physics 2 ap? " Yesterday, 11:31 PM". pretty much of a running start on this eh?
ok, fine. really there are 2 things to concider:
1.) you should need to know calculus and differential equations to explain how things work. luckily calculus is intuitive and has easy analogies to use. hell, the word "calculus" stands for "small pebbles" which is a referecne to integration, where the volume of any object can be calcultate by filling it with small pebbels.
2.) the "laplace transform" simplifies the linear differential equations into algebraic equations.
these are required to give a good explaination of crossovers, especially 2nd order crossovers.
laplace is kinda like fourier on steroids.... fouried transform looks at the steady state response of a linear system to a sine wave. laplace looks at both stedy state and transient response of a linear system to any type of input.
laplace also removes differentiation (favoring time differences) and integration (favoring time sums) in the differential equations, and replaces it with a magical algebreic value "s".
all crossovers can be seen as the combination of 2nd and 1st order systems given with laplace functions:
Wc / (s + Wc) --- first order system. for fourier analysis (aka Frequency Response) replace "s" with "2 pi w i" where i = imaginary. (please say if you're in ap physics you've seen imaginary numbers.) note that imaginary numbers will represent a phase shift.
Wc^2 / ( s^2 + s Wc/Q + wc^2 ) -- second order system. if Q > 0.5 then you will have solutions to the denomiatior that have imaginary components. this means an underdamped equation.
PM me if you want more information. you could post in this thread, but i may not reply.
if nothing made sense, well, keep in mind i am a drunk college student, but this is what i do. i know this subject very well.
if you want to do something very impressive, do elliptic filters. thats a garunteed A.