The 2012 STEP Results Discussion Thread

Does anyone have a list of the questions (year of paper and which paper) are doable with knowledge of only C1, C2, S1, M1 and M2.

I highly doubt anyone will have bothered to create such a list. To be perfectly honest, the pure section will be largely out of your reach without C3 and C4. On the other hand, you should be able to access almost all STEP I and II mechanics questions with M1-M2 knowledge and a good number of the stats questions (in STEP I/II).

The problem being that sometimes the mechanics uses pure from c3 and c4

I'd actually say that's pretty rare as far as requiring C3 and C4 knowledge beyond what you need to know for M2 is concerned. The assumption being that the OP has actually done M2 so will have at least some grasp on the basic stuff from C3 that it requires i.e. trig stuff and some of the rules of differentiation etc.

I know some of the trig identities (sec, cot and cosec etc. but not including double angle etc.). We have also done a little bit of C3 differentiation (e.g. differentiating e^x), but not much.This is as far as my C3 knowledge goes. We haven't actually finished M2 yet, but we only have statics of rigid bodies to go. Also, I have noticed that quite a lot of the mechanics questions mention the modulus of elasticity, please could someone tell me what this is. Thank you.

This is in M3 (Edexcel). Are you familiar with hookes law?

If I apply a force F to a spring or piece of elastic and it extents with a length x and has an unstretched l then:

$F= \frac{\lambda x}{l}$

lambda is the modulus of elasticity and is constant which is dependent on the type of material.

We learnt Hooke's Law in physics, but only as F=kx. So is (lambda/l) the equivalent of the stiffness?

could someone help me on STEP II 2001 question 4? I've done all of it but don't understand why it matters if n is odd or even. thanks

Does anyone have a list of the questions (year of paper and which paper) are doable with knowledge of only C1, C2, S1, M1 and M2.

could someone help me on STEP II 2001 question 4? I've done all of it but don't understand why it matters if n is odd or even. thanks

You are perfectly correct Farhan...

...

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't ukgea's solution to STEP III 1998 Q8(ii) incorrect? I think he has misread the fact that the sphere is not necessarily centred at the origin and a quick sketch shows that $l$ need not be the same as $a$. I get the following:

to be fair to ukgea it looks to me like he's just seen that the location of the system has little bearing on the geometry of the problem and so you can WLOG let d=0 and then displace your solution by d at the end which he seems to have forgotten to do. Obviously though, you are right.

Cheers for the confirmation.


Perhaps it would make sense to move the post to the appropriate solutions thread?

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't ukgea's solution to STEP III 1998 Q8(ii) incorrect? I think he has misread the fact that the sphere is not necessarily centred at the origin and a quick sketch shows that $l$ need not be the same as $a$. I get the following:

Makes me think I should learn more about vectors, planes and "all that jazz."

It'll be good to know for Uni I suppose; especially if you're going to be doing something more towards the applied side of maths. Not so much for STEP, mind - I wouldn't dare to touch a question like that in the actual exam.