AQA Physics PHYA5 - 28th June 2016 [Exam Discussion Thread]

Boundaries are like 53/54 (excluding 2015) for an A* .....why?

Turning points is usually higher though

There's only ever been two papers even remotely close to those boundaries (June 13 and 14), the rest are around 80% i.e. slightly higher than Unit 4's 75% A* average, just as you'd expect. (This is with Astro as the option btw)

Shame there's not that much data for Unit 5 in general though

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Edit: didn't see you said it's for astro. Medical ones are much lower than that

Look for 2012 for example...

You seem to have only done the boundaries for Astrophysics. The first section has the same boundaries of course but each optional topic seems to have it's own . I think Astrophysics may have the highest boundaries actually not turning points, not quite sure.

Edit: didn't see you said it's for astro. Medical ones are much lower than that

So is medical harder than astro?

ffs why the astro boundaries so high :'(

Not sure, is it easy?

Its not piss easy but its ok, just too much content though

Not sure, is it easy?

I did astronomy as an extracurricular GCSE, and it's mainly just a rehash of that with some slightly more sophisticated mathematics. There's very little combining of different topics, and you're generally only dealing with one equation per question, unlike in, say, Unit 4 where we were expected to equate multiple equations fairly often.

The chapter (only 3 chapters total) on lenses was new to me, but I guess to everyone who did triple it would just be a matter of re-learning it.

If you look at its section on the formula sheet, I'd say it's about as hard as it looks, maybe even easier

I did astronomy as an extracurricular GCSE, and it's mainly just a rehash of that with some slightly more sophisticated mathematics. There's very little combining of different topics, and you're generally only dealing with one equation per question, unlike in, say, Unit 4 where we were expected to equate multiple equations fairly often.

The chapter (only 3 chapters total) on lenses was new to me, but I guess to everyone who did triple it would just be a matter of re-learning it.

If you look at its section on the formula sheet, I'd say it's about as hard as it looks, maybe even easier

how did you find the astro bit on the 2015 paper?

Does anyone think Rutherford's alpha scattering experiment could be turned into a six marker? Have there been many questions on it overall?

I think that was the first astro paper I did, thought it was pretty good generally. Seems like the main thing they change from paper to paper is just the names of the stars and planets they're referring to, so I don't think there'll be much chance of anything too out of the ordinary coming up.

I'll definitely need to find some more time to put into it in the next few days though (along with FP2 and C4)

For kinetic theory model, they've always asked you to explain what happens to X if volume or temperature changes, e.g. why pressure decreases when volume increases. Could they ever ask you the reverse way? I.e. why does the volume increase when the pressure decreases?