Best Way Of Revising Mechanics

Yo guys,

I'm looking for some revision techniques here. I've noticed that there are loads of different ways the examiners can ask questions for M1 (Edexcel), and I'm basically looking for techniques on revision. Is it best just to do past papers? Or is it easier to chunk it down, revise moments, revise vectors etc etc and then try papers?

Help, because I'm bad at Mechanics! :frown:

Reply 1

Mohit_C

Just do all the possible past papers you can do. There are, essentialy many different ways of solving equations, like in M2 you can use the equations of motion or simply the Work-Energy princple. Try and do as many papers as you can and do look at the mark schemes; they usually choose the simple methods.

Reply 2

generalebriety

My mechanics teacher tends to give us questions from really old papers grouped by topic, with answers and so on, and then we just work through the newer past papers. Past papers is always best though, followed by revision of anything you got wrong (and doing the exercises in the Heinemann book or whatever textbook you have will probably suffice).

Reply 3

Theorist

Being a physicist (albeit not a very good one) I have a slight bias when I say this, but I find that with Mechanics, understand the physics that goes on in the questions and the mathematics is no more than GCSE algebra and rearranging.

Reply 4

Kolya

Three words: practise, practise, and practise.

Reply 5

Oddball

This is good guys. Yes I do have the Heinemann book. Which is bright orange - WOO!

I've copied out some worked examples for a few things - jerks in strings, moments etc. and I'll carry on until I've got sufficient notes to apply past paper questions to those notes.

Thankie-doodles. :biggrin:

Reply 6

coldplasma

I ended up doing most of my revision on the very last day and ended up coming out with an A, but I would highly recommend you don't try a stunt like that :P

If there's anything you have trouble with, do the mixed exercise for that topic. If you're really terrible at mechanics, then past papers alone won't get you any higher than a C. Focus on what you DON'T know very well and what you loathe doing. It's easy to revise what you know rather than what you don't, because that's the easy way and certainly doesn't get you a very good grade.