AP Physics C-Electricity and Magnetism Syllabus
Overview
Students enrolled in AP Physics C have already completed a year-long, accelerated physics
course in their junior year. It is required that they also have completed, or are concurrently
enrolled in a first semester calculus course. The AP Physics C course will meet five, 70-minute
periods a week, for a75 day second semester. Approximately one and a half weeks will be
allowed for review immediately prior to the AP exams in May, and review sessions will also be
held outside of class time during the second semester. Students are expected to take both the
mechanics and electricity and magnetism AP exams in May. Students are highly recommended
to review practice exams and other materials available through the College Board website.
Textbook
University Physics, 12th Edition, Young and Freedman (Pearson, 2008)
Materials Needed
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Textbook
Three-ring binder with tab dividers and notebook paper
Scientific calculator
Pens and pencils
WebAssign account and access to internet outside of the class
Course Description
This fast-paced semester-long course is designed to prepare students for the AP Physics C exam
in electricity and magnetism. Topics will be covered in the order presented in chapters 21-30 of
the Young and Freedman textbook, University Physics. Calculus will be used throughout this
course, with emphasis on both differential and integral methods. Concepts and problem-solving
techniques will be introduced through a series of lectures, interactive demonstrations, question
and answer sessions, problem-solving sessions, laboratory investigations, and homework
assignments. The course will adhere to a tight schedule and students will be expected to put in
30-60 minutes per night in homework.
Major Units of Study
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Unit 1: Electrostatics: charge, field and energy
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Unit 2: Conductors, Capacitors and Dielectrics
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Unit 3: Electric Circuits
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Unit 4: Magnetic Fields
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Unit 5: Electromagnetism
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Instructional Strategies
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Lectures: Formal presentation of concepts will typically proceed through lecture. Since
students have already completed a year-long, advanced course in physics, lectures will be
limited in number and duration to topics deemed to be sufficiently difficult or novel to
students. Wherever possible, the instructional strategy will be to present students with
phenomena first, and follow this with explication of concepts, working from concrete to
abstract.
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Interactive demonstrations: The instructor will incorporate a variety of demonstrations
within the course. The purpose of such demonstrations ranges from introduction of a new
concept (introductory) to detailed analysis of a phenomena using labware probes (advanced.)
Demonstrations will serve to support the conceptual understandings required for the
mechanics curriculum.
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Question and Answer Sessions: Interaction and feedback make question and answer sessions
essential in this course. Class-wide question and answer sessions will be incorporated on a
daily basis, in a largely informal manner. These may center on student queries about lecture
topics, demonstrations, labs or physics problems.
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Problem-Solving Sessions: Students will be allowed class time to work individually and
collaboratively on solving problems assigned in class or as homework. These sessions are
valuable insofar as they allow students to exchange strategies for mastering problem-solving
techniques, and also allow students to interact with the instructor on a one-on-one basis.
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Laboratory Investigations: As a laboratory-based course, students should expect to spend
about 20% of class time (1 day for every 5 days of instruction) doing laboratory work. Labs
are designed to reinforce concepts from the mechanics curriculum. Labs are designed to
maximize student inquiry, collaborative interactions, authentic applications and open-ended
creative solutions whenever possible. Students will often be required to generate their own
procedures, decide which information is relevant, and then decide how to organize and
analyze this information. Students will be required to consider and evaluate possible sources
of error in laboratory investigations. Clear communication of ideas and findings through
writing, tables, graphs and calculations will be demanded. Reports will typically document
purpose, method, data, analysis and conclusions. Students will work collaboratively in teams
of 2-3, but will generally submit their own individual final reports. Students are expected to
compile a portfolio of their lab work for each semester.
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Homework: AP Physics is a college-level course! Students will need to invest 45-60 minutes
of time each evening on preparation for class. This will include online and written problem
assignments, reading assignments, laboratory write-ups and general study time. Problemsolving assignments are of particular importance in the homework regimen. Problems found
at the end of the textbook chapter will be assigned on a weekly basis. Students will submit
answers through Webassign and will be expected to achieve a minimum percentage of
correct responses after a limited number of allowed attempts. From these problem sets,
students will also be asked to submit a subset of fully-worked out problems in writing. These
problems should be submitted on loose leaf paper.
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Assessment Strategies
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Philosophy: Assessment of Student Understanding: Since this course is fast-paced, it is
essential that students prepare themselves in a daily manner for lessons. Toward this end, the
instructor will assess students on a daily basis in either formative or summative manners.
Students will be assessed formatively on a daily basis in a variety of ways, including
o Formative: Although homework assignments and quizzes will comprise 20% of the
classroom grade, the spirit of homework assessment is to provide formative feedback.
Students will be given multiple opportunities to achieve full credit on problem
assignments, encouraging them to revisit problems that they find especially difficult.
On a weekly basis, students will be expected to successfully complete a minimum
percentage of online problems. The instructor will also collect and provide feedback
on students’ written problems on a weekly basis. Homework quizzes will be
administered on a frequent basis to test student understanding and provide feedback
for improvement.
o Summative: Laboratory reports (see previous section), unit tests and the final exam
are modeled on the AP exams and are very difficult. Unit tests are given at the end of
each unit and are written to encourage students to see the ‘big picture.’ Unit tests will
be divided into multiple choice and free response sections. Free response problems on
unit tests will involve combining material from previous units.
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Weighting of Class Work Grade: The class work portion of the grade will be weighted as
follows: Homework and Quizzes (20%), Labs (20%), Unit Tests (60%)
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Final Exam: A final examination will be administered at the termination of each semester
and will be cumulative. The final exam will count for 20% of the semester grade.
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Grading: Final grades for the quarter and semester will be assigned according to the
following scale: A (90-100%), B (80-89.9%), C (70-79.9%), D (60-69.9%), F (<60%)
Category weighting for AP Physics Class Work
Category
Labs and
activities
Homework
(Webassign and
collected work)
Homework
quizzes
Tests
Code
LAB
Weight
20%
HW
10%
HWQ
10%
TST
60%
Typical assignment values
100 for labs
20, 25, 50 for activities
Determined by webassign (20-50 typical)
100 for large quizzes
20, 25, 50 for small quizzes and homework checkins
100 for multiple choice
40 for problems
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Electricity and Magnetism Labs
Students will spend 20% of course time on laboratory work. This work will include both
informal activities of an exploratory nature, and also lengthier laboratory investigations requiring
a formal analysis and write-up. The following formal laboratory investigations will support the
mechanics curriculum:
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Electric Potential Mapping Lab: Using conductive ink pens, students will create and test a
variety of conductive patterns on a sheet of resistive paper. They will use a voltage probe to
measure the magnitude and sign of the electric potential at a variety of key locations. They
will use their results to qualitatively sketch electric field gradients. They will test their
predictions using PhET* software designed for modeling electric fields and potentials.
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RC Circuits Lab: Students will construct a basic resistor and capacitor DC circuit using
breadboards with stock capacitors and resistors. They will use voltage probes to measure
time constant for charging and discharging of these circuits, using different combinations of
resistors and capacitors.
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RC Circuits Virtual Lab: Students will use the PhET application, “Circuit construction kit”
to build circuits containing resistors and capacitors and test the steady state behavior of
circuits containing these elements. They will also test the behavior of DC circuits containing
multiple capacitors in series and in parallel.
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Kirchoff’s Rules Lab: Students will use breadboards and stock resistors to create a variety of
DC circuits. They will measure equivalent resistance, current and voltage drops in these
circuits, comparing their results to predictions from Ohm’s law. They will test circuits
containing both series and parallel combinations of resistors. They will construct circuits
with multiple loops, comparing their results to the predictions of Kirchoff’s rules. Finally,
students will model these circuits using the PhET circuit construction kit.
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Biot-Savart Law Lab: Students will construct Helmholtz coils using wire and cardboard
discs. They will use magnetic field probes to measure the magnetic field along the axis of
these coils when a DC current is applied, comparing field magnitudes and directions to
theoretical predictions from the law of Biot-Savart.
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Slinky Solenoid Lab: Students will use a magnetic field probe to measure the magnitude and
direction of the magnetic field generated within a solenoid. For the solenoid, students will
pass an electric current through the coils of a toy Slinky. As part of this lab, students will
determine the magnitude of the magnetic permeability constant.
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RL Circuits Virtual Lab: Students will use PhET circuit construction kit to build circuits
containing resistors and inductors and test the steady state behavior of circuits containing
these elements.
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Induction Virtual Lab: Students will explore a variety of concepts relating to Faraday’s law,
electromagnetic induction and electromagnetic radiation using PhET applications designed to
provide a virtual introduction to these topics.
*PhET, Physics Education Technology website. http://phet.colorado.edu/
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Units of Study, Detailed Outline – Electricity and Magnetism
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Unit 1: Electrostatics: Charge, Field and Energy (15 days) , Chapters 21-23
o Electric charge and Coulomb’s law
 Describe types and behavior of electric charge
 Apply Coulomb’s law and the superposition principle
o Electric field
 Define in terms of force on a test charge
 Calculate magnitude and direction of field from or more point charges
 Interpret electric field diagrams
 Analyze kinematics of motion of a charged particle in a field.
o Gauss’s law
 Concept of flux and Gaussian surface
 Electric field by integration for symmetric geometries
o Electric potential
 Concept of electric potential and relation to field
 Potential of point charge configurations
 Potential by integration
o Fields and potentials of other charge distributions
 Equipotential lines and surfaces
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Unit 2: Conductors, Capacitors and Dielectrics (5 days), Chapter 24
o Conductors
 Explain how charge distributes itself on conductor in equilibrium
 Describe the electric fields surrounding conductors in equilibrium
o Capacitors
 Define capacitance and state relation to charge, voltage and energy
o Parallel plate capacitors
o Dielectrics
 Understand effect of dielectric placed within a capacitor
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Unit 3: Electric Circuits (16 days), Chapters 25, 26
o Current, resistance and power
 Concept of resistance and current at microscopic level
 Ohm’s law
o Steady-state direct current circuits with batteries and resistors only
 Series and parallel combinations of resistors
 Application of Kirchoff’s rules to solve circuits
o Capacitors in circuits
 Concept of voltage and charge across capacitors in initial and steady-state
situations
 Capacitors in series and parallel
 Write expressions for time-dependence of charge and voltage for capacitor
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Unit 4: Magnetic Fields (15 days), Chapters 27, 28
o Forces on moving charges in magnetic fields
 Describe magnitude and direction of force on charges moving in magnetic
fields
 Understand situations involving motion of charged particle through a
magnetic field at constant velocity, uniform circular motion, etc.
o Forces on current-carrying wires in magnetic fields
 Describe magnitude and direction of force on current-carrying wire in
magnetic field
 Calculate magnitude and direction of torque on current loops
o Fields of long current-carrying wires
 Calculate net field from multiple current sources, and the effect that one
wire has on another.
o Biot-Savart law and Ampere’s law
 Derive and apply expression for the field created by summing small
current elements, in particular for a circular loop of current.
 Use Ampere’s law, plus symmetry arguments and the right-hand rule, to
relate magnetic field strength to current for planar or cylindrical
symmetries.
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Unit 5: Electromagnetism (14 days), Chapters 29, 30
o Electromagnetic induction
 Calculate flux of a uniform field through a loop of arbitrary orientation.
 Calculate flux of a non-uniform field by integration
 Calculate the magnitude and direction of an induced emf in a loop under
different circumstances
o Inductance
 Understand how an emf generated within an inductor
 Understand self-inductance of long solenoid.
 Understand LR and LC circuits with direct current, especially initial and
steady state behavior.
o Maxwell’s Equations
 Recognize each of Maxwell’s equations and identify its implications
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