Scioly.org

ichaelm wrote:Hey, I showed up at 2:59. So really I was early!

Haha I think your watch was slow . Mostly, you just missed the instructions... Maybe we started earlier since we had to switch rooms.. Idk. Hey, it ended up working out well

Awh. The school I rooted for thought the test was ridiculously hard (said something about 10 zig-zagging impossible wheatstone bridge like thing), but now that I come here, maybe I'd have the chance if I were to compete against national teams!
Yah, I'd imagine the differences that would've turned out at regionals had it a test the level of nationals. (I still wonder if the tie-breaker is overall ranking of the team or speed because I got 4th on a ridiculously easy test with about 5 questions and an easy measure this circuit lab).

Just a question here: how similar is the content and difficulty of a nationals level Circuit Lab test related to some of the topics covered on AP Physics E and M? I know obviously each test will have some unique topics and the practical part of the event will be different, but how similar are the theory portions?

typically 'bout the same

Mathc314 wrote:Just a question here: how similar is the content and difficulty of a nationals level Circuit Lab test related to some of the topics covered on AP Physics E and M? I know obviously each test will have some unique topics and the practical part of the event will be different, but how similar are the theory portions?

The circuit lab topics are actually a relatively small part of what is covered on AP Physics C E&M. The AP curriculum covers several other topics like electrostatics and electric fields even in the "electricity" half of the content that isn't covered in circuit lab. And then there's the whole other half that's about magnetism, and a bit of calculus that's covered. For example, for this year's E&M FRQ's, only the 2nd FRQ is answerable with circuit lab concepts.

But there is definitely some overlap, and actually I just used circuit lab knowledge to answer the 2nd FRQ this year. It's hard to judge difficulty because a nationals test could have a few hard questions or a lot of medium questions, but idk maybe this year it was about equal. I could actually imagine that FRQ being a practical section of the nats exam. If you're planning on self studying, if you do circuits and maglev it works quite nicely though since you get both halves approximately (that's what I did this year)