AQA Physics PHYA4 - Thursday 11th June 2015 [Exam Discussion Thread]

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80% UMS overall for an A, so 480 UMS in both AS and A2 total for an A. If you get 50UMS for your ISA and you got 242 last year, you need an average of 94/120 in PHYA4 and PHYA5 (total 188UMS) to just scrape an A, but without knowing the grade boundaries it's hard to tell exactly how well you'd need to do to get that :smile:

ThankQ!

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Reply 441

Disney0702

Hello everyone!

My teacher showed me this really useful website to help with Physics revision and I thought it was best to share it with you all of you.

Reply 442

Lau14

Original post by CD223

Also, does anyone know what equations we need to know how to derive in PHYA4? It's just I know the derivation of the kinetic theory of gases equation is needed in unit 5 so I wondered if there was any needed for unit 4.

We need to be able to derive from other equations/remember the equations for escape velocity and Kepler's law because those aren't on the data sheet, but otherwise I can't think of anything?

Reply 443

Disney0702

Original post by susanjan123

Quick question, for an A grade overall what UMS is needed?
Also I got 242 (low A I think??) UMS last year and NEED an A this year-let's assume I get around 50 for my ISA this year- what grades do I need for unit 4 and 5 approximately?

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Hi there!

You can check out the AQA UMS Converter to see how much raw marks (approx.) you would also need because predicting yourself what UMS you need can be misleading sometimes.

What I mean by that is, we know to get a minimum of an A* in this exam we would need 108 UMS which is 90% of the total UMS of this exam.

But convert that 108 UMS into raw marks and you'll actually notice that it is around 61 raw marks out of 75 which is 81.3% raw marks of the overall exam!

Reply 444

CD223

Original post by Lau14

We need to be able to derive from other equations/remember the equations for escape velocity and Kepler's law because those aren't on the data sheet, but otherwise I can't think of anything?

Ah right thank you!

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Reply 445

thirushi95

Have anyone done your practical exam?

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Reply 446

Lau14

Original post by thirushi95

Have anyone done your practical exam?

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No, we've been told recently that we'll be doing some EMPA preparation after next week, then a mock and the actual thing after Easter.

Reply 447

CD223

Original post by thirushi95

Have anyone done your practical exam?

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I'm in the middle of my second mock EMPA. My real practical one is in a week's time. The section B is in mid May.

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Reply 448

_Caz_

I have my is a soon. Trying to practise some papers but not doing a great job of it >_>

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Reply 449

CD223

Original post by _Caz_

I have my is a soon. Trying to practise some papers but not doing a great job of it >_>

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Ah how soon is soon? :/ it's hard to revise for the practicals!

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Reply 450

_Caz_

Original post by CD223

Ah how soon is soon? :/ it's hard to revise for the practicals!

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Got the practical this Friday :frown:

. More nervous for the written part though.

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Reply 451

CD223

Original post by _Caz_

Got the practical this Friday :frown:

. More nervous for the written part though.

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I agree! Good luck! My practical (EMPA) is on 16th March! Section B written part is on 5th May which is more nerve wracking.

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Reply 452

Lau14

Original post by CD223

I agree! Good luck! My practical (EMPA) is on 16th March! Section B written part is on 5th May which is more nerve wracking.

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Everyone else seems to do their practicals so early? We aren't doing it until after half term because they like it to be as close to the written paper as possible (still fresh in our minds!)

Reply 453

CD223

Original post by Lau14

Everyone else seems to do their practicals so early? We aren't doing it until after half term because they like it to be as close to the written paper as possible (still fresh in our minds!)

It would make sense to do things that way..I've no idea why my college insists on it being this early. It doesn't quite figure!

Reply 454

_Caz_

Original post by CD223

I agree! Good luck! My practical (EMPA) is on 16th March! Section B written part is on 5th May which is more nerve wracking.

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If you don't mind me asking what is the difference between EMPA and ISAs? And good luck for yours :smile:

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Reply 455

CD223

Original post by _Caz_

If you don't mind me asking what is the difference between EMPA and ISAs? And good luck for yours :smile:

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Aha! Don't worry, as far as I can tell ISAs are internally marked by your teachers/assessors, right?
EMPA = Externally Marked Practical Assessment. As far as I can tell, despite the experiments being slightly different, the EMPA is externally marked. We do two practicals and record results/plot a graph in section A, then answer theory questions related to both practicals in section B. How similar is that to the ISA, (minus the external marking)?

Reply 456

Lau14

Original post by CD223

It would make sense to do things that way..I've no idea why my college insists on it being this early. It doesn't quite figure!

I'm just hoping that we'll do some properly useful preparation this year!

Reply 457

CD223

Original post by Lau14

I'm just hoping that we'll do some properly useful preparation this year!

Ah we've had two mocks in the last 3 weeks which have been useful. It's annoying. They went better than my C last year but I doubt I'll be able to improve much on that this year in the real thing...

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