On February 29 2024, the College Board released the course and exam descriptions for the revised version of all four AP Physics courses. You can find all the information and links at this page.
For the AP Physics C exams, the course content will not change. However, all AP physics exams - P1, P2, C-mechanics, and C-E&M - will be in an identical format as of the 2025 exams. The format is, 80 minutes for 40 multiple choice questions; and 100 minutes for 4 free response questions. That means an entire exam takes three hours.
But wait! For decades, the two physics C courses have each had 90 minute exams, not three-hour exams, because the physics C courses have each represented a single-semester college course. Has that changed?
It has not. Each of the FOUR courses now represents what is taught at the college level in a single semester. AP Physics 1 represents the first semester of a college-level algebra-based introductory course. AP C-E&M represents the second semester of a college-level calculus-based introductory course. And so on.
Thing is, we are teaching high school classes on a high school schedule. The vast, vast majority of high school students taking physics for the first time should do a full year of mechanics. This full year can be AP Physics 1; this can also be AP Physics C-mechanics for advanced students who are taking calculus. Both cover substantially identical concepts.
For those taking a SECOND year of high level physics, well, AP Physics C-mechanics probably isn't challenging enough. It's absolutely normal, acceptable, reasonable, typical for a student to take AP Physics 1 one year, then the combination of C-mechanics and C-E&M in their second year. This post gives a recommended course sequence for such students.
Me, I like to teach AP Physics 2 as my second-year high school course. It's rich in diverse content, meaning that physics veterans won't ever say "oh, geez, not another cart on a ramp". It's also particularly well adapted to seniors who need the course front-loaded - start with the hardest stuff like electricity and magnetism, and end with the simpler and more concrete topics like optics and thermodynamics.
But in any case, in any way you adapt the courses to your particular school ecosystem, the three-hour AP Physics C exams don't mean anything about how long you spend teaching the material. Rather, the longer exams are a response to the fact that the pre-2025 APC exams were quite "speeded." They were as much a test of how fast a student could do physics as how well a student could do physics. And that's not what anyone wants to test.
I've arranged AP Physics 2 so that the E&M portion of the year is a 4-unit mini-course that lasts from approximately December through February. The advantage of doing this is that static electricity experiments and demonstrations work so much better in the winter. I have no other good reason.
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