Edexcel A2 Biology Unit 5 (6BIO5) - 22/06/2011- OFFICIAL THREAD !

I only have to orange (snab) book? lol, and it makes it look really confuisng..., have you got any notes on it?

Please could someone explain auxins to me? and IAA? I'm using the orange snab book and don't understand a word of it! the only part I get is that auxins are a type of plant growth substance that bring about responses in the plant and IAA is one of them. that's literally all I know!

Is there any chance of Unit 4 stuff coming up in Unit 5 exam because i hardly see any topics that are related to Unit 4?

I maybe wrong, if there are please share

well for the article you will need immunity and protein synthesis

Then of an auxin as a plant hormone, it stimulates something... in this case growth. The only plant hormone you need to know about though is IAA which regulates tropism by stimulating elongation of cells in the case of phototropism and inhibiting growth in the case of geotropism.

For phototropism in shoots: IAA gathers at area that is shaded causing the cells to elongate and the shoot to bend towards the light.

For geotropism in roots: IAA gathers at the underside of roots causing the cells to be inhibited so the top bends towards the ground.

I'm finding the exams so confusing, mainly because everyone seems to be using different textbooks? my school uses the orange snab book only... so surely this should provide us with all the information we need to be able to answer any question that comes up in the exam. But from doing past papers a lot of questions have come up about things I've never even heard of and they aren't mentioned in the book. Are you meant to use more than one book? how do we know what we're supposed to have learnt? I use the specification but I've found questions about things before that aren't even mentioned on the spec! I've now bought an AQA book and an edexcel revision guide to try to help. Does anyone else have the same problem?

I hate being on edexcel! other exam boards seem so much easier and they dont have this stupid article

thanks do we need to know how IAA causes the cells to elongate? because in the orange snab book it describes how but I don't understand it and it also doesnt mention geotropism, what is geotropism?

The thing is, you just need to be able to APPRECIATE and UNDERSTAND the concepts and be able to APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE of the things you have learnt to unfamiliar situations...

yes I understand that, but I've come across a lot of things that are not "suggest" questions, but questions that ask you to state things or explain things that you couldn't possibly know as they are not in the book. I've showed them to my teacher and even they didn't understand and wrote to the exam board about it. Like for example in a unit 4 past paper I did they asked about ammonification, I'd never heard of it and had never been taught it and also it isn't in the textbook anywhere, similar things happen in all the exams I find :s
definitely regretting moving schools because my old school was on OCR :/

also, how are you revising for the article?

I'm finding the exams so confusing, mainly because everyone seems to be using different textbooks? my school uses the orange snab book only... so surely this should provide us with all the information we need to be able to answer any question that comes up in the exam. But from doing past papers a lot of questions have come up about things I've never even heard of and they aren't mentioned in the book. Are you meant to use more than one book? how do we know what we're supposed to have learnt? I use the specification but I've found questions about things before that aren't even mentioned on the spec! I've now bought an AQA book and an edexcel revision guide to try to help. Does anyone else have the same problem?

I hate being on edexcel! other exam boards seem so much easier and they dont have this stupid article

yes I understand that, but I've come across a lot of things that are not "suggest" questions, but questions that ask you to state things or explain things that you couldn't possibly know as they are not in the book. I've showed them to my teacher and even they didn't understand and wrote to the exam board about it. Like for example in a unit 4 past paper I did they asked about ammonification, I'd never heard of it and had never been taught it and also it isn't in the textbook anywhere, similar things happen in all the exams I find :s
definitely regretting moving schools because my old school was on OCR :/

also, how are you revising for the article?

That's good you purchased the revision guide, the CGP revision guide is really good at summarising concepts and doesn't have a lot of waffle like the orange SNAB textbook does. That textbook is purely like the person above said to understand the concepts but not to revise from. I made notes for ALL of topic 7 and 8 from the textbook which I can upload , but it's just the way certain things are phrased in the orange textbook like ''the fate of pyruvate'', I mean why use the word ''fate?''
Honestly, in the exam you just need to bullet point things, you can't write as detailed or more like waffly as the orange textbook does This boy in my class for his unit 4 exam [when we had the module in January] only used the CGP revision guide and got 114/120.

Not that I'm saying, don't use any other resources/notes, but I just use the orange textbook to confirm/refer to things. For instance chemiosmosis, I personally think the CGP book explains it so much better :P

That's good you purchased the revision guide, the CGP revision guide is really good at summarising concepts and doesn't have a lot of waffle like the orange SNAB textbook does. That textbook is purely like the person above said to understand the concepts but not to revise from. I made notes for ALL of topic 7 and 8 from the textbook which I can upload , but it's just the way certain things are phrased in the orange textbook like ''the fate of pyruvate'', I mean why use the word ''fate?''
Honestly, in the exam you just need to bullet point things, you can't write as detailed or more like waffly as the orange textbook does This boy in my class for his unit 4 exam [when we had the module in January] only used the CGP revision guide and got 114/120.

Not that I'm saying, don't use any other resources/notes, but I just use the orange textbook to confirm/refer to things. For instance chemiosmosis, I personally think the CGP book explains it so much better :P

hey thanks so much for your advice! im worried its a little late now though as I have my unit 4 exam next week and then this unit 5 one the week after? but I guess I could still look over some topics in other books between now and then. that's probably why I've only ever been able to get c's... I've only ever used the snab book and it goes into so much detail about things you don't even need to know! I'll definitely start using my revision guide especially as it cuts out all the waffle! what grades have you been getting for the biology units?

It seems as though everyone on the student room are just straight A students! Ive never got an A in biology, and only ever got 1 B grade, really worried seeing as I need a B overall just isn't going to happen... and as for the article im completely lost... the only things i've done is read through it a couple of times and then complete a glossary of words I don't understand from it, and revised relevant sections from the textbook e.g the performance enhancing stuff. But I feel completely clueless about the article still