CIE - Can practical papers be answered without lab facilities?
Here is the situation: I am a private candidate. The cost to use my exam centre's lab facilities is £1000+. Cambridge international doesn't have a practical endorsement, but they do have practical papers which make up 25% of the grade. These practical papers expect you to have access to lab facilities so that you can carry out the experiments and give answers to their questions.
I would like to find out how much of these practical papers can be answered without actually having access to lab facilities.
Please take a look at these two sample papers from the Cambridge International website.
Paper 1 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567870-june-2019-question-paper-31.pdf
Paper 2 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567872-june-2019-question-paper-51.pdf
I would like to find out how much of these practical papers can be answered without actually having access to lab facilities.
Please take a look at these two sample papers from the Cambridge International website.
Paper 1 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567870-june-2019-question-paper-31.pdf
Paper 2 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567872-june-2019-question-paper-51.pdf
(edited 2 years ago)
Original post by Math.Qs
Here is the situation: I am a private candidate. The cost to use my exam centre's lab facilities is £1000+. Cambridge international doesn't have a practical endorsement, but they do have practical papers which make up 25% of the grade. These practical papers expect you to have access to lab facilities so that you can carry out the experiments and give answers to their questions.
I would like to find out how much of these practical papers can be answered without actually having access to lab facilities.
Please take a look at these two sample papers from the Cambridge International website.
Paper 1 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567870-june-2019-question-paper-31.pdf
Paper 2 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567872-june-2019-question-paper-51.pdf
I would like to find out how much of these practical papers can be answered without actually having access to lab facilities.
Please take a look at these two sample papers from the Cambridge International website.
Paper 1 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567870-june-2019-question-paper-31.pdf
Paper 2 - https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/567872-june-2019-question-paper-51.pdf
A few things to note and consider.
Anyone can answer paper 3 and paper 5 without lab facilities. It is NOT about access to lab facilities. It is the practical work or experiences that a student needs in order to do well in the paper(s).
If you have not done any A level Physics practical/experiments before, you may not have the necessary skills and knowledge of doing paper 3 especially.
Capable students may follow the instructions to set up the apparatus and perform the experiment. However, take for example the Q1 in paper 31 (provided by you), there are some “implicit rules” in “choosing” the six sets of values of x and y. Without going through similar experiment(s) in a lab prior to the exam, students may not know such “rules”.
Different experiments require the students to take different precautions to obtain reasonable experimental results.
For most of the questions in paper 3 in CIE, students need to know how to perform the analysis on their experimental results. Most of the time, students just need to follow the questions to perform the analysis like plotting of graph, compute uncertainty, etc. Students can train their analysis skills by practising paper 5 or other examination boards physics practical papers.
Paper 5 is to
• plan experiments and investigations
• collect, record and present observations, measurements and estimates
• analyse and interpret experimental data to reach conclusions
• evaluate methods and quality of experimental data, and suggest improvements to experiments.
Paper 5 is an “experimental” theory paper (IMO) and is NOT really about performing experiments but to plan an experiment like paper 3 question 1 to investigate “something”. The steps must be doable like a real experiment. You can expose yourself to a large variety of experimental setups for investigating different “theories” or “laws” by going through some experiments reference books or other examination boards physics of similar types of questions.
Original post by Callicious
Tbf a lot of that looks like actually doing the practical- like all/most of it. There are a few marks available in each that don't need the practical, but do need an understanding of the experiment- doable without the practical imo.
If you're not able to use the exam centres facilities, you either have to get the data somehow, or fail the paper. I would say £1,000 for a good grade is fair play- you need the practical experience, anyhow. If you can get the data from someone, that also works (though I don't know if the exam centre is expecting you to do this paper with them directly, in which case paying is the only option???)
If you were able to do this at home without having to go through the exam centre at all (see: do paper in house, no lab facilities, they don't ask questions, just submit it) you would easily be able to just synthesize the data or ask someone to do that for you, which is frankly a fairly easy thing to do- you could even fake it by hand if you weren't able to use a PC to do so (tools do exist on a PC to fake this kind of data.)
If you're not able to use the exam centres facilities, you either have to get the data somehow, or fail the paper. I would say £1,000 for a good grade is fair play- you need the practical experience, anyhow. If you can get the data from someone, that also works (though I don't know if the exam centre is expecting you to do this paper with them directly, in which case paying is the only option???)
If you were able to do this at home without having to go through the exam centre at all (see: do paper in house, no lab facilities, they don't ask questions, just submit it) you would easily be able to just synthesize the data or ask someone to do that for you, which is frankly a fairly easy thing to do- you could even fake it by hand if you weren't able to use a PC to do so (tools do exist on a PC to fake this kind of data.)
Hi, please restrict yourself from giving advice to something that you don't have knowledge. The advice from the last paragraph can easily ruin someone grade. Please provide responsible and honest comments/advices.
Original post by Eimmanuel
Hi, please restrict yourself from giving advice to something that you don't have knowledge. The advice from the last paragraph can easily ruin someone grade. Please provide responsible and honest comments/advices.
Edited it, sorry
(edited 2 years ago)
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