OCR Physics A G484 Jan 2012 - The Newtonian World

Sooo I recalled this paper as I did considerably worse than expected to find that my grade of a D was 39/60 raw mark, that 42 was a C and 38 an E wtf? that's ridiculous grade boundries I know how they get them but I mean 65% i'd expect at least a C for that -_-
Also anyone kno where I can find the mark scheme? :P as U can' r get hold of it grrrrr

I think it was easy to do "average" in this paper, and at the top there was still a lot of lee way, you could lose 12 marks and still get an A.... The people that deserved A's and understood their physics will have got their A.. But silly mistakes will cost. The fault lies with the paper not the mark scheme, if it was so easy - the people posting would have got full marks?
Also if anyone thinks having to put in specific words is bad in Physics... Try do A level Biology, now that is picky.

Fair enough comments, i think the people who lost out are the people who are aiming for middle grades, just because you needed more raw marks than normal to get those grades, and also like you said, silly mistakes cost a lot..

My comment about how specific the mark scheme was was mainly aimed at the 4 mark question about explaining how molecules exert a pressure on a container. The markscheme has 5 bullet points to gain the 4 marks, 1 of the bullet points is irrelevant to the question, 1 has the word 'many' underlined (many molecules), which is both incorrect (you dont need 'many' molecules to exert a pressure, just the pressure wouldnt be measurable) and penalising people who know what they are talking about but have only implied that there are 'many' rather than specifically writing the word. 3 of the bullet points rely on you talking about momentum too, so even if you explained 'how' it exerts a pressure, if you didnt mention the specifics of momentum behind it, you could only get half marks max. (i guess the last point is less of an issue, although i still think only 1 mark should be lost for that).

Guess thats partially just my opinion though

For 4marks though, i thought that was a gift of a question.. momentum was crucial and is in my opinion the best was to explain it.
change of mom = 2mv
change of mom = ft
so there is a force exerted on the wall by the particle,
pressure = force per unit area,
The gas exerts therefore has pressure,
i made some other random points i've seen on previous mark schemes too just for good measure but standard question i thought. As you say its all opinion, you may have found other questions better than i did due to teaching focus etc

My friends dad actually wrote to the exam board to ask why the grade boundaries were so high and so compressed. They basically said that the paper turned out to be much more straight forward than they expected (possibly due to the extra 15 minutes we got), and at the standardisation meeting (or something like that) they found everyone had done much better than the other exam boards.. They decided they couldnt make the mark scheme harsher so had to up the grade boundaries significantly.
They also said that it was nothing to do with government pressure to make exams harder to pass, and that they dont want to have the grade boundaries anywhere near as high again..

and having seen the markscheme.. i think its ridiculous very specific and picky, and penalising people who understand what they are talking about but havent included odd key words :L