British Physics Olympiad (BphO) round 1, November 2024
Hi all, How did you find BphO this year? I thought it was quite awful myself.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
Hi there.
I thought it was pretty good, I’d done a decent bit of preparation. I answered most of section 1 with the exception of the tarmac one, the rod with trolley one, and a couple more that I’ve forgotten. For section two, I answered 4 and 5 and thought they were quite entertaining questions. Got all but the last 6 marks of each done. Does anyone know when we get the results?
I thought it was pretty good, I’d done a decent bit of preparation. I answered most of section 1 with the exception of the tarmac one, the rod with trolley one, and a couple more that I’ve forgotten. For section two, I answered 4 and 5 and thought they were quite entertaining questions. Got all but the last 6 marks of each done. Does anyone know when we get the results?
The swearing? Idk man. Probably.
Original post by ANON12342
Hi all, How did you find BphO this year? I thought it was quite awful myself.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
I thought it was really good for the most part. I didnt really get much preparation done, only a few past papers and only the section 1 part, however i have been revising for the PAT for oxford since the start of the summer holidays, and did the actual thing, which came in very handy for section 1. A lot of the section one questions were really hard so i skipped very many without much thought other than "do i think i can do this/do i KNOW how to do this" and then went back to harder ones after i did those, felt like i picked up anywhere from 28-39 marks on section one, though could be way lower.
Section 2 was a mixed bag, like, very much so. I attempted questions 4 and 5. With question 4, it was probably one of the most blessed bpho question i had seen in my life, i got every single part down and thought it was easy and most of the difficulty came from inputting an expression in the calculator (integrating the activity and having to use the mass with the moles and avogadros number and convert to joules and find the decay constant and stuff, putting the numbers in took so long. but with question 4 i felt like i got at least 19 marks if not 25. Question 5 on the other hand actually sucked, i did 5 a, and it was okay, but after that, i got super stuck on 5b not even getting the first bit, and every other part of question 5 needed 5b, so i got max 6 marks on questions 5.
overall i think it went pretty well, though i could have easily screwed up loads of the questions in section 1, well see lol
BPhO was supposed to release the paper by midday yesterday. Does anyone have the paper or MS? Just want to see which questions from section 1 I got correct.
(edited 3 weeks ago)
Does anyone know what the grade boundaries might be this year? Can't find anything past 2020
Original post by ANON12342
Hi all, How did you find BphO this year? I thought it was quite awful myself.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
I absolutely despised Section 2. I wasted 20 minutes on Q5b) and had no idea what to do, then went to Q3, got stuck after a few marks, so then scrambled back to Q5 for a bit, before finally doing Q4 and thank god it was easier than the other questions. I'm thinking I bombed this one and only got 20/50 tops (rip)
Original post by orangesandjuice
I absolutely despised Section 2. I wasted 20 minutes on Q5b) and had no idea what to do, then went to Q3, got stuck after a few marks, so then scrambled back to Q5 for a bit, before finally doing Q4 and thank god it was easier than the other questions. I'm thinking I bombed this one and only got 20/50 tops (rip)
I was in the same boat as you, but unfortunately I completely avoided Q4 as I have only taught myself the basics of nuclear incase it came up on section 1, but it seems like I shot myself in the foot with that. In retrospect section 1 wasn’t too bad compared to section 2. Luckily I’m not doing physics at uni anyway so I don’t need to be too attached to whatever result I get, but it would be nice to do well and perhaps get onto the next round (if the grade boundaries are low enough- in 2022 the papers were objectively easier and it was only 39/100 to get a top gold and onto round 2)
Original post by botheredmonkey
BPhO was supposed to release the paper by midday yesterday. Does anyone have the paper or MS? Just want to see which questions from section 1 I got correct.
Original post by ANON12342
Hi all, How did you find BphO this year? I thought it was quite awful myself.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
What questions did you do from section 1 and 2? I managed to get quite a few problems done on section 1 (I remember the electricity being quite nice, but overall definitely an increase in difficulty from previous years). Section 2 was a scramble for just a few marks, I got some of the question about rotating stuff done and the first couple of marks of the last question on gravity, but I am not at all optimistic about this paper.
Do feel free to share any answers you would like to check in the replies.
Also, if we swear on the BphO but cross it (with a single line so it is still probably visible) out could i suffer any consequences in this (the offensive material was "**** this" and "whoever wrote this exam, **** you".?
Anyway, all the best and hopefully the grade boundaries will be really low.
I fs agree with you - it was definitely worse than last year. Paper 1 went well for me too, paper 2 was very hit or miss so idk how I did. Did you get any ideas for question 5b? I was trying to solve it afterwards as well but I'm still kinda stumped ngl
Original post by BigUpGian
I fs agree with you - it was definitely worse than last year. Paper 1 went well for me too, paper 2 was very hit or miss so idk how I did. Did you get any ideas for question 5b? I was trying to solve it afterwards as well but I'm still kinda stumped ngl
Original post by BigUpGian
I fs agree with you - it was definitely worse than last year. Paper 1 went well for me too, paper 2 was very hit or miss so idk how I did. Did you get any ideas for question 5b? I was trying to solve it afterwards as well but I'm still kinda stumped ngl
Here's my method:
https://we.tl/t-nmiOoE83Ur (it won't let me upload a photo, i'm so bad at this 😭)
only unknown is x, solve for it, you get the 1.5AU (ish) they want. You know v_e, so you can use x and a to calculate y and then find time, the last 2 parts have angles from this diagram, which is basic trig cos (get it?) by the end you have everything on the diagram labelled.
For C, you can use vector momentum conservation, along with a nice pretty diagram (use column vectors).
Then it's pretty simple subbing into KE equation
For D, for part 1, you do GPE = KE (magnitudes), for part 2, you calculate GPE + KE (with GPE having a negative sign) and calculate that for a circular orbit based on time period.
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