AP Physics C: With 4 Practice Tests, 5th Edition (2020)

Name: AP Physics C: With 4 Practice Tests, 5th Edition (2020)
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Author: Emma Thompson

Gain insights into exam patterns with AP Physics C: With 4 Practice Tests, 5th Edition (2020), an invaluable resource for test-day preparation.

Emma Thompson

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Acknowledgments
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my coauthor, Joshua Farkas, an
exceptionally gifted former student of mine. Josh contributed the lion’s share
of work to the first edition, developing most of the examples and problems
(especially the novel and creative ones), and offering numerous ideas and
suggestions as to the best way to present difficult concepts and useful
problem-solving strategies. I am very grateful for all he has done in making
our book a success. While preparing the fifth edition, I was helped by yet
another superb Brown undergraduate, Adam Scherlis. Adam reviewed all of
the examples, problems, and practice tests, catching many errors and making
many suggestions for improvements. I am very grateful for his expert help.
—RAP
I would first of all like to thank Robert Pelcovits for coauthoring this book
with me and for his valiant efforts in its revision. To work with a man of his
stature, both as a physicist and as a person, is indeed a privilege. This book
never could have been possible without him. I would also like to thank Esta
Farkas for heroically reviewing the initial drafts of this book for both content
and English.
—JDF

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About the Authors
Robert Pelcovits is a professor of physics at Brown University, where he has
taught since 1979. He earned his B.A. and M.S. degrees at the University of
Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. at Harvard University. The author of over 80
publications in theoretical condensed matter physics, he has lectured on his
research at many universities throughout the world. He has taught a wide
range of courses at Brown, from introductory to advanced graduate level. In
1999 he was awarded the Philip J. Bray Award for Teaching Excellence in
the Physical Sciences by Brown. In 2008 he was named a Royce Family
Professor of Teaching Excellence at Brown, and in 2011 the university
awarded him the Harriet Sheridan Award for Distinguished Contribution to
Teaching and Learning.
Having earned both Sc.B. and M.S. degrees from Brown University and an
M.D. degree from Cornell University, Joshua Farkas is currently an assistant
professor of medicine at the University of Vermont. He was also a National
Merit Scholar, a Goldwater Scholar, and a Faculty Scholar at Brown
University, with experience teaching college-level calculus and calculus-
based physics. Having scored 5s on AP exams in BC Calculus, Biology,
Chemistry, and Physics C, as well as 800s in SAT I Math and on SAT II
exams in Math IIC, Chemistry, and Physics, he brought a student’s
perspective to this book.

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© Copyright 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008 by Kaplan, Inc., d/b/a Barron’s
Educational Series
Prior edition © Copyright 2002 by Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., under
the title How to Prepare for the AP Physics C Advanced Placement
Examination.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the
non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook
on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded,
decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any
information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented,
without the express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kaplan, Inc.,
d/b/a Barron’s Educational Series
750 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017
www.barronseduc.com
ISBN: 978-1-5062-7424-9
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Kaplan, Inc., d/b/a Barron’s Educational Series print books are available at
special quantity discounts to use for sales promotions, employee premiums,
or educational purposes. For more information or to purchase books, please
call the Simon & Schuster special sales department at 866-506-1949.

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Contents
Barron’s Essential 5
Introduction
Diagnostic Test
1 Background
2 One-Dimensional Kinematics
3 Two-Dimensional Kinematics
4 Newton’s Laws
5 Work, Energy, and Power
6 Linear Momentum and Center of Mass
7 Rotation I: Kinematics, Force, Work, and Energy
8 Rotation II: Inertia, Equilibrium, and Combined
Rotation/Translation
9 Simple Harmonic Motion
10 Universal Gravitation
11 Coulomb’s Law and Electric Fields Due to Point Charges
12 Calculating Electric Fields and Potentials Due to
Continuous Charge Distributions
13 Gauss’s Law
14 Analysis of Circuits Containing Batteries and Resistors
15 Capacitors
16 RC Circuits

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•
•
•
•
•
•
Barron’s Essential 5
As you review the content in this book to work toward earning that 5
on your AP PHYSICS C exam, here are five things that you MUST
know above everything else:
1 Dimensional Analysis. Many AP Physics multiple-choice questions can be answered
or have the number of possibly correct answers significantly reduced by using
dimensional analysis to check the units of the answers.
Even for free-response questions you should check your units. You may discover a
mistake in your work by doing so.
Whenever you solve a practice or homework problem, always check the units; this is
a great habit to develop while mastering physics.
2 Vectors. Vectors are key quantities in physics, whether Newtonian mechanics or
electricity and magnetism.
Review the addition and subtraction laws for vectors in Chapter 1.
Most important, review how to resolve vectors into components, including the
relevant trigonometry.
3 Graphs. The AP exam will test your ability to understand physical information in
graphical form, such as displacement of a moving object vs. time. You will need to
draw graphs in the free-response questions and select correct graphs in the multiple-
choice section.
Review the use of graphs in the free-response questions. Also read “Graphical
Analysis of Data” in Chapter 1.
4 Newton’s Laws. Physics C Mechanics is all about the application of Newton’s three
laws of motion to mechanical systems.
Review Chapter 4, paying close attention to the correct drawing of free-body
diagrams and the proper application of Newton’s third law to a pair of interacting
objects.
5 Practice! Practice! Practice! The best (and maybe only) way to learn physics is to do
practice problems. Reading a practice book or textbook over and over will not help
you. Do as many practice problems as you can in this book, your textbook, and any
online resources.

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S
Introduction
HOW TO REVIEW FOR THE AP PHYSICS
EXAM
olving physics problems is like mastering any sport or musical
instrument: If you want to do it well, you have to practice. Do not expect
to understand everything immediately and do not be frustrated by the effort
required to master some concepts and techniques. Contrary to popular
conceptions of a vast divide between physics geniuses who can immediately
solve problems and other people who simply cannot, learning physics
requires hard work. However, a mastery of calculus-based physics will teach
you analytical and mathematical skills that will prove extremely useful in a
broad range of other disciplines.
GUIDE TO THIS REVIEW BOOK
Text
The text of the chapters works from the ground up without assuming
extensive knowledge of physics on your part. Therefore, the text is
appropriate at any stage of your mastery of AP physics. You may find it
helpful to read the text along with your textbook when you are first learning
the material and studying for course exams, or you may choose to read the
chapters together as a review after you have completed most of your AP
Physics course.
Questions
Because of space limitations, it is impossible for the questions to work from
the ground up (i.e., start with very easy questions and progress to more

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difficult ones). Therefore, the questions are generally near the AP level and
assume that you have some problem-solving experience. The questions are
designed to raise you from a competent problem solver to an expert with
extensive experience in solving AP problems. If you have difficulty with the
questions, you may want to go back and solve some problems in your
introductory physics textbook or AP physics textbook, as well as consider the
advice in the next paragraph.
Difficulty of the Questions
The problems in this review book are generally slightly more difficult than
actual AP exam questions. In order to maximize the amount that you learn
from this book and your degree of comfort with AP physics questions, we
have designed the questions to cover the material and problem-solving
techniques of the AP Physics exam while being more challenging than
questions you are actually likely to encounter on the exam. For example, our
problems generally have more parts than standard AP problems in order to
exhaustively explore various hypothetical situations. Therefore, we strongly
urge you not to become discouraged if you are not able to solve all the
problems on your first attempt. Instead, the best approach is to make your
best effort at the problems, read (and study) the solutions of problems you got
wrong, and later return to these problems and try them again. Because we
have attempted to include all the common problem types that appear on the
AP exam, after you have worked through all the problems in this guide
correctly (even if not on your first or second attempt), you will probably be in
excellent shape. Another approach that you might find useful for multistep
problems is to do each part individually and check the answer before
proceeding to the next part. This allows you to avoid wasting time by making
a mistake in one part and then propagating it through the rest of the problem.
The advantage to this difficulty level is that after you obtain experience
solving the problems in this book, you will be comfortable solving the
problems on the AP exam.
Distribution of the Questions

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Not all AP topics are created equal. Some topics (such as Gauss’s and
Faraday’s laws) are tested extensively and are frequently the subject of entire
free-response questions. Other topics (such as circuit analysis) are central to
solving a range of questions but are generally not the sole topic of a free-
response question. Finally, some topics (such as Maxwell’s equations) are not
tested very extensively.
The distribution of questions in this review book is based on a careful
review of decades of AP examinations. Topics that have been tested
frequently in the past are reviewed thoroughly, and topics tested infrequently
are not reviewed as extensively. Additionally, more attention is paid to topics
requiring more practice than others. (For example, although rotational
kinematics is frequently tested, extensive practice with rotational kinematics
is not crucial because of its similarity to linear kinematics.) We appreciate
that the time you have to review for this exam is limited, so we have worked
hard to provide you with exactly the material and questions you need to do
well on the AP exam.
Derivations
From introductory physics courses, you may have received the impression
that derivations aren’t very important but rather that only the final results are
relevant. This is not the case in Physics C, where the level of sophistication is
high enough to require the derivation of most of the important equations.
Since these derivations illustrate important principles and problem-solving
approaches, we have included them here and urge you to make sure you
understand them.
Problem-Solving Strategies to Watch For
As multiple-choice and free-response questions are presented and explained,
we have tried to show, often in multiple approaches to the same problem,
how various strategies can be applied. A quick way to answer a multiple-
choice question, for example, often involves elimination of incorrect choices
based on such considerations as dimensional analysis, behavior at extreme

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values of the system parameters, results of eliminating certain parameters,
and the absence of parameters that by the nature of the problem must be
included. In the free-response questions, results from previous parts
frequently are used in later, more involved, parts; thus, notice how you can
get valuable clues as to how to approach part (d) by rereading (and probably
using results from) parts (a), (b), and (c). Remember the value of getting a
good grasp of the situation described in a problem; using sketches, diagrams,
and graphs; thinking of the relationships between given quantities; and
relating situations to concepts that might be more familiar (as in rotational
and linear motion, in electrical and gravitational fields, and in conservation of
elastic and gravitational energy). As you carefully study our solutions, be
sure to watch for these and the many other approaches that will improve your
abilities to analyze and to understand physics problems and to develop your
“physics intuition.”
GRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF DATA
The free-response section of the exam typically includes a question involving
a lab experiment and data analysis. We have included such questions in this
edition. Here are some general tips for successfully solving these questions.
∎ You will usually be asked to plot a relationship between quantities that is
expected to be linear. You may need to evaluate a suitable function of one
of the quantities in order to obtain a linear relation. For an example, see
“Mechanics III” of the Diagnostic Test (page 19).
∎ If you are asked to plot quantity A as a function of quantity B, then A is on
the vertical axis and B is on the horizontal axis. On the other hand, the
problem may simply say to plot the data to test a linear relationship. In
that case, it is your choice as to which quantity goes on which axis.
∎ You will need to examine the range of data points to determine the correct
scale on the axes. Your data points should cover at least half of the grid.
Your scale must be uniform along the axis; i.e., if neighboring major
gridlines differ by 4 units, then this must be true of all neighboring major
gridlines.
∎ Label the axes with the quantity plotted, and be sure to include the units.

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AP Physics C: With 4 Practice Tests, 5th Edition (2020)

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