Advanced Higher Physics 2011-2012 Discussion/Help Thread

Original post by Arianto

Yup. Felt a bit underchallenged just doing 1 AH and 2 Highers, so I swapped H RMPS for 'ol Fizix. Hardwick was pleased :biggrin:

I bet he was :tongue:

Many people doing it this year? Have you got the seminar room for your investigations?

Reply 22

OP

Original post by sandys1000

I bet he was :tongue:

Many people doing it this year? Have you got the seminar room for your investigations?

4 people, yep we've got the Physics Cave we call it. We get Hardwick for 3 periods, Mr Moody, a new physics guy for 1 period, and a period all to our own devices, perhaps for our investigations :O Hardwick actually specifically warned us not to slack off if we get our unconditionals later in the year aswell :colone:

Like what they did last year apparently... Do you know what you got percentage-wise for your physics exam and AH maths btw? Cos I do! Just thought I'd ask for you just in case :biggrin:

Reply 23

OP

Original post by laughylolly

I'm trying to think of an investigation at the moment. I'm thinking of maybe doing something to do with radiation but I'm not sure what. I'm doing AH Maths and AH Stats this year too so I want to do an investigation that I would be able to use my maths/stats in a lot. My teacher gave us a list of possible/past investigations but I kinda want to do something a bit different. I just don't know what would be at the right level for AH.

I think the most important thing is the ease at which you can do it (equipment wise specifically) and the depth and variety of the readings you can get. Judging by your statistics background yeah maybe do something that will yield a lot of varying results? Take my advice with a pinch of salt anyway, I'm struggling to think of one myself.

I'd also say do something that WILL keep your enthusiasism and attention? :dontknow:

Reply 24

laughylolly

14

Original post by Arianto

I think the most important thing is the ease at which you can do it (equipment wise specifically) and the depth and variety of the readings you can get. Judging by your statistics background yeah maybe do something that will yield a lot of varying results? Take my advice with a pinch of salt anyway, I'm struggling to think of one myself.

I'd also say do something that WILL keep your enthusiasism and attention? :dontknow:

Yeah...

I was thinking of doing something with sports balls and how their movement/bounce changes with pressure and temperature but I think that will be very hard to do with the schools equipment. I think some sort of radiation investigation would be interesting although I don't know how I could increase the depth of it. I guess it's hard to decide before actually knowing whats in the majority of the AH course.

Reply 25

anyone_can_fly

Hello!

I'm thinking about doing my experiment on something about vibrating strings and resonance. Not sure exactly what, though - I also want to get lots of maths in, and perhaps a bit of music.

Reply 26

OP

Original post by anyone_can_fly

Hello!

I'm thinking about doing my experiment on something about vibrating strings and resonance. Not sure exactly what, though - I also want to get lots of maths in, and perhaps a bit of music.

Yeah I think I saw something like that in a booklet listing suggestions for experimens and the background of each of them, I think it was called Musical Sounds ( :lolwut:

) to do with (guitar?) strings etc. Not sure how much maths would be in it though. As long as you're interested in it though, and make sure you're schools got the equipment.

Reply 27

OP

Original post by laughylolly

Yeah...

I was thinking of doing something with sports balls and how their movement/bounce changes with pressure and temperature but I think that will be very hard to do with the schools equipment. I think some sort of radiation investigation would be interesting although I don't know how I could increase the depth of it. I guess it's hard to decide before actually knowing whats in the majority of the AH course.

I know what you mean, we're only on circular motion just now. Although it doesn't HAVE to be something that's also in the course (it helps though maybe). My teacher said someone a few years ago did an investigations on the frequency/nature of muons - if that's how you spell it. And apparently it had NEVER been done in the field whatsoever, it was a completely new experiment that no-one had done before. But no, she didn't get a Nobel Prize, in fact she was marked kinda poorly cos she didn't have enough data. 4 muon particles over the weekend was detected! So watch you have plenty of data to play with...

Reply 28

laughylolly

14

Original post by Arianto

I know what you mean, we're only on circular motion just now. Although it doesn't HAVE to be something that's also in the course (it helps though maybe). My teacher said someone a few years ago did an investigations on the frequency/nature of muons - if that's how you spell it. And apparently it had NEVER been done in the field whatsoever, it was a completely new experiment that no-one had done before. But no, she didn't get a Nobel Prize, in fact she was marked kinda poorly cos she didn't have enough data. 4 muon particles over the weekend was detected! So watch you have plenty of data to play with...

Yeah, the more data you have the better. And the more you mess up the better in a way, since then you can put more in to say why you got strange data/why certain things happened that shouldn't have. That's what gets you the marks apparently.

Reply 29

Quintro

So how is everyone finding the course so far? We're around Simple Harmonic Motion just now and so far I think it's been ok. Doesn't seem as bad as Higher did at the time. Although no doubt I'll get a shock at my prelim.

Oh and does anyone have links to decent resources such as past papers such as the ones before 2007? For Higher I had every past paper since 1992 and it helped so much.

Reply 30

soup

Original post by Quintro

So how is everyone finding the course so far? We're around Simple Harmonic Motion just now and so far I think it's been ok. Doesn't seem as bad as Higher did at the time. Although no doubt I'll get a shock at my prelim.

Oh and does anyone have links to decent resources such as past papers such as the ones before 2007? For Higher I had every past paper since 1992 and it helped so much.

We have just started gravitation and everything seem fine.

I have every AH paper since 2001 for some reason I'll try to find a link some other time so you can download them.

Reply 31

...damn.

We're only on angular movement and acceleration just now. We didn't have any time whatsoever before the holidays, to be fair, though. I guess I should be doing a lot more work. I know all of the stuff on gravitation already though, and some of the other stuff throughout the course.

Reply 32

Inlineadam

7

Anyone know of some books which are useful?

Scholar's way of deriving equations is riciulously confusing!

Reply 33

Original post by Inlineadam

Anyone know of some books which are useful?

Scholar's way of deriving equations is riciulously confusing!

The BrightRed revision books are supposed to be quite good.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BrightRED-Revision-Advanced-Higher-PHYSICS/dp/1906736200/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316387029&sr=8-1

Reply 34

Quintro

I actually prefer Scholar for learning derivations over the BrightRed book, but as for actual learning I think Scholar is better for learning for the first time and then the BrightRed book is good for revising.

And BOOM here is the link for the past papers from 2001: http://mrmackenzie.co.uk/advanced-higher/

Reply 35

OK guys (and girls!), I just found this. A lot of the stuff seems really, really useful, and I know how hard it is to find resources for AH physics. The PowerPoints are good (just had a flick through them) and there's plenty of questions and solutions for everyone.

Hope this can help some of you out - I know my class will be pretty pleased with it when I go back after October! :smile:

Reply 36

Sw3ensterFM

http://www.theyoungscottishphysicist.co.uk/

I'll drop my teacher's website in here. He usually updates it after we complete each section. Good for Higher revision too.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 37

Original post by Sw3ensterFM

http://www.theyoungscottishphysicist.co.uk/

I'll drop my teacher's website in here. He usually updates it after we complete each section. Good for Higher revision too.

Brilliant. Thanks. c:

Reply 38

Aiden

2

Hey guys, so my school was strugling to find me a teacher to teach AH physics. But a few weeks into the first term it was all sorted. Just want to know what unit/ topic eveeyone is on so i know how far behind we are. We have just completed SHM. :smile:

Reply 39