The Edexcel M3 (14/06/12 - AM) Revision Thread

I started revising for it yesterday as the M2 exam gave me a great buzz I'm going through all the review exercises first and then I'm going to go through all the exam papers (my revision plan for all my maths modules now ha). I'm approximately halfway though the review exercise (question 48/105), just started the SHM questions

It was harder than the previous M2 exams, but I think I've gotten everything correct for it But it certainly was more challenging than many of the previous M2 papers. (one of the questions that came up was very similar to one of the questions in the M2 book's review exercise (the one on impulse), and I would have struggled with the question if I hadn't seen it before; made me smile in the exam)

About 3 weeks, and I taught it to myself (same as M2). I think that I'll actually get the best grades with the modules that I am teaching myself as then I go through every single question (more or less) in the books, although I'm doing that for C4 now too

Cool, which chapter would you say is the hardest?

I'm not sure to be honest, at the moment it's probably the statics of rigid bodies chapter mainly because that's the chapter that I haven't gone over lately, and I'm probably quite rusty with the questions. But when I've gone over them all, I think that they're all about the same difficulty

Only M2 for maths, but I've sat both AS Physics papers for OCR in May. Which chapter do you find the most difficult for M3, and what exams have you sat so far?

A few days I think, it seemed to drag on for a while if I recall correctly, but the questions are very satisfying to answer if you get them correct ha

Yeah I see what you mean, replace what they've written with $x = asin(\omega t + \phi)$ as it makes more sense.

The $\phi$ symbol respresents how far the SHM is through an oscillation when t= 0 say, (known as phase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_%28waves%29 ). The book's used the letter a (well actually it's alpha, but the font looks extremely similar to an a) to represent it however which makes it unnecessarily confusing.

However the questions in M3 never use this 'phase through the oscillation' stuff, as the SHM in the questions always start either at 0 displacement or at maximum displacement (ie x = amplitude), and never at some way through an oscillation. So on the 1st and 2nd pages of SHM, you'll only deal with Cases (i) and (ii), and never (iii) in M3

So $\phi$ shows where the particle starts relative to O?

It sort of more moves the wave along the x axis/time axis, which in turn does change the displacement of the particle from O (when t= 0), as $\phi$ shifts the graph left or right.

Fortunately it's not in the spec

Oh ok, so basically when t=0, the particle starts its motion from the origin?