Section A of the Leaving Cert Physics exam contains 30% of the overall marks so it’s worth studying it in detail.
I have put together a booklet which contains every Section A question which has appeared on an exam paper at higher and ordinary level together with all the solutions.
The booklet can be accessed from the revision page of thephysicsteacher.ie
Hope it’s useful.
This word document has now been updated; not only does it now include all definitions from the 2009 paper but it also includes all definitions from Ordinary Level papers from 2002 – 2009.
The document can be accessed from the revision page of thephyiscsteacher.ie
The answer to each question is also included; hopefully this allows for non-physics friends/parents/brothers/sisters to ask the questions and check the answers as you go along.
It is notable that in some instances the ordinary level definitions are actually more difficult ( and at times rather obtuse) than the higher level questions. I have noticed something similar in the Junior Cert Science papers over the years. I suspect that while many of us write in to exams commission to comment on the higher level paper, few of us ever bother to analyse the ordinary level paper in the same detail and so these anomalies go unchecked.
Anyways, as always the document is on the leaving cert physics revision page.
Hope it’s useful.
What Hollywood actress said the following in a recent interview for GQ magazine?
I’m interested in elementary particles, any spare time I have, I bury my head in a physics textbook. The elements at the atomic and subatomic level make up everything. You, me, the buildings, our souls, our minds. I’m reading a lot about Einstein. I like theories. I want to understand string theory. I’m dying for someone to explain quarks to me!
Answer
Anne Hathaway.
What rock-star recently acknowledged that watching quantum physics videos on YouTube had affected her music?
Quantum physics has done my band a world of good.
Answer
Courtney Love
Thanks to Physics World for those.
It reminds me of the beginning of the brilliant E = mc squared; A biography of the world’s most famous equation, written by David Bodanis, where the author describes his inspiration for writing the book:
A while ago I was reading an interview with the actress Cameron Diaz in a movie magazine. At the end the interviewer asked her if there was anything she wanted to know, and she said she’d like to know what E = mc squared really means. They both laughed, then Diaz mumbled that she’d meant it, and then the interview ended.
All the material required to make Leaving Cert Physics a fascinating subject already exists – all we have to do is bring it together.
Don’t hold your breath.
With all the media attention on NAMA these times it’s understandable that most of us missed this headline from RTE the other day (hat-tip to eagle-eyed Jude for bringing it to my attention).
The RTE article leads with the following:
Research suggests that almost 10% of second level schools have been forced to drop Physics as a subject offered to students.
The findings indicate that the decision is as a direct result of education cutbacks.
Not a happy statistic, but presumably many of these schools had less than ten students in the class, and it just wasn’t feasable to maintain this. So why don’t more students do physics? It’s a very complex issue but the problem is causing concern to authorities throughout the western world. I believe that one very important factor is the picture of physics which students get from the Junior Cert – if we don’t get this right then it’s going to create a poor impression when they go to choose their leaving cert subjects.
So what would I change in Junior Cert Physics? – stay tuned.
btw – should we read anything into the fact that the accompanying picture in the RTE webpage is chemistry-related, not physics?
Via the Science.ie newsletter
Antoinette O’Connor from Cork has won a medal for achieving first place in the country in Leaving Certificate Physics, awarded by Institute of Physics.
Nothing strange so far, after all someone has to come first, don’t they?
There’s more: Her sister Martha O’Connor won the award in 2005.
Still more: Another student from the same school, Deirdre O’Leary, won the award in 2000.
No prizes for guessing that all three were taught by the same teacher; serious respect to Diarmuid Hickey from Coachford College, Co. Cork
Read more on UCC ‘s website
Got up at 6:30 this morning to be in school at 7:15 to have lots of time to prepare for a form 5 class on electrostatics which I wanted to film.
Now I’m not normally this dedicated, but because it was being videod (‘videoed’?) I wanted to get everything right.
Electrostatics is dodgy at the best of times, but at half eight this morning every thing was going like a dream. To such an extent that I started wondering why other teachers made such a big deal of it. Maybe they should prepare more – like I was doing.
Class began at about 12 o clock. I started the video, and spent the first ten minutes correcting homework on the board, then started into the demos.
Not one worked as well as it did in the morning.
Some didn’t work at all.
It was baffling, frustrating and funny in roughly equal measures.
I take that back.
Mostly it was frustrating, especially since I had prepared it so well.
The smug factor had felt good too.
It’s possible that atmospheric conditions had changed over a few hours, but I suspect one other variable was that the classroom had had four sets of students sit in there for forty minutes at a time, each breathing in nice clean dry air, and breathing out air which contained a higher percentage of water. As one of the students said: “Come on now sir, I know you blame us for everything else, but you can’t seriously think you can blame us for this one.”
So;
tomorrow I repeat the process first thing in the morning, then again a few hours later, and if the same thing happens I think I might use hot plates or bunsen burners to dry out the air for a spell and then repeat (what happens the water / water vapour when the air drys? Where does it go?).
Edge of the seat stuff this . . .
There are four mandatory experiments to do with Heat on the leaving cert syllabus.
And we always do them.
And, apart from the first, they can all give horrible (and I mean horrible) answers.
I warn the troops in advance and suggest that a percentage of under 30% would be acceptable. It’s not unusual for a student to get a percentage error greater than 100%.
But they generally don’t calculate this untill they are writing up the experiment at home.
They don’t ask about it in class because they probably think that they would just be highlighting their own incompetence, and I don’t mention it because I also am a little embarassed by their results, knowing that they were only following my instructions.
Am I the only teacher who is this inept?
Do many others check?
What do I know? As I keep saying, in this business once we close that classroom door we become kings of our own classroom, and it wouldn’t be unusual for a teacher to go from their own secondary school as a student, up until the day they retire, having only ever seen one other person (their old science teacher) teach any given topic.
This can’t be right.
Can it?
