Book Description

Teaching Science, I have always found myself to be jealous of Maths teachers. When they set an exercise from a text book there are always many questions for the students to practice the topic which has just been taught. Not only that but the questions are also not just from the initial perspective but are rearranged to find a variable which is not the subject of the equation. After that there are the questions in words rather than numbers and they always increase in difficulty throughout the exercise.The most common way in which I try to use text books is to set exercises from them after the topic has been introduced but I am always disappointed. It is not uncommon to find a Science text book with just 3 or 4 questions on a topic as wide as, say, momentum and so we science teachers use worksheets.Since no book existed that met my needs, I have written one.The aim of this book is not to show students how to solve Physics problems - the assumption is that that has already been done by the teacher using any of the methods in their pedagogical armoury. It is to give the students chance to practice those skills more than just a couple of times and to attempt problems posed from as many angles as possible. Where there is an equation, I have set problems which require rearrangement to solve for all variables. I have given questions in simple numerical form as well as in longer, "wordier" ways. I have kept pictures to a minimum as I find examinations do this too.Where appropriate, I have given the formulae in exactly the format of the AQA Specifications 8463 and 8464. "g" is also given as 9.8 m/s2 as stated in the specification. I have noted within the questions whether the formula in question will be given on the Physics Equation Sheet or whether candidates are expected to recall it. I have varied units throughout so that students are expected to convert to standard units before using formulae and, although I have attempted to keep numbers as "tidy" as possible (such as when students are expected to take a square root), there will be times when they will have to round to significant figures or decimal places, as stated in Mathematical Requirements (AQA Specification 8463 page 81 and AQA Specification 8464 page 163).I have tried to write everything from the point of view of the specification. You will find specification references at the beginning of every section and I have written questions relating to everything which appears within the specification. Where a specification section is small, I have merged it with an appropriate section. A couple of specification sections (Energy Stored in a Spring and Specific Heat Capacity) are repeated but I have only put one set of questions for each into the book.It was only near the end of the writing process that I discovered that the concept of giving the students lots of examples has a name - SLOP! (Shed Loads Of Practice.) If, like me, you subscribe to this idea then this book is for you.This book is written in the Comic Sans Serif font as I had it recommended as the most readable font by my school's SEN coordinator. Visit www.teachingandmarking.com for more of my resources.