WJEC A2 Physics New Spec

I'm sitting the exam on thursday, how you feeling about it?

If it's like the old spec I think it should go fine. I'm not sure about the comprehension question at the end; the specimen paper one was okay so if that's like that I won't mind. What about you?

I'm not that sure about the comprehension question either, but just hoping that the rest of the paper will go smoothly. I'm more confident with this paper than Unit 4 next week!

Oh yeah me too. Unit 3 is much more straight forward in my opinion. All of the circular motion and SHM seems easy to me because I do M2 and M3 which are significantly harder 😂

The gas stuff, like thermodynamics etc, is quite easy too as long as u can rearrange formulae and do trapeziums. The nuclear stuff is usually fine though I'd say has the potential to be the hardest part of the paper. Praying for a nice comprehension thoooo

Posted from TSR Mobile

Yeah I'm doing M2 aswell, helped a lot doing a few of the same topics in maths and phys haha. I still havent got my head fully round some parts of nuclear energy, it's deffo my weakest part of the paper. I hope the comprehension is fairly straightforward, it's worth a fair chunk of the paper isn't it? :s

It's worth 20marks out of the 100 total I believe. I expect people will generally do badly on it, regardless of what it is on, since we dont have much guidance or examples to go off

Posted from TSR Mobile

Right okay, we'll have to see how it goes tomorrow!

I thought the comprehension was quite challenging. It took me a good amount of time to even answer "what is a Maser and how does it work" without simply copying from the passage. The calculations on the comprehension took me a while to get a grip on too, though my final answer (where they gave data), matched my answer to the previous q (within the uncertainty) so I think that's promising???

Thought the nuclear stuff was fine. Was unsure how much to write for q1 so probably overdid it but oh well. They reused the q about the BE/nuc curve from a past paper so thought that was fine too. The gas stuff was a little tricky though I thought there were lots of easy marks to pick up.

I liked the 6 mark QER. Talked about the first law of thermo and how ∆U =Q since the volume was constant, so U increased. Then linked that to U=3/2nRT and said hence T increases. The pressure bit came up in a past paper too. Talked about the collisions between molecules and walls , linked to N2L & N3L, then P=F/A.

Circular motion was interesting. I guessed they'd throw a practical style q in there. I made sure to fill in the table of results to 2s.f. like all the other columns... I suspect this may have been overlooked by some people. My value of g was 10.1 so I wrote 10m/s² down, sticking to 2sf. The proof style qs in this section were pretty trivial. Firstly F = 0.01v²/R , then T = 0.09g. Equating both as 0.01v²/R = 0.09g lead to the answer.

The pendulum question was a little spicy and set SHM in a different context to past papers. That minor arc proof is in the wjec textbook though it simply states "resolving the weight force along the minor arc gives -mgsin(x)" so I'm not too sure how they're awarding 3 marks for this. The second proof of acceleration was again a trivial one. -mgsin(x) = ma
sin(x) = s/l from the diagram and using the approximation x ≈ s/l , rearranging lead to the result easily. I said this was in agreement with SHM definition (I gave the definition), likened it to a= -ω²x where
ω² = g/l in our equation. The final bit almost caught me out as I felt the question was purposefully vague/ambiguous. Using x=Asin(ωt) I calculated the time taken to reach max amplitude. This was ¼ of the period calculated earlier so was in agreement.

I may have missed a question out from this? How did you guys find it?
Posted from TSR Mobile

How did you do the very last question? I used pythagoras -

sin pheta = r/d

But this didn't work for me?

I know Ive dropped quite a few marks here and there, especially in the last bits of the comprehension question. When i first looked at SHM questions i didnt really know how to go about it but after revisiting it towards the end of the exam it clicked a bit better. I think what threw me off with the shm question was the fact that it was quite alot different to the old papers.

Those pendulum questions were tough, particularly the small angle one, although I did get there in the end by figuring out you could approximate the arc of the pendulum to a right angle so that sintheta = s/l

Didn't really like the comprehension and felt weak on the pressure 6 marker too. I also felt quite pushed for time towards the end.

I reckon the grade boundaries will be low but it's hard to tell with new spec.

I wonder if the next exam will be easier now...