M1 Jan 2012 Edexcel Post-Exam discussion - Solutions and Paper in first post

Why was that so? It was a nicer paper than June 2011 though, but that moments question was quite frustrating and the one at the end...

You guys seriously think that was an easy paper? I did every single one of the past papers prior to the exam and they took me 30-50 minutes each.. got 70+ marks on each one too... Anyway yeah, I only just finished this paper in the full 90 minutes; I didn't have time to check most of my answers. That's not an easy paper to me... The fact that the moments question was entirely algebraic threw me at first, there hasn't before been an acceleration-time graph (iirc) and never before has there been an object moving at constant velocity up/down a rough plane... I'm sure that messed up the direction of a lot of people's frictional forces.

Tbf though I didn't notice that it was constant velocity and not constant acceleration on question 8 or that the plank was on the point of tilting about a support on question 5 until the last ten minutes.. that screwed me over a bit and could have been why I found it so hard.


Anyway I have a question if anyone can answer it... basically as far as I can see the only mistakes I made were embarrassingly stupid ones. I solved for T incorrectly in question 6 (I did it as 2 triangles and a rectangle, and took the base of the last triangle to be 4T/3 + 6 rather than just the 6) and equated the i vectors rather than the j vectors in question 7 (I'm kicking myself; never made that mistake before!). Oh, and I may have forgotten the y-axis on my acceleration-time graph, not sure though. Does anyone have any idea at all how many marks I will have dropped? I have no idea how generous Edexcel are with errors carried forward...

Yes questions like that hadn't come up before but if you knew the basics off M1 you would have been able to give it a shot! I managed okay...
And I'd rather be give be give questions I have to think about rather than questions I have seen in every past paper.

exactly!

Yes questions like that hadn't come up before but if you knew the basics off M1 you would have been able to give it a shot! I managed okay...
And I'd rather be give be give questions I have to think about rather than questions I have seen in every past paper.

Ha, I dunno! I like maths so in my own time then yeah; more challenging questions are brilliant... but when my future (and pride) depends upon doing well in this exam, I prefer to have stuff straight from the textbook ;D

for the question 5c i wrote the right answer then i crossed it out but it is still visible and i wrote another answer which is wrong do you think i will get any marks for the first answer even though i crossed it out.

(if so how many)

I don't think you would get any, because you crossed it out. There is still the method marks.

You guys seriously think that was an easy paper? I did every single one of the past papers prior to the exam ... there hasn't before been an acceleration-time graph (iirc)

Incorrect recall. Acceleration-time graph came up last year. Jan '11, Q5.

If I drew a faint solid line between the acceleration line and the x axis how many marks do you reckon I will loose, assuming that the acceleration time graph was all correct.

Cheers :P

I much preferred this paper as every answer wasn't necessarily easy to answer at the first glance!!!

How do you reckon you done?

I totally agree with you first time I actually didnt finish incredibly early in a maths exam

erm..i think I dropped 15 marks not counting any method marks etc I guess its a B. What about you? What other modules are you sitting this season?

You find this easy because you're a teacher, no?
I've been learning M1 since september now (along with C1 and C2). Not everyone has found this very easy. At least I don't think so. Q1, 2 and 3 were very easy. I felt as though the rest were quite tricky. This is coming from someone whose studied M1 for 4 months, so I guess you can't really take my opinion into consideration.

I drew my graph with a vertices solid line. I checked the jan 11 examiner report and they said this is penalised.


"Those who had a graph with the correct basic shape were penalised if they included vertical lines on their sketch, although dotted lines were acceptable. "

This is the quote from the jan 11 Q5.

It cost me two marks which i should have goten as i had the correct basic shape.