tutor. You can book an appointment with these peer tutors through the OHS Writing Center, which can be found on the OHS Gateway site. 

SASS: What did you enjoy about this course?

Calder Hansen (‘19): I like physics because it’s really interesting how a few universal, relatively simple laws can be applied in many different ways and allow us to understand all sorts of complicated situations. The labs and homework problems were often pretty fun, and were interesting to think about. Also, I think Dr. McKale is great, and I had a nice time going to his office hours.

SASS: What challenged you the most in this course? How did you overcome those challenges?

Calder: The most challenging thing for me was probably the time involvement — the weekly reading, workbook, problem set, quiz, and often a lab as well could sometimes take quite a lot of time. I usually ended up devoting large blocks of time over the weekend (or Friday and Saturday) to accomplish everything: since I was always reasonably sure of how long each thing tended to take, I could know when to do things so that I could get them in on time.

SASS: What tips do you have that could be useful to students taking this course?

Calder: Take notes while doing the reading, and during class or office hours if you learn something new or better understand something there. My notebook ended up containing everything I learned in the class — in a much more condensed form than the textbook — and it was very useful for studying for quizzes, exams, and the AP test. (It might even be useful for me in the future!) 

Print out the equation sheets and keep them somewhere you can reference them at a glance (in particular, a place where you won’t set things on top of them). Doing this made it easy to remember things if I forgot them and to quickly access useful constants, and it also helped familiarize me with how equations are written on the AP test.

Try not to spend too much time on the workbook. If you feel like you understand the ideas but are taking way more time than is useful for you, you’re probably taking too much time.

Go to Dr. McKale’s office hours if possible — for me, they were useful both for asking questions related to assignments and also for discussing any other physics questions I was wondering about. I know he often doesn’t like to give straight answers to questions, but if you want help with something, he will help you, by always prompting you to take the next small step in thinking it through yourself. In my experience, students also helped each other a lot in office hours, which I think Dr. McKale encouraged, since explaining a problem can help you learn more yourself. And, of course, you can see a peer tutor if you want help in a different way or in a more personal environment.

SASS: About how much time a week did you spend working on assignments and preparing for discussion sessions in this course?

Calder: I usually spent about 3 hours on the reading (including taking notes), and around 2 hours (sometimes less) on the workbook. The problem set usually took around 3 hours, and the labs took anywhere from 2–5 hours or so. However, these are only my numbers, and I’m sure other people’s look very different; there’s no right answer for how long things should take. (If you’re worried about time, maybe talk to your teacher, a peer tutor, or classmates.)

SASS: What was your favorite topic covered in this course?

Calder: This is a hard question, since I liked everything! I probably have stronger opinions about favorite problems than favorite topics, since all the topics in the class can be made into interesting problems. However, to name a few specifics, I’ll say that it was neat to diagram and understand systems of interacting objects, to derive the moments of inertia of shapes, and to understand Maxwell’s equations.

SASS: What assignments did you enjoy doing in this course?

Calder: I enjoyed the labs, since there was a lot of room to try things out, solve problems, and make decisions on my own. I also liked seeing the ideas I was learning about expressed in real life. If I had to choose, I might pick as my favorites the two weeks where we had mini-labs, because I felt that those activities were particularly neat. I especially liked the induction mini-lab: it was fun to drop a magnet down a pipe and see it move only one meter in four seconds, and I also liked figuring out on my own how to make a setup that let me light an LED using induction.

I also enjoyed many of the problems in MasteringPhysics. They are often mathematically interesting or combine concepts in neat and unique ways, making them satisfying to solve and understand. It’s just fun to be given a complex situation and find exactly how it would play out — especially if what happens is unexpectedly simple or complex, or follows an interesting mathematical function.

SASS: Did you have any experiences with this course that could encourage those who are uncertain of the course to want to take it?

Calder: It’s hard to name any particular experiences, but I just thought it was fun! It was fascinating to learn about the ways that everything works on the most fundamental level, and there were many ways that AP Physics went deeper than Honors which I found satisfying. Some of the problems I solved were hard but really neat once I figured them out, and along the way to figuring them out, it was nice to talk to others about them.

SASS: How well did this course prepare you for the AP exam?

Calder: I felt very well prepared for both exams. The course gave me a good understanding of everything I needed to take the tests, and it was also helpful to work on practice problems in class. (I also found it useful to go over the extensive notes I took throughout the year.)