AP Physics 1 Pacing Guide: A 32-Week Plan

How this pacing guide is built

This is a week-by-week plan for a full-year AP Physics 1 course, counting back from the May exam to 32 teaching weeks: a typical 36-week school year minus roughly 4 weeks lost to state testing and breaks leaves 32 weeks, the last 2 of which this guide reserves for cumulative review. It follows the 8-unit course structure from the AP Physics 1 course page, and the number of weeks per unit tracks the College Board's own multiple-choice weighting: Unit 2 (Force and Translational Dynamics) gets six weeks because it carries 18-23% of the multiple-choice section and nine subtopics, while Unit 6 and Unit 7 get three weeks each because they carry only 5-8%.

Each week lists its topics by CED code (matching the numbering on the unit pages) and the guide, calculator, interactive, or practice set that fits that week's material. Keep the AP Physics 1 formula sheet open from week one; students should be reading it, not meeting it for the first time in April.

The plan assumes five 45 to 55 minute periods a week. A block schedule that meets every other day for 90 minutes delivers slightly less weekly instructional time and needs roughly 35-36 calendar weeks to cover the same 32 teaching weeks (see the worked example below); a school with fewer than five periods a week should treat this as a 32-week sequence of content and expect it to run past 32 calendar weeks rather than compress the content.

Weeks 1 to 4: Kinematics (Unit 1)

Kinematics is 10-15% of the multiple-choice section and the foundation for every unit that follows, so the pace here should be unhurried even though the topic list is short.

Have students predict where the ball lands in the projectile launcher before they run it. Being wrong out loud in week 3 is cheaper than being wrong on a graded free-response question in week 30.

Weeks 5 to 10: Force and Translational Dynamics (Unit 2)

This is the largest unit on the exam (18-23% of the multiple-choice section, nine subtopics) and the one most likely to run long, because circular motion and friction both take longer to land than the syllabus suggests.

Build in the assumption that week 7 (friction and the inclined plane) is the week most likely to spill into week 8. That is the safest overrun in the whole calendar, because the two weeks of flex built into the final review at the end of this guide exist to absorb exactly this kind of slip.

Weeks 11 to 14: Work, Energy, and Power (Unit 3)

Unit 3 carries 18-23% of the multiple-choice section, the same weight as Unit 2, but its four weeks move faster because the topic count is lower and the bookkeeping approach to energy reuses the free-body work from Unit 2.

Treat every energy problem as a system-definition exercise before it becomes a calculation: have students name what is inside the system and what crosses its boundary before they write a single equation. That habit is what the Qualitative/Quantitative Translation free-response question rewards, and it is cheaper to build here than to retrofit in April.

Weeks 15 to 17: Linear Momentum (Unit 4)

Momentum is 10-15% of the multiple-choice section and one of the more self-contained units, which is why it fits in three weeks even though collisions take real class time to run as demonstrations.

Run the collision lab before the conservation-of-momentum guide, not after. Letting students see a collision that looks momentum-conserving but is not kinetic-energy-conserving is what makes the elastic-versus-inelastic distinction stick.

Weeks 18 to 21: Torque and Rotational Dynamics (Unit 5)

Unit 5 is 10-15% of the multiple-choice section and asks students to redo Unit 2 in rotational language, so the pace depends heavily on how solid the linear force work from weeks 5 to 10 turned out to be.

If Unit 2 ran past its six weeks, this is where the overrun shows up: a class shaky on free-body diagrams will need extra time translating them into rotational form. Protect week 19 (torque itself) even if it means compressing week 20.

Weeks 22 to 24: Energy and Momentum of Rotating Systems (Unit 6)

Unit 6 is the lightest unit on the exam at 5-8% of the multiple-choice section, and it is where a behind-schedule class should look first for time, covered in the final section below.

Rolling without slipping is the one idea here worth a full class period of its own: it is the topic students most often get right on a multiple-choice question and wrong on a free-response question that asks them to justify it.

Weeks 25 to 27: Oscillations (Unit 7)

Unit 7 is another 5-8% unit, and its four subtopics compress well into three weeks because simple harmonic motion is a self-contained model rather than an extension of earlier units.

A pendulum and a spring on the same lab bench, timed side by side, does more for the period formulas than either equation does on its own.

Weeks 28 to 30: Fluids (Unit 8)

Fluids carries 10-15% of the multiple-choice section, the same weight as kinematics, but it lands in April on most calendars and is the unit most often shortchanged because it is new to the current course and sits right before the review weeks. Do not let it slip.

Buoyancy is the concept most often confused with density alone. Spend part of week 28 having students argue, before any math, whether a given object floats and why, the same qualitative-first approach used in weeks 11 through 14.

Weeks 31 and 32: Full review and practice exams

The last two weeks are cumulative, not new content. Rotate through units in reverse order of how recently they were taught, since Unit 1 material is now ten to eleven months old for most students.

These two weeks are also the calendar's buffer. If every unit above landed exactly on schedule, spend both weeks on full practice exams. If any unit ran long, this is where that time gets paid back first, before touching content weeks, following the priority order in the next section.

Where classes fall behind, and what to cut

Three units eat time that is not on the syllabus: Unit 2 (friction and circular motion, weeks 7 and 9) runs long because both topics need a demonstration to click, Unit 5 runs long when Unit 2's free-body work was weak, and Unit 8 gets squeezed because it sits last, right before the exam, on a calendar that has already absorbed two overruns by April.

When a class falls behind, cut in this order, not in calendar order:

1. Cut from the review weeks (31 and 32) first. They are built as buffer. Losing one review week to an earlier overrun is normal; losing both means the next overrun has nowhere to go.
2. Compress Unit 6 (Energy and Momentum of Rotating Systems) from three weeks to two. It carries only 5-8% of the multiple-choice section, tied with Unit 7 for the lowest weighting on the exam, and its six subtopics can run as three double periods: rotational kinetic energy with torque and work, angular momentum with its conservation, then rolling with orbiting satellites in one combined session.
3. Compress Unit 7 (Oscillations) from three weeks to two the same way, combining the SHM definition topics into one week.
4. Do not cut Fluids. It is worth as much as kinematics on the multiple-choice section, and it is the unit most likely to be under-taught simply because it runs out the clock. If Units 2 through 7 together have eaten three or more extra weeks, that time has to come from steps 1 through 3, not from Unit 8.
5. Do not cut a full unit's worth of free-response practice anywhere. The exam is half free response, and units taught without a timed writing week produce students who can solve the multiple-choice version of a problem but freeze on the same problem in prose. If time is short, shorten the synthesis week's lecture portion, not the practice portion.

A class that is more than three weeks behind by the start of Unit 5 (week 18) will not make up the difference through pacing alone. At that point, the fix is fewer but longer problem sets per unit rather than skipped topics: every CED subtopic still shows up on the exam whether or not it got its own class period.