Advanced Placement (AP) Physics is a set of four courses offered by the College Board as part of its Advanced Placement program: Each AP course has an exam for which high-performing students may receive credit toward their college coursework.
[3] Both exams cover a similar mixture of topics, focusing primarily on Newtonian mechanics, kinematics, rotation, and oscillation.
[2][7] Both exams cover core concepts in electromagnetism, such as electrostatics, capacitors, simple electric circuits, magnetism, and induction.
However, AP Physics 2 additionally covers thermodynamics, waves, sound, optics, and modern physics,[8] while AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism instead covers calculations involving electric flux, inductance, RL circuits, LC circuits, and the equations of Maxwell and Biot-Savart.
A 2007 study found that passing either exam was associated with greater success in college science courses.
[14] The new AP Physics 1 and 2 sequence was designed to be taken over the span of two years instead of just one in order to give students enough time to understand the concepts at an appropriate depth.