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iGCSE EDEXCEL PHYSICS DISCUSSION 2012

member963009

Who hates the new style of these physics papers?! omg

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Reply 1

farhatj

I know, hardly any calculation questions

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Reply 2

Rendition

Yeah, I found the Jan 2012 papers quite hard... :mad:

Reply 3

member963009

Original post by Rendition

Yeah, I found the Jan 2012 papers quite hard... :mad:

that was sooooo mean! :frown:

Reply 4

Big-Daddy

January 2012 Paper 1P was deadly. Not complicated - exhausting. But Paper 2P was as easy as usual.

The grade boundaries for Physics tend to be really low, so I'm not particularly worried about this exam.

Reply 5

Graceyfave

Agreed on physics. January 2012 was ridiculous, as evidenced by the extremely low boundaries. Hopefully it will be more approachable this year!

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Reply 6

Big-Daddy

Original post by Graceyfave

To be fair, those grade boundaries were astoundingly low even considering the painful dreariness of Paper 1. 119/180 for an A*?

This year is more likely to be like June 2011, I think. We can expect a grade boundary of around 140/180 for an A* as a maximum.

Reply 7

Graceyfave

Original post by Big-Daddy

True, I was shocked at how low they were! Hopefully they'll be more questions relating to equations and conceptual knowledge as opposed to experimental procedures!

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Reply 8

Big-Daddy

Original post by Graceyfave

Yeah - I love the mathematical questions. They're trivially easy; the experimental questions just get annoying.

I have a list of equations and units if anyone wants it. Keep in mind that it might go over IGCSE depth slightly for some parts.

Reply 9

Big-Daddy

I particularly hope they ask a question such as "What is the half-life of this substance" after giving an initial count, final count, and time period. I can rearrange my half-life equation to calculate it straight away :wink:

Reply 10

Graceyfave

Personally I hope a lot of radioactivity,
Electricity, electromagnetic spectrum questions (easy marks!) etc come up. I hate electromagnetism with a burning passion!

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Reply 11

RoyalBlue7

Electromagnetism is doomed to come this time. Perhaps they will give a diagram of an electric bell, trip switch, circuit breaker, Dc Motor, Moving coil Loudspeaker, or an alternator and ask us to say how it works. 99% chance it is gonna come as the last question worth 6 marks.

Reply 12

Big-Daddy

Anything except questions about advantages and disadvantages of wind turbines :tongue:

Reply 13

Graceyfave

Ahhh. Better revise it then, but I find electromagnetism so absurd :/ we rushed that section of the syllabus, so I am doomed to failure! :P

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Reply 14

Big-Daddy

Original post by StUdEnTIGCSE

I seriously doubt a transformer will come up as a 6 marker. There are barely 6 things to say! They might save a loudspeaker or motor for a 6-marker, but somehow I think they would be more inclined to make bigger questions out of those as they are basically the entirety of electromagnetism at IGCSE.

BTW the bicycle dynamo has a spinning magnet in a stationary coil and the generator has a spinning coil in a stationary magnet, right?

Reply 15

Graceyfave

Does anyone have any EM notes by any chance? :/

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Reply 16

member963009

Original post by Big-Daddy

Hopefully it will be except biology was worse than January I found! But June 2011 Physics was sooo easy. Hope it's straightforward like that not all this experimental ****. But sadly, the specification has changed a bit for next year's examination and our teachers said they will most likely be as experimental as January 2012 as they will follow the new specification style to be examined first in 2013. That's why you'll notice June 2011 was drastically different to January 2012. I have a specimen paper from the new specification (the same content but still the style we're going to get), shall i upload it here?

Original post by Graceyfave

I know it really annoys me about how literally 75% of the paper is experimental :angry:

Reply 17

NilFBosh

I'm really good at the calculation part...not so good at the experiment part...They said that our papers (first paper 2011) were going to be easier than the previous years (2010, 2009, 2008...). To be honest I really find those questions more easier than the current ones!