Moving from GCSE Science to A Level can be a daunting leap. You’ll be expected to remember a lot more facts, equations and definitions and you will need to learn new maths skills and develop confidence in applying what you already know to unfamiliar situations.
The below ‘Getting Ahead’ work aims to give you a head start by helping you:
Learning objectives
After completing the following work you should be able to:
Physics, as a science, involves both theory and practical and we will be doing a set of experiments over the course. You need to be confident about the definitions of terms that describe measurements and results in A Level Physics experiments.
Learn the terms below, then cover the answers column and write as many answers as you can. Check and repeat.
| Accurate values | Values which are close to the accepted value |
| Precise values | Values which are close to each other |
| Control variables | Variables that should be kept constant to avoid them affecting the dependent variable |
| ³ | pico (p) | 10⁻¹² |
| nano (n) | 10⁻⁹ | |
| micro (μ) | 10⁻⁶ | |
| milli (m) | 10⁻³ | |
| centi (c) | 10⁻² | |
| deci (d) | 10⁻¹ | |
| kilo (k) | 10³ | |
| mega (M) | 10⁶ | |
| giga (G) | 10⁹ | |
| tera (T) | 10¹² |
Standard form
Many values in physics are very small or very large so for ease of reading and handling we write them in standard form. This has a number between 0 and 9.9 in front of a power of ten. For example, 3300 is written as 3.3 x 10³ and 0.00046 is 4.6 x 10⁻⁴. Standard form helps in calculations because for values multiplied or divided, the powers of ten can be added or subtracted.
e.g. 1200 x 0.01 = 1.2 x 10 3 x 1 x 10 ⁻² = 1.2 x 10 ¹ = 12
and
8800000 / 220 = 8.8 x 10 6 / 2.2 x 102 = 4.0 x 104
Significant figures
When you use a calculator to work out a numerical answer, you know that this often results in a large number of decimal places and, in most cases, the final few digits are ‘not significant’. It is important to record your data and your answers to calculations to a reasonable number of significant figures. Too many and your answer is claiming an accuracy that it does not have, too few and you are not showing the precision and care required in scientific analysis.
Numbers to 3 significant figures (3 s.f.):
3.62, 25.4, 271, 0.0147, 0.245, 39,400
(notice that the zeros before the figures and after the figures are not significant – they just show you how large the number is by the position of the decimal point).
Numbers to 3 significant figures where the zeros are significant:
207, 4050, 1.01 (any zeros between the other significant figures are significant).
Standard form numbers with 3 significant figures:
9.42×10-5
1.56×108
If the value you wanted to write to 3.s.f. was 590, then to show the zero was significant you would have to write:
590 (to 3.s.f.) or 5.90 × 102
If you are not familiar with standard form and significant figures, practise using them with small and large numbers.
Describe in your own words and using diagrams how these devices work, thinking about how the physics you know is involved (see the video clips in the ‘Watch’ section below first):
The mobile phone
The human eye
The computer disk drive
Go over electric circuits in Bitesize.
Make sure you can remember the key circuit symbols and that you understand the concepts of electric current and potential difference.
Go over how to describe how things move in Bitesize.
If you haven’t done it before, see how to find a velocity at a particular time using a distance-time graph.
How the Mobile Phone Works
The Function of the Eye
How a Hard Disk Works
There are more stars in the Universe than sand grains on the entire world’s beaches
The Higgs boson was predicted by theory nearly 40 years before it was seen
Superconductivity was known about 40 years before it was properly explained by theory
The sky is blue because blue light is far more scattered by particles and molecules in the atmosphere than the other colours
Medical physicists can use radioactivity to monitor whether your kidneys are functioning correctly
The atomic clocks on the GPS satellites need to have a precision of better than 1s in several million years
