12 AP Physics 1 Project Ideas for High School

What separates a physics project from a craft project

A poster board or a device that either works or does not skips the part of the course that actually matters. A catapult that launches something is a craft project. A catapult where the student predicts the landing distance from the launch angle and speed, then measures the real distance and explains the gap, is a physics project, because the second half forces real use of a model rather than trial and error.

Every project below follows that pattern: build something cheap, predict a number using an equation from the unit, then test the prediction. Only one calls for anything bought specifically for it, a spring for the oscillation lab; the rest run on materials already in a kitchen drawer or a recycling bin.

A note on timing: most of these fit inside one class period plus a short write-up. A few are ongoing across a unit. Durations below assume a single 50-minute period unless stated otherwise.

1. Catapult trajectory challenge

Duration: one class period to build, one to test.

Unit and topic: Unit 1, Kinematics, topic 1.5, Vectors and Motion in Two Dimensions.

Science practice: 2.D, predicting a new value of a physical quantity using the functional dependence between variables.

Materials: craft sticks or a plastic spoon, rubber bands, a small soft projectile such as a marshmallow or pom-pom, a tape measure, a protractor or a protractor app.

Deliverable: before any launch, students fix the angle, measure the launch speed with a phone's slow-motion video against a ruler in frame, and use $R = \dfrac{v_0^2 \sin(2\theta)}{g}$ to predict the horizontal range. They then run three trials and record the measured range.

Grade: the percent difference between predicted and measured range, and whether the student can name a real reason for the gap, such as the projectile leaving above table height or air resistance on a light marshmallow, rather than writing "human error".

2. Ramp friction coefficient lab

Duration: one class period.

Unit and topic: Unit 2, Force and Translational Dynamics, topic 2.7, Kinetic and Static Friction.

Science practice: 3.A, creating an experimental procedure appropriate for the question.

Materials: a stiff board or clipboard, a protractor, a small block or eraser, three or four surface samples such as sandpaper, felt, and wax paper taped to the board.

Deliverable: for each surface, students raise the ramp slowly and record the angle at which the block first starts to slide from rest. Since the block is on the verge of slipping when $mg\sin\theta = \mu_s mg\cos\theta$, that angle gives $\mu_s = \tan\theta$. They then give the block a small push at a slightly shallower angle and adjust it until the block slides down at constant speed, which gives $\mu_k = \tan\theta$ at that second angle.

Grade: a table of measured $\mu_s$ and $\mu_k$ for each surface with $\mu_s$ consistently larger than $\mu_k$, plus one sentence explaining why a rougher-feeling surface does not always produce a larger measured coefficient.

3. Whirling-stopper circular motion lab

Duration: one class period.

Unit and topic: Unit 2, Force and Translational Dynamics, topic 2.9, Circular Motion.

Science practice: 2.B, calculating an unknown quantity with units from known quantities.

Materials: a rubber stopper or heavy washer, two meters of string, a short length of hollow tube or an empty pen barrel, a paperclip, several more washers to hang as a counterweight, a stopwatch.

Deliverable: thread the string through the tube, tie the stopper on one end and hang a known weight of washers on the other, marking the string so the radius stays fixed while swinging. The hanging weight supplies the centripetal force, so $m_{hang}g = \dfrac{m_{stopper}v^2}{r}$. Students solve for the predicted speed and predicted period $T = \dfrac{2\pi r}{v}$, then time twenty revolutions and divide to get the measured period.

Grade: predicted versus measured period within a stated tolerance, and a correct identification of which force in the setup is providing the centripetal force.

4. Balloon-powered car

Duration: one class period to build, part of a period to race and measure.

Unit and topic: Unit 2, Force and Translational Dynamics, topic 2.3, Newton's Third Law.

Science practice: 3.B, applying a law to make a claim.

Materials: a balloon, a straw, tape, a rectangle of cardboard or a small plastic bottle for the body, four bottle caps or a wheel set from an old toy.

Deliverable: students build a car propelled by air escaping from a balloon through a straw, then run trials at three different inflation levels, measuring the distance traveled each time. They write a claim, supported by the trend in their own data, about why a more inflated balloon should travel farther, explicitly naming the pair of forces from Newton's third law: the car pushes air backward out of the straw, and the air pushes the car forward with an equal and opposite force.

Grade: whether the written claim correctly names both members of the third-law force pair, not whether the car goes far.

5. Marble roller coaster with a loop

Duration: two class periods.

Unit and topic: Unit 3, Work, Energy, and Power, topic 3.4, Conservation of Energy.

Science practice: 3.C, justifying a claim with evidence.

Materials: foam pipe insulation cut lengthwise as a track, cardboard for supports, tape, a marble.

Deliverable: students build a track with one loop of radius $r$ and must predict, before testing, the minimum release height that lets the marble complete the loop. At the top of the loop the minimum condition is gravity alone supplying the centripetal force, $v_{top}^2 = gr$. Conservation of energy from the release height $h$ to the top of the loop, at height $2r$, gives $h = 2r + \dfrac{v_{top}^2}{2g} = 2.5r$, treating the marble as sliding rather than rolling so the arithmetic stays at the Unit 3 level. Students then test the marble from that predicted height and from a height slightly below it.

Grade: the marble either makes the loop at the predicted height or falls short by a small, explainable margin from friction, and the write-up states the sliding-versus-rolling simplification rather than presenting $2.5r$ as an exact real-world number.

6. Egg drop, graded on impulse not survival

Duration: one class period to build and test.

Unit and topic: Unit 4, Linear Momentum, topic 4.2, Change in Momentum and Impulse.

Science practice: 2.B, calculating an unknown quantity with units from known quantities.

Materials: a raw egg per design, straws, tape, cotton balls or dry pasta, a plastic sandwich bag, a fixed drop height such as a stairwell landing.

Deliverable: students estimate the impact speed from the drop height using $v = \sqrt{2gh}$, then design two padding schemes and use slow-motion video to estimate the contact time $\Delta t$ for each. Since the impulse-momentum theorem gives $F_{avg}\Delta t = m\Delta v$, a longer contact time produces a smaller average force for the same change in momentum. Students calculate $F_{avg}$ for each design and rank them before knowing which egg survives.

Grade: whether the design with the longer measured contact time also produced the lower calculated average force, and whether an egg surviving is explained by that number rather than treated as the whole result.

7. Newton's cradle collision lab

Duration: one class period to build, one to test different combinations.

Unit and topic: Unit 4, Linear Momentum, topics 4.3 and 4.4, Conservation of Linear Momentum and Elastic and Inelastic Collisions.

Science practice: 2.C, comparing physical quantities across two or more scenarios.

Materials: five identical marbles or steel balls, string, a cardboard box frame, hot glue or tape.

Deliverable: students predict, then test, how many balls swing out on the far side for several release combinations: one ball released, two balls released together, and two balls released from opposite ends at once. Steel-on-steel collisions are close to elastic, and for equal masses an elastic collision fully exchanges velocity, so momentum and kinetic energy conservation applied one collision at a time down the line predicts that the number of balls leaving the far side matches the number released.

Grade: a comparison table of predicted versus observed balls for each combination, and one paragraph explaining the two-balls-from-opposite-ends case, where the middle ball or balls stay nearly still.

8. Balanced mobile torque lab

Duration: one class period.

Unit and topic: Unit 5, Torque and Rotational Dynamics, topics 5.3 and 5.5, Torque and Rotational Equilibrium.

Science practice: 1.A, creating a diagram to represent a physical situation.

Materials: thin dowels or wooden rulers, string, small identical objects such as paperclips or washers, tape.

Deliverable: students build a two-level hanging mobile and must balance each crossbar before hanging it, working from the bottom level up. At each pivot the net torque must be zero, so the objects and distances on each side must satisfy $\sum (mg)(d) = 0$ measured from that pivot. The final deliverable is an annotated diagram of the finished mobile showing the calculated torque at every arm.

Grade: the mobile hangs level without adjustment on the first attempt, and every arm's diagram shows a correct torque calculation rather than a value found by trial and error after the fact.

9. Solid versus hollow can race

Duration: part of one class period.

Unit and topic: Unit 6, Energy and Momentum of Rotating Systems, topics 6.1 and 6.5, Rotational Kinetic Energy and Rolling, drawing on the rotational inertia defined in Unit 5, topic 5.4.

Science practice: 1.C, sketching a qualitative graph of a system's behavior.

Materials: a full, unopened soup can and an empty can of the same size, or a solid rod and a length of pipe of the same mass and radius, a board for a ramp.

Deliverable: before racing, students sketch a qualitative bar chart of how the kinetic energy splits between translational and rotational for each can, since rolling without slipping down an incline gives an acceleration of $a = \dfrac{g\sin\theta}{1 + I/(mr^2)}$, and a solid cylinder's rotational inertia, $I = \tfrac{1}{2}mr^2$, sends less energy into rotation than a hollow cylinder's $I = mr^2$. Students predict which can wins, sketch the graph, then release both from the same height and time the race.

Grade: the sketch correctly shows the solid can with the larger share of translational kinetic energy, and the prediction of which can wins matches the race result.

10. Pendulum period lab

Duration: one class period.

Unit and topic: Unit 7, Oscillations, topics 7.1 and 7.2, Defining Simple Harmonic Motion and Frequency and Period of SHM.

Science practice: 1.B, creating a quantitative graph with appropriate scales and units.

Materials: string, a washer or small weight, a protractor, a stopwatch, tape to fix the string to a table edge or doorframe.

Deliverable: for a pendulum with small swings, $T = 2\pi\sqrt{L/g}$, so $T^2$ plotted against $L$ should be a straight line through the origin with slope $4\pi^2/g$. Students measure the period, timing ten full swings and dividing by ten to reduce timing error, at five different string lengths, then plot $T^2$ versus $L$ and use the slope to calculate $g$. A second required trial repeats one length with double the mass to confirm the period does not change.

Grade: the calculated value of $g$ from the slope, within about 5 percent of 9.8 m/s squared, and whether the double-mass trial correctly shows almost no change in period.

11. Spring constant and predicted period lab

Duration: one class period.

Unit and topic: Unit 7, Oscillations, topic 7.4, Energy of Simple Harmonic Oscillators, using the spring force from Unit 2, topic 2.8.

Science practice: 2.D, predicting a new value using the functional dependence between variables.

Materials: a light spring (a hardware-store extension spring works better than a rubber band, which stretches nonlinearly at anything beyond a small displacement), a set of identical washers or small masses, a ruler, a stopwatch.

Deliverable: students hang a known mass, measure the stretch $x$, repeat for several masses, and plot the hanging weight $mg$ against $x$ to find the spring constant $k$ from the slope, since $F = kx$. They then predict the oscillation period for a chosen hanging mass using $T = 2\pi\sqrt{m/k}$, and separately predict, before measuring, the factor by which the period changes if that mass is doubled. Since $T$ is proportional to $\sqrt{m}$, the predicted factor is $\sqrt{2}$, about 1.41.

Grade: the measured spring constant from a straight-line fit, and whether the measured period ratio after doubling the mass lands close to the predicted $\sqrt{2}$ factor.

12. Aluminum foil boat buoyancy challenge

Duration: one class period.

Unit and topic: Unit 8, Fluids, topic 8.3, Fluids and Newton's Laws.

Science practice: 3.B, applying a law to make a claim.

Materials: a square of aluminum foil per student, a tub or sink of water, pennies or another small uniform weight, a ruler.

Deliverable: students shape a foil hull, measure its approximate dimensions to estimate the hull volume up to the rim, and apply Archimedes' principle, buoyant force equals the weight of displaced water, $F_b = \rho_{water} V_{displaced} g$, to predict the maximum number of pennies the boat can hold before the water level reaches the rim and it swamps. They record the prediction before testing, then add pennies one at a time until the boat sinks.

Grade: the written prediction, made before testing, compared with the actual number of pennies at which the boat sank, and whether the student can explain a shortfall by naming an unaccounted source such as folds trapping air or an uneven hull thickness.

Grading projects fairly

Grade the prediction against the measurement, not who finished first or built the nicest-looking device. Every project above has a number the student commits to before the test runs. That written number, and the reasoning behind it, is the physics. A car that travels the farthest by accident has not demonstrated anything a rubric should reward.

Require the prediction in writing before the test, with a date or a checked-off timestamp. Without that step, a student can quietly adjust the story after seeing the result, and the project stops testing whether the model was understood.

Score the explanation of a gap as its own line, separate from whether the numbers matched. A 15 percent difference between predicted and measured range, correctly attributed to launch height or air resistance, should score higher than a lucky exact match with no explanation offered. Both models and measurements have real, nameable sources of error: string mass in a pendulum, air trapped in a foil hull, a stopwatch reaction-time lag. "Human error" without a specific mechanism is not an explanation and should not earn the point.

Use one small rubric that repeats across every project in this list. Four lines work for all twelve: correctly identifies the model or law that applies, calculates the predicted value with correct units, reports an honest measured value, and explains any gap between the two with a specific physical cause. Because the structure repeats, it grades quickly and it grades the physics rather than the craftsmanship.

Do not grade a race outcome as the assessment. The can race and the balloon car both produce a winner, and that winner is useful only as a check on the prediction made beforehand. If the fastest can was not the one the student predicted, that mismatch is more informative than the race itself, and the write-up should say so rather than quietly moving on.

All twelve projects can run alongside the AP Physics 1 practice sets for the matching unit, and the free-body diagram builder and other interactive simulators let students check a prediction against a clean simulation before trusting a noisier real-world build.