ATAR Notes: Forum
Archived Discussion => Mathematics and Science => 2013 => Exam Discussion => Victoria => Physics => Topic started by: Twanny666 on November 13, 2013, 10:44:03 pm
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So basically my teacher never taught us pulley's as it wasn't "on the curriculum".
Hence, I got the question most likely wrong....
At first I thought it would've been my teachers fault...
However I am hearing now that other schools have also complained.
So what's your thoughts? May they take it off....
P.S: Please don't discuss answers below... I don't want to know them :)
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I don't think they will take it off. The trusses and arch questions in Materials and Structures detailed study were also not in the Study Design, but I have never seen they once dropped any question after the exams were done. That's how "kind" they are... Probably it'll cause a big, loud discussion between the markers when they're sitting in the same room marking the paper.
That's what I'd call a part of "bad luck" in exams since some school actually taught it (like mine)...
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It is just a simple application of newtons laws which are definitely in the course.
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It's not simple if you have never seen or done it before, this is coming from someone who found the rest of the exam relatively easy
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It's not simple if you have never seen or done it before, this is coming from someone who found the rest of the exam relatively easy
I'm pretty sure there was a similar question on the 2010 VCAA...
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Odd...I remember coming across many pulley questions in VCE ???
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Thank god I did specialist! It came up in a few practice exams and I did it throughout the year but very briefly. Specialist is what got me through that question
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Yes it was on past exams, but if you hadn't realised the study design changed this year so a lot of the stuff on past exams weren't on the current curriculum.
Hence, I was advised to skip those questions that weren't on what I was told was on the current curriculum...
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The study design for motion (and all other Areas of Study too, I believe) has not changed since 2009. Pulleys were never explicitly mentioned. It's an application of the first bullet point:
- apply Newton’s three laws of motion in situations where two or more coplanar forces act along a straight line and in two dimensions.
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It's not simple if you have never seen or done it before, this is coming from someone who found the rest of the exam relatively easy
i think vcaa should give more questions that we've never seen before so we can actually APPLY our knowledge rather than REHEARSE for the same questions over and over.
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i think vcaa should give more questions that we've never seen before so we can actually APPLY our knowledge rather than REHEARSE for the same questions over and over.
Unfortunately, that is not the purpose of VCE.
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Unfortunately, that is not the purpose of VCE.
I KNOW RIGHT, purpose of vce is to build robots to do the same types questions perfectly.
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So basically my teacher never taught us pulley's as it wasn't "on the curriculum".
Hence, I got the question most likely wrong....
At first I thought it would've been my teachers fault...
However I am hearing now that other schools have also complained.
So what's your thoughts? May they take it off....
No they will not take it off. It is technically on the curriculum, as it is an application of Newtons Laws. In fact, I believe the majority of questions should mirror this for all subjects, more thinking required and less memorizing the course.
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Does anyone have a copy of the past study design? I think the issue here is that even though it is an application of Newton's Laws, I'm fairly sure the old study design explicitly had a dot point relating to the analysis of forces in a situation with pulleys. This is not on the current study design, which may be a bit misleading if I am correct in saying that it was there on the old one. If.
Personally I'm not complaining, but I can see the other side.
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It has been identical for motion since 2009. There was a pulley question on the 2010 exam.
The 2000 and 2004 study designs do not mention pulleys explicitly either.
I'm sorry, it's a perfectly legitimate question.
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http://www.vicphysics.org/documents/teachers/StudyDesignChanges.doc
This document gives a summary of all the new study design changes
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No they will not take it off. It is technically on the curriculum, as it is an application of Newtons Laws. In fact, I believe the majority of questions should mirror this for all subjects, more thinking required and less memorizing the course.
But it wasn't at all a question where thinking was required, the kids who got it right generally had done it on past exams or where doing Spesh Maths where it was taught and clearly on the curriculum,
Where as I had been told by my teacher to just avoid them.
Oh well... lol
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Admittedly, it is slightly ironic that there is arguably more advanced physics in spesh than in physics.
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Yeah, they don't tend to take questions off the exams. There was a question one year in a psych exam that was completely off the course (about 84% got 0/2) and they left it in
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But it wasn't at all a question where thinking was required, the kids who got it right generally had done it on past exams or where doing Spesh Maths where it was taught and clearly on the curriculum,
Where as I had been told by my teacher to just avoid them.
Oh well... lol
But it is a simple application of Newton's law, F=ma?
Fnet=mg-T=ma
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But it wasn't at all a question where thinking was required, the kids who got it right generally had done it on past exams or where doing Spesh Maths where it was taught and clearly on the curriculum,
It was if you hadn't done it before. You had a situation where you could apply Newton's laws in a way you hadn't seen before.
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I don't do Physics Units 3 & 4, but I remember doing pulley questions in Units 1 & 2 from the textbook.
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It's a question that has been pretty core for the last couple of years, so I don't really think it should be a surprised that it's still in the course...
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Also saying that the verticale circular motion question shouldn't be on here since that was take off the course as well
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Also saying that the verticale circular motion question shouldn't be on here since that was take off the course as well
What was wrong with that question?
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Nothing he was just using it as an example to show the ridiculousness or this thread lol
Oh okay. I think the OP has a valid point, that you can't ask things that are off the study design, but I guess the fact that similar questions were in past papers without any notable changes to this area in the study design suggests that it is included in the study design, even if it's not explicitly mentioned.
But honestly, you can't really derive that much from the study design, I mean "analyse Newton’s three laws of motion as applied to situations with two or more forces acting along a straight line and in two dimensions" - it's such a generic statement I don't think it really helps your learning at all.
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Pulley is just an "application" of Newton's Three Laws of motion, so I don't think they will take the question off.
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Nope, you're not gonna get by in VCE simply rote-learning 'dot points' (Except in business management). You need to be able to apply your knowledge (which sorts out the hacks from the natties), and this was a relatively straightforward application.
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Nothing he was just using it as an example to show the ridiculousness or this thread lol
Sorry basicacid but you misinterpret my post completely, I agree with the original post and I think VCAA was very misleading with what was going to be on it (not saying the content is difficult but many students were informed not to worry about certain topics which occur on the exam).
My teacher sent me an email with a quote from a comment in a VCE physic teacher for thingy ( not entirely sure) and they did remark that vertical circular motion was off the study design which they were told about at a VCAA physic conference thingy.
I'm sure many students would of been in the same situation, my school didn't even bother to do any vertical circular motion at all (but then again, we basically skipped half the content of the course).
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But again, vertical circular motion has come up in past papers, so you'd need to show some sort of meaningful change in the study design for it to be off the course.
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pretty sure you only need to analyse situations where an object is at the top or bottom of the vertical circle
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But again, vertical circular motion has come up in past papers, so you'd need to show some sort of meaningful change in the study design for it to be off the course.
But the issue is though many schools believe that vertical circular motion was off the course completely so they didn't cover some of the topics (I know my school avoided it but I learnt it from past exams).
I just think it's bad how VCAA mislead many teachers (this statement is very speculative).
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But the issue is though many schools believe that vertical circular motion was off the course completely so they didn't cover some of the topics (I know my school avoided it but I learnt it from past exams).
I just think it's bad how VCAA mislead many teachers (this statement is very speculative).
Huh? The 2013 VCE Physics study design clearly states that students must be able to:
• apply Newton’s second law to circular motion in a vertical plane; consider forces at the highest and lowest positions only
If schools didn't teach vertical circular motion, that's their own fault (or rather the teachers' faults). Sorry, but VCAA hasn't mislead anyone.
Source: http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/physics/PhysicsSD-2013.pdf
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I disagree that VCAA has misled anyone, because (although I didn't realise at first) the study design for motion is unchanged. If any of your teachers told you that anything had been taken off the study design - even though it hasn't changed - then that is entirely their fault.
I think some people are looking at study designs the wrong way. They're not intended to be a list of the questions which you should be able to respond to. They're not intended to be a checklist for the exam questions that may come up. They are purely a guide of the areas of study that are to be taught within the course.
The study design still states "apply Newton’s second law to circular motion in a vertical plane; consider forces at the highest and lowest positions only". So obviously, vertical circular motion is still on the course; ostensibly, however, the claim that we only need to consider the top and bottom points has some merit. But the reasoning for the multiple choice question that I think you're all asking about is in understanding circular motion; to remain in circular motion, there must be a net force directed towards the centre of the circle of rotation. This is not "considering the forces" as the study design suggests we need not do; that would be separating the individual forces at play, and calculating the magnitudes and/or directions. I don't think it was too harsh of VCAA to put in a question that just went back to the core of what circular motion is.
I think, as the final point of my argument, you should read the study design a little closer and see that under the outcome 1 heading it says: "To achieve this outcome the student will draw on the following key knowledge and apply the key skills listed on page 12." If we go back to the "key skills" section that they mention, it has a number of relevant points.
- identify and describe relevant scientific information, ideas and concepts, and the connections between them
- apply understanding of concepts to explain qualitative and quantitative data in both familiar and new contexts
I especially like the second one in this case. It seems like it gives VCAA the right to use any questions that require a true understanding of the concept in question. And it's not like they've misled anyone if this information is available on the public domain; if you have only printed off the shorter list of "key knowledge" then VCAA are not to blame.
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Can someone just lock this thread already