Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>

AQA Core 2 May 2012 Discussion - Because Our Inevitable Death Isn't Enough Punishment

I haven't seen a thread, so I thought I'd start one. Forgive me if there is already one, and I've completely missed it.

I had Core 1 and Core 2 back-to-back, and after the semi-delight of a paper that was Core 1, I new something bad was coming. However, when I skimmed through the Core 2 paper once we started, my heart sank so low I am still dragging its shattered remains off the floor.

The trigonometry questions was like... something I've never seen before. I couldn't think of any identity that would turn everything into tanx. I ended up, somehow, getting tanx=3 and tanx=-1. The very last question, the 4 marker, was also awful. The destroyer of logic and reason. I ended up getting something like log(10/9). And the 6 marker, the area question, resulted in like 222m.

Please tell me some people got similar answers?!

The rest of the paper wasn't as bad. However, the diabolical questions that were 7, 9, and 5(?), shadow all the other questions.

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

username899419

I got the same as you for the trig question: tanx= -1 , tanx=3.
Unfortunately though I've now realised it should have been tan^2 x= 3 :frown:

Reply 2

shelcin

WORST PAPER EVAHHH!! :frown:

questions 6,7,8,9, went quite bad

The area i got 222 and i got tanx=-1 and tanx =3 as well :frown:

I didnt understand the exponential one and got like y=4 and the one at the end i just guessed log5/2 pure guess.

Could someone say how you can turn y=7^x and y= 7^2x-12 into a quadratic?

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 3

jph12

Indeed... I've just realised that too...

I wrote three whole pages trying to answer that question, and it was so deceptively simple that I could have done it in three seconds flat... It's a wonder I finished the paper at all.

Reply 4

tom472

The trigonometry one, the expression was already factorised. So you had tan x = -1 and for the other one you had tan x = +- square root of 3. I think the answers were 60, 120, 135.

I thought the paper was really tricky but i solved everything apart from the logs question right at the end.

Reply 5

jph12

I got 222m too. I think the answer was log(1000/729).

If you made the two y equations equal each other, and sub certain things into other things, the gradient is y over x, and y was like... log(10/9) over 1/3. Which equates to like 3log(10/9). And then log(10/9)^3, and so forth...

However, if you do 3^-1log(10/9), you get the same graph, so it would seem it makes no difference... A little unsure about that to be honest. Hopefully I will get like 3/4 for method marks. I think that if I do end up getting anything higher than a B, it will be through method marks, because I know I've answered question 7 wrong, and a large proportion of question 9 wrong...

What does everyone think the grade boundaries will be? Lower or higher than last year's Core 2 May exam?

Reply 6

Spyrolad

Ah, It's a relief reading this thread, I got the hard ones right it seems :smile:

Reply 7

Boxed

what was the range for the trig question? I cant remember

Reply 8

Boxed

was it -180<x<180? because i got some negative values..

last part of it i got -120, 60, and 2 other values

my answers must make some sense because if you tan(-120) you get root3, same with 60...
i did that with the other values to make sure i got them correct

I think the grade boundaries should be low, everyone in my school doing c2 thought it was exceptionally difficult. most complex c2 paper I've done...

Reply 9

Liver2029

The hilarious thing was, I've always found Core 2 easier than Core 1. But that paper, was a piss take.

Reply 10

iLayton

Boxed, it was between 0<x<180 i'm pretty sure! i got that The tan=-1 past right, but failed to recognise that it was tan^2=3, so hopefully got 2/4 for that question. What did everyone else get for the 4 marker transformation one?

Reply 11

za1ntc

Original post by iLayton

What did everyone else get for the 4 marker transformation one?

stretch in x direction scale factor 0.5 and stretch in y direction scale factor 0.5

Reply 12

Emor

I found it okay TBH. The question where you had to find the area of a triangle I messed up on, and the least couple of logs questions, but other than that I was pretty happy. I found the trig question pretty easy but i didn't even revise for the C2 exam(I've been doing C3 and C4 in class), but I guess if you've been revising a certain method for a certain question for hours on end something relatively simple can stump you because it's different.

C1 on the other hand I found horrible and I think the best I could get would be a C. I counted up the max. amount of marks I could get and it was a low A, but I'm pretty sure I made a dozen mistakes too.

Reply 13

Kaney2409

At first when I left the exam I was expecting to be the only one who struggled but then it turned out the whole year group struggled and I'm so happy to know we weren't the only ones, and if everyone struggled the marks will be scaled down which is a relief.

Reply 14

iLayton

Original post by za1ntc

stretch in x direction scale factor 0.5 and stretch in y direction scale factor 0.5

Are you sure, i got a scale factor of 1/10 , as it gave you Lg10x^2, ? i may be wrong though.

Reply 15

The H

aye the core 1 p sure was easier
:s-smilie:

Reply 16

gs_alka

What did everyone do for the question that said work out the area of the shaded region in the sector and something else question? the one with tangents coming off the sector.

Reply 17

iLayton

Original post by gs_alka

What did everyone do for the question that said work out the area of the shaded region in the sector and something else question? the one with tangents coming off the sector.

222 M^2, how about you?

Reply 18

Jamie T

thought the only tricky bit about C1 was the amount of fractions that were involved in the differentiation and integrations questions that, without a calculator of course, meant they took slightly longer to calculate. Other than that, I thought the C1 paper went well and reckon I can turn my C I got in January into an A. The C2 paper on the other hand was a different ball game. I managed to answer questions 1-7 quite comfortably with the odd area question popping up that took a bit of time, but I got there, but then questions 8 and 9.....W.T.F only managed to answer about 50% for those two :/ and think I missed out about 10 marks because of the buggers. Might get an A in C2 if Im lucky but think I will most likely get between a high C and a B (unless the lovely exam board lowers the grade boundaries of course :wink:

What did peeps get for the coordinate for the last question in C1? I got (40something, 2ish) sorry I really cant remember well ^^

Reply 19

yjq_95

the exam was ok, but when the question came up about the area of bound for 6 marks my mind was blank at first then right at the end i went back to the question and realised it was about the area of segment which is dead easy and before i write it the exam was finished and my paper was taken. Sad times!! :frown: