AP Physics 1: Algebra-Based — The Complete 2026 Guide for Texas Parents & Students

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If you have been told that AP® Physics 1 is the AP exam that fails half the students who take it, you were told something that was true for a decade and stopped being true in 2025. The redesigned course was examined for the first time in May 2025, and the curve moved so far that almost every piece of advice written before that date now misdescribes the exam. This guide is built from the current Course and Exam Description, the College Board’s published score distributions, and the 2025 Chief Reader Report — the document that says, question by question, where points were lost.

The honest 2026 headline is not “this exam is brutal.” It is stranger and more useful than that: the average student now passes, and the collapse risk is still real. Both things are true, and the gap between them is where preparation actually matters.

The 2026 exam at a glance

AP Physics 1: Algebra-Based is scheduled for Wednesday, May 6, 2026, at 12 p.m. local time. It sits in the first of the two 2026 administration weeks (May 4–8 and May 11–15). If your student has an unavoidable conflict, the late-testing window runs May 18–22, and Physics 1 is scheduled for Friday, May 22, 2026, at 12 p.m. local time. Note that students cannot self-select late testing — the school must approve a valid conflict or emergency first — so talk to your AP coordinator rather than assuming.

Three hours total. Note the arithmetic that students never do in advance: Section II gives you 25 minutes per free-response question, and it is worth exactly as much as the entire multiple-choice section. Students who train only for multiple choice are training for half the exam.

One format detail worth checking before May, because it surprises people: the exam is hybrid digital. Students answer the multiple-choice questions and view the free-response questions in the Bluebook testing app, but they handwrite their free-response answers in paper exam booklets, which are collected and shipped for scoring. Reading physics on a screen while deriving on paper is a physical skill, and May is a bad time to discover it.

Beware of any prep site still advertising “50 questions in 90 minutes.” That was the pre-2025 format, which also carried five free-response questions and multiselect items that no longer exist. Several popular score calculators have never been updated — a reliable signal that the rest of their content is equally stale.

What the score distribution actually says now

Here is the published record from the College Board’s score distribution pages. One caution before you read it: the 2026 figures are preliminary. They are released rounded to whole numbers and may shift slightly as late exams are scored. Earlier years are final and carry decimals.

Read the 2024-to-2025 line again. The pass rate jumped roughly twenty points in a single year, and the rate of 5s nearly doubled. Nothing about physics changed; the course and its exam were redesigned, and the scoring standard was reset with it. In the global May 2025 administration, 174,992 students took the exam and the mean score was 3.12 — the first time this exam’s mean sat above a 3.

So the old reputation is dead. But look at the column parents skip. On the preliminary 2026 data, 17% of students scored a 1. Compare that with the other two physics exams in the same year:

Physics 1 is now within about four points of both of its harder-sounding siblings on pass rate — while producing more than double Physics 2’s rate of 1s. That is the shape of this exam in 2026: a generous middle and a heavy tail. The students who fail are not spread evenly across the ability range; they cluster, and they cluster for reasons the Chief Reader Report describes in unusual detail.

One more piece of context that stops parents from over-reading the good news. In the global May 2025 administration, Physics 1 was taken by 174,992 students; Physics C: Mechanics by 66,267 and Physics 2 by 24,322. Physics 1 is the unselected, first-AP-science population — often 10th and 11th graders. Physics 2 and Physics C draw self-selected students who have generally already completed a physics course. A near-equal pass rate across a far less selected field is strong evidence that the standard genuinely moved, not that the material got easier to learn. Your student still has to learn mechanics. They are just not walking into a machine designed to fail them.

The eight units — and the fluids question

The current Course and Exam Description is effective Fall 2024 and was first examined in May 2025. It defines eight units. Fluids is in, as Unit 8, and it is weighted 10–15% — if you see “12–14%” on a prep site, that number did not come from the College Board.

Now the precision point that almost every summary of this exam gets wrong, and that changes how you should study. The CED presents that table explicitly as the exam weighting for the multiple-choice section. These are multiple-choice weights only. The free-response section — the other 50% of the score — is not weighted by unit at all.

The consequence is concrete. In 2025, the fourth free-response question was a fluids problem. For the students who sat that exam, Unit 8 was not 10–15% of anything; it was 8 of the 40 free-response points, on top of its multiple-choice share. A student who wrote off fluids as the small unit at the end of the year — the unit many courses reach in May, if at all — lost a fifth of Section II before reading the prompt. Treat every unit as capable of anchoring a free-response question, because the weighting table makes no promise that it will not.

Units 2 and 3 deserve their own note. Together they are up to 46% of the multiple-choice section. Forces and energy are not merely the biggest units; they are the language the later units are written in. Rotational dynamics is torque plus Newton’s second law; oscillations are energy plus a restoring force; fluids are buoyancy plus a net-force equation. A student shaky on free-body diagrams in October does not have a Unit 2 problem. They have a whole-exam problem.

Section II: the four tasks, and what they are worth

Section II is not four generic physics problems. The CED assigns a specific task type to each of the four question positions, and the 2025 exam followed that structure:

• Question 1: Mathematical Routines — 10 points in 2025
• Question 2: Translation Between Representations — 12 points in 2025
• Question 3: Experimental Design and Analysis — 10 points in 2025
• Question 4: Qualitative/Quantitative Translation — 8 points in 2025

Forty points, and here is the number that should reset your expectations. The 2025 mean scores reported by the Chief Reader were 4.74, 6.09, 4.93, and 4.64 respectively. Students averaged roughly half of the available free-response points — on an exam whose overall mean was a passing 3.12. Half credit on Section II is not a disaster on this exam. It is the norm. Which means every additional free-response point is disproportionately valuable, and the Chief Reader tells us exactly where they are lying on the floor.

What actually costs points — from the people who score it

The 2025 Chief Reader Report was summarized by Brian Utter, Teaching Professor and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at the University of California, Merced, and reflects 840 readers scoring 174,992 students. It is the single most useful free document for this exam, and its findings are far more specific than the usual “it’s conceptual, not mathematical.” The findings below are paraphrased from that report. The pattern that emerges is consistent and counterintuitive: the algebra is usually not the bottleneck. The interpretation is.

Experimental design: students design experiments they cannot interpret

On the 2025 experimental design question, which used a torque scenario, the numbers fall off a cliff in a very particular place. About 70% of responses described a workable way to gather data with limited lab equipment. About 46% could describe how to graph that data to find the unknown mass. But only around 20% could describe how the slope yields that mass.

That collapse — 70 to 46 to 20 — is the exam in miniature. Students can run a lab. They cannot explain what its graph means. And the report is blunt that the mechanical skills are fine: responses did very well scaling axes and plotting points, with nearly all students creating a linear scale, and most drew an appropriate best-fit line. Plotting is not the problem. Knowing that if a relationship can be written as a fraction, graphing the numerator against the denominator gives a slope equal to the quantity you want — that is the problem.

Two point-losers on the same question are pure discipline:

• Axis labels without units. The report notes that many students supplied only a label or only a unit on the vertical axis. A correct axis needs both: Force (N), not Force, and not N. This is a free point that thousands of students hand back every year.
• Naming things precisely. The report identifies the biggest challenge as differentiating quantities that share a name — telling the distance from the spring scale to the stand apart from the distance from the block to the stand. If your student writes d for both, they cannot score the point even when their physics is right.

Also flagged: best-fit lines drawn connect-the-dots through the scatter rather than as a single smooth trend line, and responses that proposed plotting the inverse of a quantity in a way that linearizes nothing.

The fluids question: one overlooked invariant sank the chain

The 2025 qualitative/quantitative translation question involved a block submerged in fluids of different densities. Watch the failure isolate itself:

• More than three quarters of responses correctly indicated that the acceleration increases as fluid density increases.
• About 60% linked greater fluid density to greater buoyant force.
• Around three quarters used Newton’s second law in a multistep derivation of the acceleration.
• But only about a third stated that the force of gravity on the block stays the same when the fluid changes.

Read that again, because it is the whole thesis of this exam. Three quarters of students could do the derivation. A third could say why it was true. Acceleration depends on the net force, so the argument requires noting that one of the two forces did not change — and the report says responses frequently indicated or implied that the buoyant force was the only force acting on a submerged object. The algebra was never the bottleneck. The reasoning chain had one missing link, and the link was an invariant nobody thought to mention.

The same question produced three more named errors: the symbol ρ read as p and interpreted as pressure or momentum; derivations begun from Bernoulli’s equation when the prompt directed students to start from Newton’s second law; and pressure treated as if it were a force.

Representations, and the algebra that does break

On the momentum question, about 85% of responses sketched a horizontal line representing constant momentum through at least part of the collision, but fewer than half recognized that it stays continuous and horizontal throughout — some drew a line with a nonzero slope, i.e. momentum continually changing, in a problem about conservation of momentum.

On energy, the report observes that responses demonstrated better understanding of energy bar charts than of graphs showing energy as a function of position. If your student likes bar charts and avoids energy-vs-position graphs, that preference is a diagnosis.

And the algebra does break, in two named ways. The report describes responses that could not successfully complete algebraic operations with fractions, and a common error of equating (4D)² to 4D². These are not physics failures. They are Algebra 1 failures surfacing under time pressure in a course where nobody is checking them anymore.

One last misconception the report singles out, because it is so intuitive: that a moving object which makes contact with a spring will always slow down. Whether it slows, speeds up, or holds speed depends on the spring constant and on what gravitational potential energy is doing at the same time. You cannot know without comparing both energy changes.

Read the bolded verb

The Chief Reader asks teachers to be intentional about using task verbs, noting that these words are bolded in the free-response questions precisely to signal what kind of response is expected. Describe, derive, justify, calculate, and indicate ask for different things, and a beautiful answer to a question that was not asked scores zero. The complete list lives in the Exam Information section of the CED. It takes fifteen minutes to read and it is the highest-yield fifteen minutes available.

The calculator policy is simpler than you think

The CED states it plainly: a four-function scientific or graphing calculator is allowed on both sections of the exam. There is no calculator-prohibited section — a real structural difference from AP Calculus, and one that catches students who have internalized the calculus rules. A table of information and equations is also provided.

Two cautions. The equation sheet is a memory aid, not a strategy: a student who meets it for the first time in May will burn minutes hunting for relationships instead of recognizing them. Practice with it from the start. And the always-available calculator is a trap for exactly the failure mode above — this exam gives you full computational power, then awards most of its points for saying why. The machine cannot tell you that the gravitational force stayed the same.

Physics 1, Physics 2, or Physics C: how to choose

The pass rates above make these three look interchangeable. They are not, and the deciding factor is usually math, not physics.

• Physics 1: Algebra-Based requires no calculus. It is the standard first AP science, typically taken in 10th or 11th grade, and a student should be comfortable and fast with algebra and basic trigonometry — genuinely fluent, given what the Chief Reader says about fractions.
• Physics 2: Algebra-Based is the algebra-based sequel and generally follows Physics 1. Its friendlier distribution (7% ones on preliminary 2026 data) reflects a small, self-selected cohort of students who already survived Physics 1 — not an easier exam.
• Physics C: Mechanics is calculus-based and covers mechanics in greater depth. It expects concurrent or prior calculus. For a student on an accelerated math track who has already reached calculus, Physics C is often the better fit.

The trap: choosing Physics C because it “looks better” while calculus is still in progress. The 11% of Physics C students who scored a 1 in 2026 are drawn disproportionately from that decision.

What the exam costs in 2026

The exam fee is separate from any course or prep, and Texas families should know that a state subsidy exists — many never learn about it.

• $99 per exam in the U.S., U.S. territories, Canada, and DoDEA schools; $129 at schools outside the U.S.
• Students who meet the College Board’s income criteria receive a $37 fee reduction, and schools are expected to forgo their $9 rebate for these students, bringing the exam to $53.
• Texas adds $27 per exam for qualifying students, bringing out-of-pocket cost to $26. State funds are for students enrolled in public schools only.
• A $40 late-order fee applies to exams ordered between November 15 and March 13, and a $40 unused/cancelled exam fee applies after the November 14 ordering deadline.

Two things parents miss. Attending a CEP or Title I school does not automatically qualify a student — the College Board and the Texas Education Agency are explicit that eligibility has to be established for each student individually. Ask your coordinator directly. And the coordinator must indicate eligible students in AP Registration and Ordering by April 30, 2026, 11:59 p.m. ET. A missed deadline can cost a qualifying family $73 — the gap between $99 and $26 — for nothing.

A preparation timeline that survives contact with a school year

The failure mode for this exam is not laziness. It is a student who keeps up with homework all year, has never once explained a result in words, and meets Section II for the first time in May.

Fall (through winter break). Own free-body diagrams and Newton’s second law cold — Units 2 and 3 are up to 46% of the multiple-choice section and the grammar of everything after. Repair algebra now, specifically fractions and squaring binomials; the Chief Reader confirms these break under pressure. Read the task-verb list in the CED.

January–February. Start free-response early, not last. Do one released free-response question a week, by hand, on paper, timed at 25 minutes. Then compare against the published scoring guidance and count your own points honestly. This is where students discover that they can derive but cannot justify.

March. Attack the two weakest patterns deliberately. Practice experimental design to the slope: never stop at “plot this against that” — always finish the sentence “and the slope equals ___, therefore the unknown is ___.” Label every axis with quantity and unit until it is reflex. Draw energy-vs-position graphs, not just bar charts. Make sure fluids has actually been taught; if your course is behind, this is the month to get ahead of it independently, because Unit 8 can anchor a full free-response question.

April. Full timed sections, in order, with the equation sheet. Practice reading on a screen and writing on paper to match the hybrid format. For every wrong answer, write one sentence naming the misconception — not the correct answer. “I assumed the buoyant force was the only force” is a durable lesson; “the answer was C” is not.

The first week of May. No new material. Re-read your own error log, re-read the task verbs, sleep. The exam is May 6 at noon — a midday start, which means a normal morning and a real breakfast, not a 6 a.m. cram.

What to do Monday

Take one action after reading this: have your student work one released free-response question, on paper, in 25 minutes, and score it against the published scoring guidelines. Then ask one question about their own answer — “why is that true?” — and see whether they can answer in words without writing a new equation.

If they cannot, you have found the thing that this exam charges 50% of the score for, and you have found it in July instead of May. That is the entire advantage available to you.

How Texas CBE™ fits in — and what we are not

Our AP Physics 1 course is built around the failure pattern this guide describes: forced active recall on the concepts that decide scores, and repetition on the reasoning steps — the invariant nobody mentions, the slope nobody interprets, the axis unit nobody writes — rather than another pile of plug-in problems. The free quiz requires no account. The full course is $39.99 for six months of access, less than a single AP exam fee.

One limit stated plainly, because it is the honest thing to say: free response on our platform is self-scored against a model answer. We do not grade free response, and no automated system can replicate an AP Reader. What we can do is make a student practice the reasoning move repeatedly and compare their work against what a full-credit response contains — which, per the Chief Reader, is the habit most students never build.

Texas CBE™ is an independent preparation platform. We are not endorsed by, affiliated with, or connected to the College Board. AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the College Board. We are not the official exam and we do not administer it. Our questions and explanations are independently authored; we do not reproduce College Board exam questions, scoring rubrics, or Course and Exam Description text.

We make no guarantee of any score, and no prep program can honestly offer one. College credit and placement policies are set by each institution — a 3 that earns credit at one university may earn nothing at another. Check each college’s policy directly with that college before treating an AP score as credit already earned. Dates, fees, and policies here are current as of July 2026, and the 2026 score figures are preliminary; verify everything against the College Board’s own pages, linked below, before acting on any deadline.