The AP Physics is a self-learning course for senior high school students. The scope of the course covers Newtonian mechanics and energy thus the students may be familiar with the content. In the learning of classical mechanics, the students will be forced to start from an alternative route – the calculus. They shall use differentiation and integration to solve the same problems in Newtonian mechanics. They ever practiced the same problems during their senior high school period while they adopted other algebra techniques. It is the main goal to learn the new techniques of differentiation and integration. Following the calculus, the students will also learn basic concepts of differential equation. (Differential equation is a course given for sophomores.)
Except Newtonian mechanics, students will learn the new degree of motion – the rotation. The rotation can be taken as a new dimension that is totally different from linear motions. It is quite a new idea for senior high school students. The introduction of the rotational motion will be accompanied with a new idea of mass in rotation which is called the moment of inertia. There are some complicated calculations using integration to obtain the moment of inertia. In AP Physics, the students only have to know the concept of ‘mass’ for the rotation rather than to carry out the integration.
There are 10 lectures in the AP Physics. The first lecture is the review of Mathematics in which we will introduce differentiation, integration, and simple methods to solve differential equations. Please go through the links to find study resources for your self-learning. The following video courses are all in Chinese. The AP Physics is currently a part of the Physics I course. It should be recreated to have its own learning videos in the future.