As students at Westside begin to select the courses these two weeks, Westside Wired is going to preview a different department each day. The Westside Wired staff hopes to help educate students on the changes within each department and also highlight less-known classes. 

As students begin to look at prospective science classes for their next school year, they should take note of the major changes the physics department is undergoing. The College Board, which regulates all AP classes, changed AP Physics B to a two year course. The physics team is changing the Physics and AP Physics courses to fit this new structure.

The current physics class will now be open to only juniors and seniors, and is dropping from a Group 4 to a Group 3 in level of difficulty. AP Physics B will be split up into two classes: AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2. Sophomores who want to take physics will only be allowed to take AP Physics 1. After that, students can take AP Physics 2 (formerly AP Physics B), or they can take AP Physics C (the calculus based course). Juniors and seniors can still take the AP Physics 1 and 2 courses assuming they meet the prerequisites.

The intent of having the different levels of physics classes is to allow students who are on the honors math track to apply more challenging math within the physics courses.

Depending on a student’s interest, there are many different classes and paths of science available. If a student is hands-on, there are many lab based classes like physics, chemistry, zoology and others.

There are also life science courses for students interested in living things and how they work. These courses include biology, physiology and zoology.

“I guess I would just say that I am proud that so many students take a science class every year and we do our best to meet those needs,” said science department head and instructor Brenda Zabel. “Whether that be those students continuing on into college or not, I wouldn’t be able recommend one class over another because they are all so different and so many things.”

This was the preview to the science department at Westside. Here is the preview to the computer science department. Check in tomorrow for a preview on the Social Studies and English departments.