Paulsterio's Year 12 Physics Guide

[Phy124]

I guess this got superseded by Samad's guide oh well I'm nearly done so I'll finish off Unit 4 tomorrow

I think it is good to see things from different perspectives. I read both guides and I would hope physics newcomers will too.

[Kanon]

Extremely useful guide Paul
I was just wondering if you could explain what reasoning with first principles is, I've given it a quick wiki and from my interpretation (which seems wrong, haha) it involves making assumptions based on the situation where a law applies?  As for the detailed studies, does Further Electronics and Special Relativity get marked with any consideration on the difficulty of the subject, eg, getting 10/20 for Special Relativity is the same as getting a 15/20 in Further Electronics?  We've got a straight from Uni Mechanical Engineer teaching us Physics through some weird program, and it seems like he's giving us the option on what to study, so I'm considering voting Special Relativity because our schools maths is probably not at the same level as the rest of the state, and with considerations that might help out abit, does that seem logical to you?

[Lasercookie]

Extremely useful guide Paul
I was just wondering if you could explain what reasoning with first principles is, I've given it a quick wiki and from my interpretation (which seems wrong, haha) it involves making assumptions based on the situation where a law applies? 

What I assumed what Paul meant by the term was to do things without using shortcut formulas i.e. start off with the original formula and work down from there. I'll type up an example of what I think Paul meant soon (picking out which question to use).

As for the detailed studies, does Further Electronics and Special Relativity get marked with any consideration on the difficulty of the subject, eg, getting 10/20 for Special Relativity is the same as getting a 15/20 in Further Electronics? 

No, I don't believe they moderate the detailed studies.

We've got a straight from Uni Mechanical Engineer teaching us Physics through some weird program, and it seems like he's giving us the option on what to study, so I'm considering voting Special Relativity because our schools maths is probably not at the same level as the rest of the state, and with considerations that might help out abit, does that seem logical to you?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by maths and level with the rest of the state, but (extreme bias) Special Relativity was pure awesome fun to learn and I strongly recommend it

[Lasercookie]

Extremely useful guide Paul
I was just wondering if you could explain what reasoning with first principles is, I've given it a quick wiki and from my interpretation (which seems wrong, haha) it involves making assumptions based on the situation where a law applies? 

What I assumed what Paul meant by the term was to do things without using shortcut formulas i.e. start off with the original formula and work down from there. I'll type up an example of what I think Paul meant soon (picking out which question to use).

Question 9 - VCAA 2011 Exam 1

Using short-cut formulae that you already had on your cheatsheet:



Alternatively:
You would know that at A the centripetal force is due to the weight of the car and the normal. You also know that the normal force must be greater than 0, otherwise the car would fall off the tracks. So the minimum speed for the car, is when the normal force is equal to 0.

So you have:


Solve for v



Since N = 0:


(oh, I had forgotten that this method of working out leads back to that formula lol)
Then continue as above to get the answer.

Anyway, I'm not sure if that's the best example, but you can see that the second method of working out is a bit more thorough.

[paulsterio]

Hmm, I would personally say that special relativity has the most content and will be the most challenging, after the bozo with my year's further electronics, this year should be a little better, in some ways, I would say I even prefer Further Electronics, it compliments well with Electronics/Photonics and helps you with Electric Power!

In terms of what Laseredd is saying, if I were doing it with first principles, I would probably just sub everything in at this step:



I would say, N = 0

so then you essentially have



then essentially you solve numerically for v

[Phy124]

Extremely useful guide Paul
I was just wondering if you could explain what reasoning with first principles is, I've given it a quick wiki and from my interpretation (which seems wrong, haha) it involves making assumptions based on the situation where a law applies?  As for the detailed studies, does Further Electronics and Special Relativity get marked with any consideration on the difficulty of the subject, eg, getting 10/20 for Special Relativity is the same as getting a 15/20 in Further Electronics?  We've got a straight from Uni Mechanical Engineer teaching us Physics through some weird program, and it seems like he's giving us the option on what to study, so I'm considering voting Special Relativity because our schools maths is probably not at the same level as the rest of the state, and with considerations that might help out abit, does that seem logical to you?

The detailed studies are not weighted and at times this can be quite unfair. As paul has previously mentioned the further electronics detailed study had some very challenging questions in the 2011 Exam, which very few students answered correctly. The same can be said for Einstein's relativity.

Although, VCAA may make this year's questions for these detailed studies easier, I think that structures and materials is the best detailed study to chose for minimizing marks lost. It seemed to me that their wasn't really a broad spectrum of questions that could be provided for S&M. In most of the practice Exams I did, the only things that changed were units on graphs - very little places a good student can go wrong.

In summary, as the current syllabus is in existence for a longer periods, VCAA will be looking for harder questions that students won't have seen before, which I believe would be quite hard to do for Structures & Materials as the material is quite limited, unlike the other two.

For basis, in the 2011 Exam, the amount of questions answered correctly by 50% or less students is below:

Structures and materials - 2
Einstein's relativity - 6
Further electronics - 5

Also, 2010 Exam:

Structures and materials - 1
Einstein's relativity - 4
Further electronics - 3

Only my opinion, though.

[Kanon]

Thank you all for your detailed replies and very helpful replies.
I'm probably going to try and play it safe and vote for Sound and Materials, as it seems like if there's no further accreditation towards SR or FE.  Aswell as Phy mentioned, it'd be more difficult to find harder questions for what I think is the last year of the study design for Physics. 

[Lasercookie]

Aswell as Phy mentioned, it'd be more difficult to find harder questions for what I think is the last year of the study design for Physics. 

The current study design ends on 31 December 2014. I think it was originally going to end sometime earlier, but they extended it some time back. My guess is that the next study design is going to be the national curriculum study design (why else would they extend it to 2014?).

[paulsterio]

I don't think there's a national curriculum for Y11-12?

[Lasercookie]

I don't think there's a national curriculum for Y11-12?

There's definitely a national curriculum for year 11/12. But anyway, that was just my stab in the dark guess at to why they would have extended the accreditation period. They might have extended it for some other reason.

They are developing on the year 10 and under curriculum first I know. The senior secondary stuff is in initial consultation stages.

You might be interested in these documents, it provides a bit more detail: http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Information_Sheet_Australian_Curriculum_development_timelines.pdf

http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Senior_Secondary_Info_Sheet_-_KW.pdf


Oh, I just noticed this paragraph, which confirms (sort of) my guess:

The senior secondary timelines for english, mathematics, science and history are based on the assumption that the Australian Curriculum in these areas should be ready for Ministerial endorsement by October 2012 and available for implementation from
2014, building on the implementation of and learning from the Foundation to Year 10 curriculum in these areas. This timeline provides for the curriculum to be available for one year prior to implementation to allow for implementation and professional learning, planning and support. An implementation timeline is yet to be determined for senior secondary curriculum.

So they give the date of 2014 for the senior secondary curriculum to be ready for implementation, which fits in with VCAA's extension of physics, methods, specialist, chemistry, english etc. to 2014.

That last sentence doesn't sound too encouraging though. (and I think implementation of Foundation to Year 10 has been delayed as well).

[FlorianK]

Why are your exam scores out of 180?

[Lasercookie]

Why are your exam scores out of 180?

VCAA exams are marked by two assessors, and the marks get added together  - well something along the lines of that, don't quote me on the adding the two marks together thing, I'm not actually sure on the details e.g. there's some more processes where they get in a third assessor if the marks from each assessor have a significant difference (I don't know how the marks are calculated then).

[Hutchoo]

Why are your exam scores out of 180?

VCAA exams are marked by two assessors, and the marks get added together  - well something along the lines of that, don't quote me on the adding the two marks together thing, I'm not actually sure on the details e.g. there's some more processes where they get in a third assessor if the marks from each assessor have a significant difference (I don't know how the marks are calculated then).

I believe the 'third assessor' is actually the cheif assessor! I read it on VCAA somewhere.