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Edexcel A-level Further Mechanics 2 - 25th June 2019 [Exam Discussion]

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Reply 20
Yeah private school tbf (no grammar in my area)
Original post by Taran4u
How weird and tbh, pointless. Do you guys go to a private or posh school? I'm self teaching M2 coz I cba with D1.
Original post by Taran4u
How weird and tbh, pointless. Do you guys go to a private or posh school? I'm self teaching M2 coz I cba with D1.

Nope, state sixth form college (albeit a massive one, but it costs them the same and the only thing it changes for them is an extra seat in an exam so why would they care if we want to do the extra)
Hello can someone help please I'm so baffed

https://pmt.physicsandmathstutor.com/download/Maths/A-level/M3/Papers-Edexcel/January%202014%20(IAL)%20MS%20-%20M3%20Edexcel.pdf

https://pmt.physicsandmathstutor.com/download/Maths/A-level/M3/Papers-Edexcel/January%202014%20(IAL)%20QP%20-%20M3%20Edexcel.pdf

Question 5b, I don't get where the -Wrcos(alpha) term came from. They're taking moments about the point of contact, so there's only 2 forces you have to consider which are P and W. What am I missing? This has bugged tf out of me expecially since I thought I was ready to take the exam lol looks like I will need to murder the other half of Edexcel's past papers

EDIT I figured it out, it's obvious, but I forgot the other component of W also has a moment about the pivot
:facepalm:
(edited 4 years ago)
Exact same here: our school made us take D1 and M1, personally I would have preferred FP1 and M1 or M1 and M2 cus D1 is the biggest piece of shite A level maths has ever included imo (it's not difficult but e.g in simplex if you add 2 numbers wrong all your accuracy marks are lost and you're not going to get time to check cus it's D1)

My school's making me take all 3 exams tho and I decided to do STEP I for the lols. Should i actually bother with D1?
Original post by Taran4u
How weird and tbh, pointless. Do you guys go to a private or posh school? I'm self teaching M2 coz I cba with D1.
Original post by DeBrevitateVitae
Exact same here: our school made us take D1 and M1, personally I would have preferred FP1 and M1 or M1 and M2 cus D1 is the biggest piece of shite A level maths has ever included imo (it's not difficult but e.g in simplex if you add 2 numbers wrong all your accuracy marks are lost and you're not going to get time to check cus it's D1)

My school's making me take all 3 exams tho and I decided to do STEP I for the lols. Should i actually bother with D1?


Maybe do it as an insurance. The thing I hated about D1 is that mistakes were very very costly, and the exams were overall very very tedious. It's not well regarded and that's part of the reason it was taken out of single maths. I just regard at as a cop out for schools who want an easy way out of teaching useful maths :redface:

Not that it's of use to anyone now but an excuse I used to get out of D1 was that I was learning statistics as part of STEP and FS1 would help me do that. Utter rubbish but it worked. My friend used a similar argument to be entered for FM1.
Original post by _gcx
Maybe do it as an insurance. The thing I hated about D1 is that mistakes were very very costly, and the exams were overall very very tedious. It's not well regarded and that's part of the reason it was taken out of single maths. I just regard at as a cop out for schools who want an easy way out of teaching useful maths :redface:

Not that it's of use to anyone now but an excuse I used to get out of D1 was that I was learning statistics as part of STEP and FS1 would help me do that. Utter rubbish but it worked. My friend used a similar argument to be entered for FM1.

Yeah my maths teacher said to do it as an insurance but it's going to be a cram job. And you're absolutely right about the poor teaching - our school is quite understaffed and maths teachers with knowledge of M3/ FP1/ FP2 don't come by often, so by restriction of choice, we ended up stuck with D1.

Hmmm... stats for STEP. Sounds right?
Original post by _gcx
Maybe do it as an insurance. The thing I hated about D1 is that mistakes were very very costly, and the exams were overall very very tedious. It's not well regarded and that's part of the reason it was taken out of single maths. I just regard at as a cop out for schools who want an easy way out of teaching useful maths :redface:

Not that it's of use to anyone now but an excuse I used to get out of D1 was that I was learning statistics as part of STEP and FS1 would help me do that. Utter rubbish but it worked. My friend used a similar argument to be entered for FM1.

d1 is sooooo easy. honestly when i revise for end of years i barely have to do any revision for d1, you just memorise algorithms lol. but in all fairness d1 helped me with programming a bit.
couldnt touch fs1 or fm1, they look like hell to me
Original post by DeBrevitateVitae
Yeah my maths teacher said to do it as an insurance but it's going to be a cram job. And you're absolutely right about the poor teaching - our school is quite understaffed and maths teachers with knowledge of M3/ FP1/ FP2 don't come by often, so by restriction of choice, we ended up stuck with D1.

Hmmm... stats for STEP. Sounds right?


Yeah I wouldn't worry so much. "Unfortunately" the new FM doesn't really let schools get away with just teaching the whole maths A-level (all the 1s and 2s) and then 2 further pure modules, so teachers that aren't very good might struggle to cope with bits of the new spec.

Well it wasn't a lie that I was learning stats, and that was motivated by stats in STEP. But FS1 has very little crossover with the stats content of STEP, except the poisson distribution. (the other stuff - eg. combinations of random variable and continuous prob distributions are in FS2)
Original post by Gent2324
d1 is sooooo easy. honestly when i revise for end of years i barely have to do any revision for d1, you just memorise algorithms lol. but in all fairness d1 helped me with programming a bit.
couldnt touch fs1 or fm1, they look like hell to me


I think D1 would be much more useful if it was like MEI Decision Maths with Computation, where instead of implementing the algorithms by hand, you'd do it by actually programming solutions. It would allow for more problem solving and overall make something that's pretty interesting and applicable in real life.

To be honest - after D1, FS1 is probably the easiest module so nothing to be scared of. Do you do FP1? If so you do the same combination as my school.
Original post by _gcx
I think D1 would be much more useful if it was like MEI Decision Maths with Computation, where instead of implementing the algorithms by hand, you'd do it by actually programming solutions. It would allow for more problem solving and overall make something that's pretty interesting and applicable in real life.

To be honest - after D1, FS1 is probably the easiest module so nothing to be scared of. Do you do FP1? If so you do the same combination as my school.


yeah fp1. theres only me and my friend doing further maths in my school and we hate stats and mechanics to ****, i originally wanted to do fp2 because group theory and number theory seemed pretty interesting but my teacher wasnt confident teaching that so we went with fp1 and d1.
we havent started fp1 yet, instead we have done the whole of d1, whole of book 1, and about 2 thirds of book 2. im finding book 2 pretty hard ngl
Original post by Gent2324
yeah fp1. theres only me and my friend doing further maths in my school and we hate stats and mechanics to ****, i originally wanted to do fp2 because group theory and number theory seemed pretty interesting but my teacher wasnt confident teaching that so we went with fp1 and d1.
we havent started fp1 yet, instead we have done the whole of d1, whole of book 1, and about 2 thirds of book 2. im finding book 2 pretty hard ngl


That's a pretty quick pace! Sounds like you'll be finished with the course by Christmas at the latest.
Entirely up to you. I'm doing step 2 and 3 for the lols as well lol
Original post by DeBrevitateVitae
Exact same here: our school made us take D1 and M1, personally I would have preferred FP1 and M1 or M1 and M2 cus D1 is the biggest piece of shite A level maths has ever included imo (it's not difficult but e.g in simplex if you add 2 numbers wrong all your accuracy marks are lost and you're not going to get time to check cus it's D1)

My school's making me take all 3 exams tho and I decided to do STEP I for the lols. Should i actually bother with D1?
FM2 now! Does anyone know about resources not previously mentioned? I feel like there's very little material on this course
Reply 33
Anyone have any practice papers or past papers? I can't find any
How's everyone revising?
Reply 35
what is meant by the string oscillates through an angle alpha? in the review exercise 1 question 18?
thanks
Original post by mmonk
what is meant by the string oscillates through an angle alpha? in the review exercise 1 question 18?
thanks

Pretty sure it just means the string rotates through alpha. The diagram explains it pretty clearly. Oscillates just means it goes from one side to the other
(edited 4 years ago)
Reply 37
diagram shows theta not alpha though??
Original post by B12thllo
Pretty sure it just means the string rotates through alpha. The diagram explains it pretty clearly. Oscillates just means it goes from one side to the other
Reply 38
can someone please explain question 49 of review exercise one?
dont get it at all?
20190623_221300.jpg
Bit rough but hope this helps, ask away if not clear :smile:
Original post by mmonk
can someone please explain question 49 of review exercise one?
dont get it at all?

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