Guys, you're all being way over the top! Yes the paper was hard, but if it wasn't it wouldn't seperate the high ability students from the low. Whining to OCR will do absolutely nothing, they're not going to give more students A's just because they asked for it.

Reply 306

Moodydes

Hey fellas,

I like you have done this exam and after had a nervous breakdown since I had given up everything to study for these A levels. Came here and found that I wasn't the only one. So I sent a lovely email. Any thoughts?

Dear Sir/Madam,

Going through the student room forums and just from school I know that your inbox must be full by now from outraged students, but just to show our gratitude from today morning's AS G491 horrendous exam, I'm going to add another.

What the heck was that? The exam paper had almost no questions that are to do with physics!!! I spent this entire year learning what most logical human beings would call "physics". I'm not sure in which mental asylum you're exam "writers" define physics but judging by todays paper, it was nothing remotely close. Any questions that had anything to do with physics were completely out of the spec and in the time period we had was as some students would call "impossible" to answer.

If this was some kind of a practical joke you fellas need to check your calender since April 1st has long since past. I seriously hope you get your things sorted and actually know what "physics" is before even trying to write exams that are to examine "physics" students on the subject of "physics" and not how a QR code works.

I hope you all have a terrible day with angry students wishing you the worst as you had just made mine and possibly every other student studying physics the worst day in history.

Sincerely,

A student that wanted to study physics and not QR codes.

Reply 307

LimbuRonit

1

Yep there goes my dream of getting into a dental school. Thank you ****ing very much OCR. Exam was so cruel nothing like the past papers!

Reply 308

Valyrian

18

I just sent my complaint to OCR, however I'm quite unsure whether it's a tad rude....

"To whoever this may concern,

I am most likely one of the many hundreds of students unsatisfied with the G491 Physics B paper this morning.

The paper itself was so far out of our league that not one of my peers felt that It was okay, but the consecutive amounts of "I haven't a clue what's just happened" was the popular phrase instead.

After almost a years worth of studying for the Physics exam - all the legacy papers, recent papers before the May 2014, I can say the least that I personally did have no idea what sort of paper you were aiming to make , OCR. In fact, I felt like I would have done better doing Government and Politics that was going on at the same time.

The format and layout of this years paper was nothing in comparison to the past papers. As a school, we sit the recent paper from 2013 as a Mock procedure in January. The biggest difference between this 2014 paper and it's predecessor is the fact that it was do-able. There was almost 80% more content relative to the course material studied in class.

In my syllabus never had I ever come across a QR code and it's functions. Who would have known that the 3 dots in a QR code meant anything significant?

In all honesty I had never thoroughly learnt about Graphene at all. The calculations were almost impossible - just like the majority of the paper. The wording of the sentences could hardly be interpreted. Many of my peers misunderstood the questions and did something completely different.

With this much of the courses' actual content missing and therefore not testing us on what is relevant, I would suggest that a reasonable action is taken towards this paper, whether it be lowering the grade boundaries to an acceptable degree to which the majority of the nation that took this paper can achieve, or by whatever means there is of not ruining some chance of obtaining good grades.

Thank you,

Least to say, a very confused AS student."

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 309

monsoon_man

So which were the exact questions people couldn't do? I messed up the LDR one because of time and then the last few as well

Reply 310

monsoon_man

I thought the QR one was quite easy, but everything else...

Reply 311

urz13

8

I'm all for sending emails, but to be fair the QR code was related to physics. The QR codes are like blocks of pixels, which is of course in the spec. The 3 squares in the QR code which don't contain data are to show the scanner where the QR code ends, so that it doesn't scan blank paper and assume it's a blank 'pixel'. So the QR questions were physics for sure, but there were definitely many other bad ones!

Reply 312

HowDoIScience

1

For me it got to the point where I thought, "Damn. These OCR guys really are searching Google for random useless questions." The paper was half arsed at best; it rarely stuck to what they were making us learn in the first place! Entirely redundant, pathetic, ****. God I ****ing hate OCR Physics. The only reason I'm continuing it is to hopefully study NatSci at a Uni. Well I can safely kiss that goodbye!

Reply 313

frank12365

Original post by james-aitken

Guys, you're all being way over the top! Yes the paper was hard, but if it wasn't it wouldn't seperate the high ability students from the low. Whining to OCR will do absolutely nothing, they're not going to give more students A's just because they asked for it.

I understand where you are coming from but most people are angry due to the fact that there was little 'real' physics theory questions! This paper was an 'unfair' paper and did not test your real physics knowledge which you have spent a year revising but on whether you can do extremely hard calculations and know about QR codes!

Reply 314

Rhetorical Hips

14

Original post by james-aitken

Guys, you're all being way over the top! Yes the paper was hard, but if it wasn't it wouldn't seperate the high ability students from the low. Whining to OCR will do absolutely nothing, they're not going to give more students A's just because they asked for it.

Yeah I see where you are coming from, and some people are whinging about things that weren't really all that bad - but while it may be a bit over the top I think people need a way to vent their frustration, which in my opinion is legitimate. I don't see how that paper separated the top students from the bottom. I think that the top students are the ones that are smart, and have worked hard to prepare.

Instead you get an exam with:
A ridiculous time constraint - this rewards people who write fast with good time management skills. Not those that are smart or know the theory. I know that with an extra 15-30 minutes I would've finished the paper, to the best of my ability, instead of rushing questions which I acutally know the answer to. Is that not what you want from an exam paper? I'm doing WJEC Biology tomorrow, and they give you 1 1/2 hours to do a similar amount.

Silly estimation questions - why should the difference between my grade and someone else's be because they can guess how much a cube of wood weighs? Does that make them better at physics? Or better at pub-quizes?

And also the specification is useless. Half of the stuff that comes up in exams and markschemes are not in the specification. The whole point of it is to tell you, broadly, what you need to know.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 315

james-aitken

Original post by frank12365

I understand where you are coming from but most people are angry due to the fact that there was little 'real' physics theory questions! This paper was an 'unfair' paper and did not test your real physics knowledge which you have spent a year revising but on whether you can do extremely hard calculations and know about QR codes!

I think the best way of testing if you thoroughly understand something is to put it in context, rather than make you just regurgitate facts and use equations, this paper tested more relevant and useful physics, and you didn't need to know about QR codes, the exam told you about them?!

Reply 316

Moodydes

Original post by james-aitken

I think the best way of testing if you thoroughly understand something is to put it in context, rather than make you just regurgitate facts and use equations, this paper tested more relevant and useful physics, and you didn't need to know about QR codes, the exam told you about them?!

Yeah the exams told you why there were 3 Squares on them didn't it? Oh wow how did I not see that!!! Must have missed it -.-

Reply 317

HowDoIScience

1

Original post by james-aitken

I think the best way of testing if you thoroughly understand something is to put it in context, rather than make you just regurgitate facts and use equations, this paper tested more relevant and useful physics, and you didn't need to know about QR codes, the exam told you about them?!

Yes, apart from the question asking you to explain the reason for the QR code having squares in 3 of the corners. Admittedly you could come up with the answer after thinking it through a few times, but a) no-one is going to waste their time coming up with an intricately woven reason and b) it's got nothing to do with physics (let alone it not being in the spec).

EDIT: Wait, so did the paper tell you? I must have missed that. Probably because I didn't have time to read it. Sorry then!

Reply 318

james-aitken

Original post by Moodydes

Yeah the exams told you why there were 3 Squares on them didn't it? Oh wow how did I not see that!!! Must have missed it -.-

I personally thought that was one of the easier questions, it's to align the device that's scanning it so it's in the correct orientation, and it was only one mark wasn't it?

Reply 319

frank12365

Original post by james-aitken

I think the best way of testing if you thoroughly understand something is to put it in context, rather than make you just regurgitate facts and use equations, this paper tested more relevant and useful physics, and you didn't need to know about QR codes, the exam told you about them?!

Well it did ask you to say why the QR are better than barcodes or something like that and then state why there are 3 squares in the corner, I suppose it may be common sense but you what have to know why the QR codes are better!!?! To add to that 'relevant and useful physics' was definitely not what this paper was testing - so knowing the density of wood is relevant?

ANSWERS: OCR Physics B(Advancing Physics) G491~ 20th May 2014~ AS Physics

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