Number of marks dropped and SS (physics)

[appianway]

Hey guys,

I know that most of this depends on the standard of the end of year examination, but what sort of marks do you think will correlate to certain study scores? Obviously you'd be in for a 50 if you attained perfect scores on both exams, but how many marks could you afford to drop this year to achieve this score? And about how could you lose to score 45+?

I'm aware that this is all speculation, and we can't make accurate predictions without the knowledge of the second exam, but I'd be really interested to know what people think.

[NE2000]

assessment report said 107 or something full marks I think for midyears. By memory there are meant to be aroud 20 50s. If endyear is of similar standard then obviously there will be some changeover between the people that get full marks but I would imagine at least 20 people would get full marks on both. If it is much harder then I imagine it will split the field more and maybe you could drop a couple. Last year one guy on VN got premiers I think with 2 marks off in midyears and full marks for endyear.

[appianway]

Hmm, hopefully it's a hard exam. It'd be nice to have something that tested physics ability.

[NE2000]

They are very limited in Unit 4. A lot of the stuff is simplified and sort-of-not-exactly-right for the VCE course and so they can't go too far into it. You've probably done enough trial exams to know that many questions get repetitive

[/0]

The physics course is broken

[IntoTheNewWorld]

If they made spesh a prereq for Physix that would be pr0.

[enwiabe]

My prediction is that there will be two separator questions on the unit 4 exam which will give the VCAA people something to scale people appropriately by. These questions will likely extend concepts studied in unit 4 to 1st yr uni level in a guided manner. Those that can make the leap (which they'll anticipate will be no more than 1-2% of the state for full marks of the qns) will get the 48-50s and those that can't won't.

That's the only way they'll be able to do it fairly. Otherwise... you better hope you're ranked 1st in your SACs because this is where it will really, really count.

[kurrymuncher]

Uni questions?

But thats unfair! this is VCE physics.

[enwiabe]

Guided uni questions, like the lead-through "derive this... hence get this anti-derivative" qns of methods

they have to have some way of separating kids out, and that's the only way i can think they could do it

i could be way wrong

[NE2000]

aahh...I see....

/0 I think we all need a quick crash course in first year uni physics now thanks

[Collin Li]

The physics course is broken

So true. It's a self-deprecating course. It doesn't even respect itself with "features" such as g = 10 and no care for significant figures.

It needs to respect itself more, and set those standards.

[appianway]

g= 10 isn't too bad an approximation. It's what they encourage us to use in olympiad physics.

But I agree. the VCE course is overly simplistic, and avoids testing real physical thought.

[Collin Li]

Haha, I just think it's embarassing that the Specialist Maths course (which should be more concerned about mathematical elegance) uses g = 9.8 -- more accurate than Physics!

Mixed up priorities!

[appianway]

I think so I think the fact that we don't give any relativistic treatment to electrons when calculating de Broglie wavelengths is even more disturbing though...