Books to help with Physics aptitude test (PAT)

thanks, i always assume the worst case scenario, i've just printed off the syllabus, and the maths section is really simple, and i'll have to do a bit of studying for the physics. i'm surprised that you say 2008 is the easiest, i've generelly found with my as subjects, the papers get harder.

my teacher was telling me how they'll give a question to you, which you have never seen in your life, so not knwoing what to do is quite bad, could that possibly wreck your chances of getting in.

Does anyone know if the syllabus will change, since most A level Physics syllabuses have changed?

I'm assuming it'll stay the same, but just making sure.

They don't tend to test you on the outer extremeties of obscurity when it comes to these things, because aside from anything they have to accommodate a test which is fair on people from many different exam boards. I don't know how the A-level syllabus has changed but I can't imagine it being that dramatic. The physics papers are normally focused around mechanics, forces, fields and energy etc, which I doubt has been dropped?

Part of the PAT syllabus is:

Natural world: atomic and nuclear structure; properties of alpha, beta and gamma radiation; half lives. Nuclear fission. Structure of the solar system. Phases of the moon and eclipses. Elementary treatment of circular orbits under gravity including orbital speed, radius, period, centripetal acceleration, and gravitational centripetal force. Satellites; geostationary and polar orbits. Elementary properties of solids, liquids and gases including responses to pressure and temperature.

None of which is in the Edexcel AS specification, and most of it isn't covered until unit 5. I don't know about other exam boards.

Obviously some of it was covered in GCSE, though.

Yes, I don't know whether its changed since I did it (obviously it has in many ways) but some of the things you need to know assume knowledge of things you cover in A2 as well as in AS. In fact I was on the AQA syllabus and the big chunk of stuff which makes up most of the interview/paper questions on circular motion, gravity, electromagnetic fields etc was only covered in the autumn term of A2. Again the problem is that different syllabuses will learn things at different times and so you may find that you need to do some additional learning of things from your text book that you would not normally cover until later in A2.

I see, thank you!

I think the best thing to do as I said in my first post is to try past papers (PAT and olympiad when you run out of PAT) and through that you will get a better understanding of what it is that you need to gen up on and learn ahead of schedule, although mechanics and circular motion etc I definitely recommend, you will almost certainly find benefit from learning those areas, while things like the nuclear stuff is less likely I would say.