Getting to Cambridge: STEP by STEP!

OP

Original post by Student403

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How are your modules coming along? Maybe it's time so self-learn vectors? What about FP2 polar coordinates?

Reply 1722

Original post by Zacken

How are your modules coming along? Maybe it's time so self-learn vectors? What about FP2 polar coordinates?

Polar coordinates are lovely - I really like the topic and I reckon we'll be finished with those this week.

The problem is my teacher's disappeared (and hasn't communicated with us even via email for 3 weeks - so I feel we've really been let down)

Having known you for so long, I knew the right thing to do was self study so I did A-D. But 5E/F are really messing with my mind (planar stuff). None of us can really get it round our head and I feel like we need some sort of personal explanation for it.

Reply 1723

Original post by Student403

It is truly awesome stuff! :yep:

And yeah dude you should probably be heading to bed soon :lol:

Pretty decent, thanks! I'm worried about FP3 - our exams start soon and we've only just started Vectors :frown:

I used to hate particle physics at first but I'm starting to love them. I've done up to January 2012 for Unit 4 so I feel like I'm sort of behind, but I'll catch up soon!

Don't worry about V + M, it won't take a smarticle like you very long to cover it. FP3 is probably like 3 whole months away! When is your U5 mock?

Reply 1724

Original post by aymanzayedmannan

I used to hate particle physics at first but I'm starting to love them. I've done up to January 2012 for Unit 4 so I feel like I'm sort of behind, but I'll catch up soon!

Don't worry about V + M, it won't take a smarticle like you very long to cover it. FP3 is probably like 3 whole months away! When is your U5 mock?

Ah true, true :smile:

I think you're fine for U4. Honestly for my Jan exam I just busted all the papers out in 2 weeks. It's all about how you learn.

Cheers, that is a while away! We probably won't have one because our teacher wants to take his time with the spec so we can fully appreciate it. So we'll be learning even after the U6 exam and a mock is probably pointless - may as well just have it as another past paper.

Reply 1725

Original post by Student403

Polar coordinates are lovely - I really like the topic and I reckon we'll be finished with those this week.

The problem is my teacher's disappeared (and hasn't communicated with us even via email for 3 weeks - so I feel we've really been let down)

Having known you for so long, I knew the right thing to do was self study so I did A-D. But 5E/F are really messing with my mind (planar stuff). None of us can really get it round our head and I feel like we need some sort of personal explanation for it.

Have you tried examsolutions? The FP3 vectors section is complete.

Reply 1726

Original post by aymanzayedmannan

Have you tried examsolutions? The FP3 vectors section is complete.

Not yet - thanks for the reminder!

Reply 1727

OP

Original post by Student403

Polar coordinates are lovely - I really like the topic and I reckon we'll be finished with those this week.

That's awesome! Polar coordinates is one of the hardest things in FP2, so if you like it that's very good news! :biggrin:

The problem is my teacher's disappeared (and hasn't communicated with us even via email for 3 weeks - so I feel we've really been let down)

That is bizarre.

Having known you for so long, I knew the right thing to do was self study so I did A-D. But 5E/F are really messing with my mind (planar stuff). None of us can really get it round our head and I feel like we need some sort of personal explanation for it.

Hmmm, I could always write up some stuff for you or even maybe do a Skype sesh or something if you can be a little more specific about the issues. Have you tried watching the examsolution videos on them? They're amazing.

Edit: Aymaninja. :ninja:

Reply 1728

Original post by Zacken

That's awesome! Polar coordinates is one of the hardest things in FP2, so if you like it that's very good news! :biggrin:

That is bizarre.

Hmmm, I could always write up some stuff for you or even maybe do a Skype sesh or something if you can be a little more specific about the issues. Have you tried watching the examsolution videos on them? They're amazing.

Ah thank you so much for that! I'll try examsolutions and let you know if the other options would be necessary, but I really appreciate the offer :biggrin:

Cheers!

Reply 1729

Original post by Student403

Ah true, true :smile:

I think you're fine for U4. Honestly for my Jan exam I just busted all the papers out in 2 weeks. It's all about how you learn.

Cheers, that is a while away! We probably won't have one because our teacher wants to take his time with the spec so we can fully appreciate it. So we'll be learning even after the U6 exam and a mock is probably pointless - may as well just have it as another past paper.

Your teachers sound awesome honestly :yep:

Our physics teacher is really cool as well but my school forced all our teachers to finish teaching everything as early as December, which I really don't see the point of. We had midterm on all our modules (which everyone flunked as expexted) afterwards. U4 is nice but I'll need to look through electromagnetism nicely, keeps bringing my grades down. :emo:

Reply 1730

Original post by Zacken

That's awesome! Polar coordinates is one of the hardest things in FP2, so if you like it that's very good news! :biggrin:

That is bizarre.

Hmmm, I could always write up some stuff for you or even maybe do a Skype sesh or something if you can be a little more specific about the issues. Have you tried watching the examsolution videos on them? They're amazing.

Edit: Aymaninja. :ninja:

Please have a Skype session with us, we'd love to learn from the master :adore:

Reply 1731

OP

Original post by aymanzayedmannan

Please have a Skype session with us, we'd love to learn from the master :adore:

I'd learn more physics from you lot than you would maths from me. :lol:

Reply 1732

Original post by aymanzayedmannan

Your teachers sound awesome honestly :yep:

Our physics teacher is really cool as well but my school forced all our teachers to finish teaching everything as early as December, which I really don't see the point of. We had midterm on all our modules (which everyone flunked as expexted) afterwards. U4 is nice but I'll need to look through electromagnetism nicely, keeps bringing my grades down. :emo:

WHOA

That's EARLY!

Yeah our mocks were flunked by everyone - the recent ones :lol:

Only one person in the year got an A* in Further Maths and Maths lol and there were even some Bs and Cs.

I think senioritis is really kicking in, since so many of us are headed to the US and Canada. And others to Australia, where the best universities (Melbourne, Sydney) will accept you with like AABB

Reply 1733

Original post by Student403

WHOA

That's EARLY!

Yeah our mocks were flunked by everyone - the recent ones :lol:

Only one person in the year got an A* in Further Maths and Maths lol and there were even some Bs and Cs.

Yeah dude and it was unaffective as ****. Our school is focused on taking exams every chance they get even though everyone flunks. 3 people got As in physics (me, the Vanderbilt kid and this other girl) so it kinda proves how unaffective it is. Haha you told me that you were the only one to boss FM. :lol:

I still remember you worrying about that exam. :tongue:

I think senioritis is really kicking in, since so many of us are headed to the US and Canada. And others to Australia, where the best universities (Melbourne, Sydney) will accept you with like AABB

So that happens in your school too lol. In mine everyone gets decent predictions and then stop bothering come April because acceptances = profit :laugh:

How's M3 coming along btw? When do you wanna start papers?

Reply 1734

Original post by aymanzayedmannan

Yeah dude and it was unaffective as ****. Our school is focused on taking exams every chance they get even though everyone flunks. 3 people got As in physics (me, the Vanderbilt kid and this other girl) so it kinda proves how unaffective it is. Haha you told me that you were the only one to boss FM. :lol:

I still remember you worrying about that exam. :tongue:

So that happens in your school too lol. In mine everyone gets decent predictions and then stop bothering come April because acceptances = profit :laugh:

How's M3 coming along btw? When do you wanna start papers?

Daaamn nice! To be fair, I scraped it by 2 UMS which I can't rely on in the real thing :afraid:

Yeah the acceptances are comforting :cool:

But very motivation-sucking.

Oooh uhhhhhhhhhh... I should REALLY start that soon :laugh:

I think come the weekend I'll start my real exam revision, starting with M3 as it's my first STEM exam. I basically treat my subjects as STEM and German :colonhash:

M+FM+Ph is like one subject to me - idk why

Reply 1735

OP

FP2 June 2013:

Total time: 48:30
Total mark: 75

bob

General thoughts: The first few minutes into this paper and I was convinced I'd opened the wrong paper and was accidentally doing an FP1 one because the first few questions looked so simple. :eek3:

Was quite happy with this paper, the second order DE wasn't an ugly one and didn't require ugly algebra, the polar coordinates question was bae. The summation was simple. Two sketches, which were free marks. This was represented with the high grade boundaries for the paper.

Q1: Simple. I'm a bit pissed at how the summation questions take up so much space because I need to write each term vertically for me to be able to see what cancels. So it takes up an entire quarter of a page or so. Checked my answer by substituting a small value of

n

and summing manually to verify my answer. So I knew I secured these marks. Also why I took more than five minutes to do the question. It's still good practice and with enough trials, you can do it in forty seconds and it's a relief to know in the exam.

Q2: This was a joke. Felt like FP1 all over again. At least the numbers were nice.

Q3: Tidy, no ugly algebra, fell out easily. Checked my answer by differentiating my function and seeing if the derivatives matched up. Good thing I did because I forgot to include the

\frac{1}{2!}

and

\frac{1}{3!}

but corrected it - again why that took me more than 5 minutes.

Q4: Ugly induction, but free marks. Again, just like FP1. Second part was a bit (very) dumb.

Q5: I quite liked the question and concept. But I cannot fanthom why the mark-scheme decided to differentiate the answer to (b) instead of just doing

y' = 0

from the given differential equation to get

y = 2x^2

. Sketch was pretty. Nice co-ordinates as well.

Q6: Bit tedious but at least the numbers were nice. Sketch was okay, meh. It was a 'meh' question all around.

Q7: Second order DE, always tedious, thankfully they played nice and it barely required any algebra or anything.

Q8: I actually really enjoyed this and did more justification than was actually required, judging from the markscheme. It bothers me that they went from

\cos^2 \theta = \frac{1}{3}

to

\cos \theta = \frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}

without justifying the use of the positive root. I was glad that it was a "show" that answer, those are the best and it was a pretty result as well. Fav question on the whole paper and took me the longest: ~8 minutes.

Reply 1736

I liked the last question as well. :biggrin:

Just the one to see how fast you could do polar coordinate questions, innit? How fast do you write :eek:

I took twice as long as you on that question but timed similarly in everything else.

Found the feature on my Samsung as well lol. It's actually really helpful to see weak points.

Reply 1737

OP

Original post by aymanzayedmannan

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Why'd you cut yourself two marks? So your only weak points are polar coordinates for FP2 (from this paper)? :biggrin:

Well done! :biggrin:

But yeah, I like the lap feature - it's quite useful.

Reply 1738

Original post by Zacken

Why'd you cut yourself two marks? So your only weak points are polar coordinates for FP2 (from this paper)? :biggrin:

Well done! :biggrin:

But yeah, I like the lap feature - it's quite useful.

I didn't use any trig identities to expand out the

\sin 4 \theta

term and found an exact ratio on my calculator. :facepalm:

I wouldn't say it was a weak point because I didn't need to think an awful lot, but I'll need to finish these in around 10 minutes to leave some breathing space.

Aye, thank YOU for all the support, bud. :biggrin:

I've managed to find my problem areas in FP2 and FP3. I'm forgetting my S3 as well, btw. :tongue:

Done no past papers yet, so I'll need to get started soon. Is it just me or is it ridiculously easy for a 3 module? :eek:

Reply 1739

OP