Getting to Grips with A Level Physics RH298 / A190

Getting to Grips with A Level Physics - 4 day intensive course.

This course is a chance to develop your:

- subject knowledge;

- practical and mathematical skills;

- pedagogical content knowledge - how to teach the topics effectively.

We will be building on GCSE teaching, so it is assumed that you will already be comfortable and familiar with the subject knowledge covered in the physics section of GCSE Combined Science.

There are four days of teaching, and we will cover a wide-range of topics from Year 12 and some from Year 13.

There are also two additional sessions that will be run online as twilights, that focus on particular further mathematical skills including exponentials, and graph analysis.

Maths in Science 1 - The Mathematics of Exponentials. 

In A level physics there are three times when we meet exponentials and natural logarithms - radioactive decay, capacitor discharge and half-thickness absorption. In nature exponentials appear again and again, caused by the a very simple relationship - when the rate of decay of something is proportional to the amount of it. 

For some students, particularly those not studying A level maths, the mathematics of exponentials can be quite daunting.

This 1.5 hour Zoom session will look at why the exponential and natural logarithm function are so useful, how we can manipulate them to solve the tougher A level physics questions, and how we can teach exponentials to make them easier to understand.

Maths in Science 2 - Straightening the Graph. 

There are many, many occasions in A level physics where students meet relationships with two variables that do not have a linear relationship. Drawing graphs of these can give us lots of useful information about these relationships, but often students are asked to manipulate the data first so that they can plot it instead as a straight line.

In this 1.5 hour Zoom session we will focus on why we ’straighten the graph’, and tips to help students figure out how to easily do it for a range of relationships.  We will also recap some winning strategies to help students quickly and accurately determine gradients, and use these to find out physical quantities.

A cashback subsidy of £560 is available to Cambridgeshire & Peterborough state maintained schools if the full fee is paid upfront and all course dates are attended.