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Physics yearly (1 Viewer)

Bricnic

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Did anyone else find the physics yearly easy?

I thought it was gonna be really hard, and that I wouldn't be prepared for it at all. Turns out I was really happy with it, and I felt that most other people thought the same thing. I know you probably will all do/have all done a different preliminary physics test, but I *think* we might have done a school based one. Anyways, if it was one of those independent papers, don't stress too much about it and make sure you understand Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams. Also, brush up on alpha beta and gamma radiation, and if you did any sort of assignment on GPS/CD/DVD or whatever have an idea of what the physics principles behind that technology were.
 

drewgcn

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You don't happen to have a past paper?
Or anyone for that matter?

Physics is my last on Monday.

We weren't told about it except our teacher warned us it would be hard.
 

klaw

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60+% of my physics paper was substituting numbers into formulas...
 

Bricnic

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Sadly no, I don't have a past paper. I find the syllabus has basically any question that can be asked of you anyway.

My study the night before was so unorganised- I just picked up the excel textbook, flipped open to a random page and started reading. I wasn't in good lightning or good posture or anything! Just happened to read through like 20 pages or so, and by some fluke covered 80% of what was assessed in the test itself... :p

Some better study that I did do for physics is doing the practice multiple choice in the excel textbooks- they have answers, too. But sometimes I find the answers (or even the questions!) are completely wrong, but this is good practice. Turns out on the day of the exam I spotted an error in the multiple choice, where none of the answers were correct. The answer happened to be 0.8 secs, but the only choices were 0.4, 0.6, 0.9 and 1.0. I chose 0.9 cause it was the closest but pointed it out to the physics teacher (who was luckily supervising) and she amended the question. Shows that it pays to read the question carefully!
 

klaw

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Bricnic said:
Sadly no, I don't have a past paper. I find the syllabus has basically any question that can be asked of you anyway.

My study the night before was so unorganised- I just picked up the excel textbook, flipped open to a random page and started reading. I wasn't in good lightning or good posture or anything! Just happened to read through like 20 pages or so, and by some fluke covered 80% of what was assessed in the test itself... :p

Some better study that I did do for physics is doing the practice multiple choice in the excel textbooks- they have answers, too. But sometimes I find the answers (or even the questions!) are completely wrong, but this is good practice. Turns out on the day of the exam I spotted an error in the multiple choice, where none of the answers were correct. The answer happened to be 0.8 secs, but the only choices were 0.4, 0.6, 0.9 and 1.0. I chose 0.9 cause it was the closest but pointed it out to the physics teacher (who was luckily supervising) and she amended the question. Shows that it pays to read the question carefully!
but maybe your calculations were wrong?
 

Bricnic

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klaw said:
but maybe your calculations were wrong?
She actually admitted that the question was wrong. Besides if I was wrong she wouldn't have amended the answers would she?
 

drewgcn

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I always wonder what to do in the event that a question has either
A) No answer or
B) Two answers.

Usually multiple choice is constructed so that its not black and white (unless its a number), so its hard to know what to do.

In software design though, there werent many people, and a question obviously was missing a word (internal/external documentation) so I pointed it out, and he told everyone to change it.

Its always a worry though, that a teacher will just go "DONT TALK ABOUT THE QUESTIONS DURING AN EXAM - 10 MARKS OFF!!!"
 

Bricnic

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Yeah i totally get ya, I hate the whole cloudy multiple choice thing. The standard response "Pick the best answer" is just a load of crap in my opinion, plus with multiple choice is just wrong or right, no half marks by justifying your point of view. Oh well, at least they usually only have 1 mark value...
 

insert-username

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Bricnic, I had that paper as well. I didn't study much for it (had an English paper before it... sigh), but I think I went reasonably well. The 0.4/0.6/0.9/1.0 period question confused me too, and our teacher came up after the test and said that it was wrong. Helpful of him. But overall, not too bad.


I_F
 

*yooneek*

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HamuTarou said:
half my exam was history, volta and galvani, the astronomers...lost some much marks. who would thought a physics exam can be mostly history...
i totally agree!!! except, in my exam they didn't test galvani & volta at all... instead they made questions worth 6 marks on how specific technologies contributed to the changing views on the models of the earth... grr was not prepared 4 that oh well- oh and then i totally didnt remember what GPS was and the physical principles- another 5 marks lol- im aiming 2 pass tho
... cz for the half yearlies i did shocking! the good ol 44% lol yay
i think it's funny when such chucks of a science paper is history!
when you spend most of your time trying to understand principles and equations
...same happended in the chem half yearlies!
oh its a funny system:D
 

*yooneek*

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Bricnic said:
Did anyone else find the physics yearly easy?
make sure you understand Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams. Also, brush up on alpha beta and gamma radiation, and if you did any sort of assignment on GPS/CD/DVD or whatever have an idea of what the physics principles behind that technology were.
wow! what on earth are hertzprung-russel diagrams??? which syllabus doc are they in?
i hope u did do well in ur exam,
good on ya!
 

[Damo]

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my physics exam was really 'on the surface', no indepth questions, had the Hertzprung-Russell diagram, thats about as hard as it got.
 

Lavenderpup

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o_O they're in the cosmic engine syllabus and its basically hot bright and hot the stars are categorised.
 

*yooneek*

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thanQ!!! :cool:
sounds veri veri uh interesting- can't wait-
we only got through the first few dot points in the cosmic engine
 

Bricnic

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In that case it probably won't be in your test- if you didn't cover the work, it would be pretty hard to do a test about it :p If you DO get the same test as we did, make sure you point out the stuffed multiple choice :D
 

drewgcn

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Oh bloody hell I wish I studied that diagram.

We had to draw one in the exam (no help, just draw it) and label the axes.

We also had to recall two inconsistencies Galileo found using his self-invented telescope with the catholic church's theory re: the universe and explain them.

Bleh.
 

klaw

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drewgcn said:
Oh bloody hell I wish I studied that diagram.

We had to draw one in the exam (no help, just draw it) and label the axes.

We also had to recall two inconsistencies Galileo found using his self-invented telescope with the catholic church's theory re: the universe and explain them.

Bleh.
I also had to talk about inconsistencies Galileo found... I basically wrote a maths essay hahahaha. I said that Galileo observed that planets appeared to have different distances to the earth, and therefore the planets can't be orbiting the earth because the distance from any point on a circle to the centre is always equal to distance from any other point on a circle to the centre... hahahaha... then I drew a diagram and labelled the radius hahahaa... but then I lost half the marks coz I only talked about one observation :(
 

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