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Examination Advice - Unit 4 Physics 

•  Read each question thoroughly before putting pen to paper. It may help to underline key

words in the question such as best option, glossary words, required data etc.

•  Students must follow the instructions given in questions. Sometimes working is required or

units of measurement are to be given. If this is not done, marks are not awarded.

•  Identify which outcome(s) /areas of the study are being addressed by the question given.

•  Ensure that you have read all outcomes from your course and understand what could be

required from each.

•  Remember to include relevant formula and diagrams in order to improve written answers.

•  Use dot points/tables in your responses where appropriate. Appropriate diagrams maybe used

in place of written explanations. They must be done with reasonable care to ensure key

aspects are clear.

•  Assessors are not expected to guess what a student has written. Illegible answers do not

receive marks. This applies particularly to multiple-choice questions where one answer is

written over another. Poorly formed 9s and 4s or 6s and 0s or decimal points not proceeded by

a zero are common problems.

•  Look carefully at units in calculations. In the majority of responses, you will need to convert to

SI units before using data in a formula.

•  Remember that when taking units of values read from graphs look carefully at the prefixes on

the axis. For example current may be in mA and your answer could really be out by a factor of 

1000 from what you intended.

•  Learn your formulae. Although you are given a formulae list in the exam, you will still need to

know when to use them, what each letter or symbol represents and what the units are for

each. Units can be worked out from dimensional analysis.

•  Appropriately choose between the two Plank’s constant namely;

For energy in joules (J) use h =6.63 x 10-34 Js

For energy in electron-volt (eV) use h =4.14 x 10-15 eVs

•  Be sure to only use your right hand for the RH Slap and RH Grip rules. This is especially

important for students who write right-handed. The Left hand will result in opposite answers.

PTO

theschoolforexcellence - vceedgeonline

examstudytip - 23 

    “    T    h   e    h    i   g    h   e   s   t   r   e   w   a   r    d    f   o   r   a   p   e   r   s   o   n

    '   s   t   o    i    l    i   s   n   o   t   w    h   a   t   t    h   e   y

   g   e   t    f   o   r    i   t ,

    b   u   t   w    h   a   t

   t    h   e   y    b   e   c   o

   m   e    b   y    i   t .    ”

    J   o    h   n    R   u   s    k    i   n

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•   Try to be aware of common tricks in questions eg. electrons have mass and photons have no

mass, the velocity of light will always be 3x108 ms-1 irrespective of the observers velocity.

•  Make a list of all experiments performed by scientists listed in your course eg. Young’s double

slit experiment, Thomson’s discovery of the electron, Faraday’s induction etc.

•  Make a list of all scientists mentioned in your syllabus and their contribution.

•   Time management – 90 minutes, 90 marks – 1 minute per mark. Obviously you don’t have to

stick exactly to this but don’t spend too long on a question particularly if it is only worth 1

mark.

•  For detailed study, there are usually 12 or 13 questions each of 2 marks so allow a total of 25

minutes for these questions.

•  For the multiple-choice questions for detailed study carefully read questions and answer

appropriately before looking at the options available. Remember some of the options are

distracters as these values are commonly found during the process of calculating and/or if a

common mistake or misconception is used.

• Remember consistency. In a calculation involving more than one stage you will be awardedconsequential marks if you correctly use a wrong answer from question 1 in your calculations

to answer question 2.

•  Show working in your calculations. You may still be awarded marks even if your final answer

is wrong.

•  In almost all numerical answers you will be required to express your answer in the units

specified in the response box eg. 

•  An exception may be a ratio which have no units such as transformer step-up or step-down

voltage ratios.

•   Take careful note of energy that can be expressed as either kWhr, J or eV depending on the

type of question.

•  Any answer that is a vector quantity should be assigned a direction (such as magnetic field

strength, B.), unless only a magnitude is required.

•  Students will not be penalised if an incorrect number of significant figures is given, unless

a number of significant figures or decimal places are specifically asked for.

•  In responding to explanation questions dot points are acceptable. As a rule of thumb, try to

come up with one more dot point than the number of marks allocated.

More subject specific advice will be issued to students at our

“Essentials – Final Exam Preparation Lectures”.

We wish you all the best in your endeavours, both in the exams and beyond!

s f  t 

    “    T    h   e    h    i   g    h   e   s   t   r   e   w   a   r    d    f   o   r   a   p   e   r   s   o   n

    '   s   t   o    i    l    i   s   n   o   t   w    h   a   t   t    h   e   y

   g   e   t    f   o   r    i   t ,

    b   u   t   w    h   a   t

   t    h   e   y    b   e   c   o

   m   e    b   y    i   t .    ”

    J   o    h   n    R   u   s    k    i   n

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