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About the Course
Explore concepts such as electrostatics, conductors, capacitors and dielectrics, electric circuits, magnetic fields, and electromagnetism. You’ll do hands-on laboratory work and in-class activities to investigate phenomena and use calculus to solve problems.
Note: Save your lab notebooks and reports; colleges may ask to see them before granting you credit.
AP Physics Revisions 2024-25
We revised the 4 AP Physics courses and exams for the 2024-25 school year.
Skills You'll Learn
Creating representations that depict physical phenomena
Conducting analyses to derive, calculate, estimate, or predict
Describing experimental procedures, analyzing data, and supporting claims
Equivalency and Prerequisites
College Course Equivalent
A semester-long, introductory calculus-based college course in physics.
Recommended Prerequisites
You should have taken a calculus-based Newtonian physics course, such as AP Physics C: Mechanics or its equivalent. You should also have taken or be concurrently taking calculus.
Exam Date
About the Units
The course content outlined below is organized into commonly taught units of study that provide one possible sequence for the course. Your teacher may choose to organize the course content differently based on local priorities and preferences.
Course Content
Unit 8: Electric Charges, Fields, and Gauss’s Law
You’ll begin your study of the electric force with an exploration of electric charges.
Topics may include:
- Coulomb’s Law
- Electric fields due to point charges or combinations of charges
- Electric Flux and Gauss’s Law
- Electric fields of charge distributions
On The Exam
15%–25% of multiple-choice score
Uint 9: Electric Potential
You’ll continue your study by analyzing forms of energy that occur when electric charges interact.
Topics may include:
- Electric potential
- Electric potential due to point charges and uniform fields
- Electric potential due to configurations of charge
- Energy conservation when electric charges interact with each other or electric fields
On The Exam
10%–20% of multiple-choice score
Unit 10: Conductors and Capacitors
You’ll explore how electric charge can move through an object and the factors that affect the way charge moves.
Topics may include:
- Electrostatics with conductors
- Capacitors
- Dielectrics
On The Exam
10%–15% of multiple-choice score
Unit 11: Electric Circuits
You’ll build on your knowledge of electrical components to investigate the nature of electric circuits and explore current, resistance, and power.
Topics may include:
- Current and resistance
- Current, resistance, and power
- Steady-state direct-current circuits with batteries and resistors only
- Gauss’s Law
On The Exam
15%–25% of multiple-choice score
Unit 12: Magnetic Fields and Electromagnetism
You’ll begin your exploration of magnetism by learning how magnetic fields are generated, how they behave, and how they relate to electricity.
Topics may include:
- Forces on moving charges in magnetic fields
- Forces on current carrying wires in magnetic fields
- Fields of long current carrying wires
- The Biot-Savart Law and Ampère’s Law
On The Exam
10%–20% of multiple-choice score
Unit 13: Electromagnetic Induction
You’ll build on what you’ve learned about charges, currents, and electric and magnetic fields to explore electromagnetic forces and their properties.
Topics may include:
- Electromagnetic induction (including Faraday’s Law and Lenz’s Law)
Inductance (including LR circuits)
On The Exam
10%–20% of multiple-choice score
Credit and Placement
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Course Resources
See Where AP Can Take You
AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism can lead to a wide range of careers and college majors