Pat Doyle’s Physics Tips Sheet
Section A • • • Section A is based on the mandatory experiments, so you know in advance of the exam that only these experiments can feature on the exam in section A. There are 24 mandatory experiments in total and since the four asked in 2007 are unlikely to be asked again this year you are mainly concerned with the other 20. You are rarely asked to describe the entire experimental procedure. Instead you are asked how the data is obtained. This involves writing two sentences. So make a list of the data obtained for each of the experiments and be able to explain how you would get these measurements. Almost all the experiments have an equation into which the data is substituted, so learn the equation for each experiment. Know where to substitute each piece of data and how to calculate the one unknown. For many of the experiments a graph is drawn, so know which data is plotted on the x-axis and which data is plotted on the y-axis. Know two precautions to be taken for each measurement made in the experiments. Remember that there are 6 previous leaving cert papers to study. These papers give a great insight to the style of question to be expected. Also the marking schemes are available on www.examinations.ie. Practice drawing and labelling diagrams of the experimental arrangement for the various experiments. Section B • • Learn the definitions and laws of Physics off by heart. Depending on your choice of questions these definitions and laws can be worth just over 15% of the total marks for the exam. Since the Physics exam is on Monday morning you have Saturday and Sunday to perfect your knowledge of these definitions and laws. Many students have a short term memory for this material learned off by heart, so a Monday morning exam is ideal. Most of the maths questions involve substituting data into equations and calculating the one unknown. These equations have to be learned off by heart, so use that week-end wisely. Pay attention to the demonstration experiments scattered throughout the course. The past papers will show several questions on these demonstrations appear each year on the paper. You have an excellent choice of questions in section B, i.e. 5 out of 8 . read the exam paper carefully, choose your questions wisely and avoid the difficult and awkward questions.
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