Hello everyone! I hope Physics has treated you well over the past week and that you are all excited for the “holidays” to come. 2021 continues to be as crazy as ever, so I hope you are all keeping happy and healthy in these difficult times. For those of you who may have missed last week’s post, I basically went through how to get organised for Physics and discussed how to tackle and best understand waves. For those of you who did read through the post, hopefully you extracted a few helpful things and are feeling a lot more confident with waves! If you didn’t get to breaking down waves, don’t worry! I know from experience that different weeks present different amounts of work, so if you were not able to go through the topic, it is never too late! I suggest that you tackle waves first before moving into this week’s content!
What are we up to this week?
This week is a great week to start taking action. In getting organised last week, you would have put yourself in a great position to start actioning some items on your plan; after all, there is no use in a plan if you don’t take action! After I made my plan, my next point of action was collating as many resources as I could in relation to what I needed. What I mean by this is that I got together all my sources of questions (whether that was the textbook, school resources, books such as Checkpoints, etc.) and specific revision material that I had received so far. After doing so, I went through each topic in the course and made a plan of the best way forward, asking myself which topics I knew well and which topics I was not confident with.
I think actively getting your resources together is another step that is essential in kick starting preparation for your exams. This task is not too intensive and is something that you can do when you really don’t feel like studying! Moving past planning and organising and physically getting to know the questions you will be encountering will give you a great insight into what is to come and get you familiar with revision! If you are feeling extra motivated, it is never too early to start working on some questions! More to come on this next week!
How can I make sure I understand light?
Last week, we talked about how we can tackle waves to ensure that we completely understand the topic. Whilst a similar approach can be utilised to tackle “light”, the topic presents its own challenges and there are a couple of things that I think you can to do make the topic much easier to understand!
When I was doing Physics, instead of breaking down the topic of light via the study design, I decided to initially break down the chapter into two major sections. The two sections were: the properties of light and Young’s Double Slit experiment. I treated these two sections as two different chapters to ensure that I gave enough attention to both and I went through the two sections in the order I mentioned. Many of you have probably come across Young’s Double Slit experiment and it is a major area of focus in Unit 4. As such, from my experience, there tends to be questions on SACs and on the exam that are targeted towards this experiment in particular. In saying this, in order to understand the experiment comprehensively, it is essential to have a good understanding of the properties of light.
This is why I think it would be great to target the properties in depth before moving onto the experiment. I found that the first time I went through the chapter, I skimmed over the properties of light (other than diffraction) before moving on to the experiment. There were a lot of questions on topics such as refraction and reflection in past exams, thus during my revision I had to thoroughly go over these properties again. To ensure you don’t make the same mistakes that I did, I suggest you give enough attention to all of the properties of light before moving onto Young’s Double Slit experiment.
With the experiment itself, my major advice would be to take it slowly and ensure that you understand every aspect of the experiment and how it shows light to act as a wave. Summarising each component in a table is a great way to simplify these challenging concepts and I found that such summaries were easily accessible when I was studying for the final exam.
I hope breaking down the chapter in this way helps you manage the content a lot better. Don’t forget to keep the study design by your side, especially after you have broken down the topic, to ensure you are still completing content that is relevant to what is going to be assessed!
What mindset should I have for Physics this week?
This week, I think a great mindset to adopt for Physics is one of engagement. In taking action after the organisation of last week and working to actively breakdown the topic of light, I think this week is one where being engaged and “in the zone” will really help you in being productive and getting some solid work done! I find that when I am actively engaged, I get a lot more work done in a shorter amount of time and hopefully this is the case for you too!
Weekly Tips and Tricks
That is all from me for now! I hope that Physics goes well this week and that you are able to make some headway after the organisation we did last week! Here are three parting tips and tricks to help you get through the week:
1. Do a quick reflection of how Physics went last week. Reflection is a great way to determine what things are going well and how you can improve
Tick things off your plan as you go! There is nothing more satisfying than crossing off things you have done!
Have plenty of breaks (same as last week)! With everything that is going on, it is very important to ensure that your health and wellbeing is flourishing! Make sure to take plenty of breaks and have some fun in between attending classes and studying.