AP Physics 2 FRQ: how to answer the free response

What the AP Physics 2 free response looks like

The AP Physics 2 free response questions are Section II of the exam: four multi-part questions in 95 minutes, worth 50% of your score. Section I is 42 multiple-choice questions in 85 minutes, worth the other half, and the whole exam runs 3 hours. You read the free-response questions on screen and handwrite your answers on paper.

That 95 minutes is new. College Board changed the free-response section from 100 minutes to 95, and the multiple-choice section from 40 questions in 80 minutes to 42 in 85, effective with the May 2027 exam, which falls on Thursday, May 6, in Session 1. Every released paper you can download used the old timing, so a full practice section takes five minutes longer than the real one.

The four questions, and what each one is worth

College Board fixes one question type to each position and lists them in exam order, so Question 2 is always the Translation Between Representations question. Each type appears exactly once, and the four are not worth the same.

Question 1: Mathematical Routines (MR), 10 points

Analyze a scenario mathematically and predict something about it. You derive relationships symbolically as well as calculating numerical values, and you create the representations that support the analysis, which is where a free-body diagram or a sketch of velocity against time earns its place. College Board also expects the MR question to ask for a claim and a justification built from physics principles rather than from the arithmetic.

Skills assessed: 1.A, 1.C, 2.A, 2.B, 3.B, 3.C.

Question 2: Translation Between Representations (TBR), 12 points

The largest question on the paper, at 12 of the 40 points. You connect different representations of one scenario: create a visual representation of it, derive equations that are mathematically relevant to it, and draw a graph relating quantities within it. The final part then asks for one of three things, and College Board says which three: justify whether two of your own earlier answers agree, use your work to predict another situation, or predict how your representations would change if the scenario were altered.

Skills assessed: 1.A, 1.C, 2.A, 2.D, 3.B, 3.C.

Question 3: Experimental Design and Analysis (LAB), 10 points

Two halves. First you design: propose a method that answers a stated question by varying a single parameter and measuring how one characteristic responds, using equipment a normal school laboratory has, and describe how the data would be analyzed. Then you are handed data collected for a similar but not identical question, and asked to plot a graph you can read the answer off, usually from a slope or an intercept. This is the only question that assesses skill 3.A, creating an experimental procedure.

Skills assessed: 1.B, 2.B, 2.D, 3.A.

Question 4: Qualitative/Quantitative Translation (QQT), 8 points

The shortest question and the most verbal. You make and justify a claim about a scenario and derive an equation related to it, then finish with the same three-way choice the TBR question ends on. College Board notes that drawing a diagram may help you here but is not itself credited: the points go to the explanation or the derivation the diagram leads to.

Skills assessed: 2.A, 2.D, 3.B, 3.C.

AP Physics 1 uses the same four question types in the same order for the same point values, so the ap physics 1 frq is worth reading if you took that exam first.

How to spend the 95 minutes

The 2026 paper carried a suggested plan of its own, printed in the directions: 25 minutes for Question 1, 30 for Question 2, 25 for Question 3 and 20 for Question 4. Two things follow from it.

The first is that the plan is exactly proportional to the points. Ten points in 25 minutes, 12 in 30, 10 in 25 and 8 in 20 all come to the same 0.4 points a minute, so no question on this paper pays better than another for the time it takes. Spending longer on the 12-point question is not a strategy, it is just what 12 points cost.

The second is arithmetic. Those figures add up to 100 minutes, and the section is now 95. That plan consumed the whole of the old section exactly, and it overruns the new one by five minutes. Scaled down proportionally it becomes roughly 24 minutes on Question 1, 28 on Question 2, 24 on Question 3 and 19 on Question 4.

The course and exam description gives ranges rather than single figures: 20 to 25 minutes on Question 1, 25 to 30 on Question 2, 25 to 30 on Question 3 and 15 to 20 on Question 4. Working at the fast end of every range leaves you 85 minutes of work and 10 minutes spare. Working at the slow end of every range puts you 10 minutes over. The five minutes has to come from somewhere, and deciding in advance where beats discovering it in the last question.

How the AP Physics 2 FRQ is scored

Each question is scored one point at a time against a published set of scoring guidelines. Every line of the guideline is worth exactly one point, so a question is won a line at a time rather than all at once, and the points are spread across its parts.

Two conventions are worth knowing before you take it. Later parts are scored consistent with what you wrote earlier, so a wrong number in part (b) does not automatically cost you part (c) as well. And on several derivation lines a correct, isolated final expression earns the intermediate points too, which is why an answer you cannot finish is still worth attempting.

Because the points are spread across parts, answering every part briefly beats writing a perfect answer to one part and running out of time.

College Board also publishes what students actually scored. On the 2025 paper, 24,322 students averaged 5.32 of the 10 points on Question 1, about 8 of the 12 on Question 2, 7.22 of 10 on Question 3 and 5.42 of 8 on Question 4. The Mathematical Routines question was the hardest of the four by that measure, and it is the one that comes first.

Where students lose the most points

The chief reader’s report for that paper gives a mean for every individual rubric line, and the pattern is the same on all four questions. The lines students earn most often, at 0.75 to 0.90 of a point each, are the ones where they set a problem up or identify a quantity. The lines they earn least often, at 0.21 to 0.43, are the last step of a derivation and the sentence that justifies a claim. Across the 2025 paper those two kinds of line are where a Physics 2 free response is won and lost.

Writing the explanations: PEAR

Two of College Board’s own scoring skills sit behind most of the points the chief reader’s report says students give away: applying an appropriate law, definition or model to make a claim, and justifying that claim using evidence from data, a representation or a physical principle. PEAR is a reliable structure for the parts that ask for them, and it maps onto those two skills directly.

It is worth knowing how much of the section rides on this. Creating representations, which is the science practice covering diagrams, quantitative graphs and qualitative sketches, carries 20 to 35 percent of the free-response score on its own, and none of it is assessed on the multiple-choice section at all. Designing an experimental procedure is the same. Those are points that exist nowhere else on the exam.

What you are given on exam day

AP Physics 2 is a hybrid digital exam. You answer the multiple-choice section and read the free-response questions in the Bluebook app, then handwrite your answers in a paper booklet that is collected and scored. Only what is in the booklet counts: scratch paper is available for planning and is not scored. Credit is awarded only for work clearly labeled as the solution to a specific part, so label the parts and sub-parts as you go, and use one color of ink or pencil for any graph or diagram.

You are given the reference information, and AP Physics 2 is one of the exams that gets it on paper as well as on screen. The proctor hands out a printed booklet of equations and constants, you may write on it, nothing you write there is scored, and you may not take it out of the room. The same information sits in Bluebook for the whole exam, including test preview, so you can open it before exam day. Each of the four AP Physics exams has its own, so check that the booklet you are handed matches your exam. Our ap physics 2 equation sheet walks through what is on it. The 2027 booklets have not been posted yet; until they are, College Board says the appendix in the course and exam description is the same information.

Calculators are permitted throughout, and all three kinds qualify: four-function, scientific and graphing. Bluebook carries Desmos in both a scientific and a graphing version, and you may bring as many as two approved handhelds of your own. A ruler and a straightedge are allowed in the free-response section as well, which matters more than it sounds on a paper that asks you to plot a graph.

Two mechanics from the printed directions. You may move between the four questions freely until time expires, so a question you cannot start is not a question you have lost. And the on-screen clock turns red when five minutes remain, which is the only warning you get: the proctor does not call the time. The ap chemistry frq is administered the same way, if you are taking both.

How to practice the AP Physics 2 FRQ

Work official past free-response questions under a timer, then grade yourself against the scoring guidelines so you learn where the points actually sit. College Board publishes both free on AP Central, along with sample student responses, the scoring statistics and the chief reader’s report for each year. Those two are the ones most worth opening: they tell you which parts of each question students found hard, question by question.

Set the timer to the real 95 minutes rather than the 100 printed on the paper. Use the AP Physics 2 test guide to connect the free-response work to the units it draws on, and when you have a raw score, run it through the AP Physics 2 exam score calculator.