Did I Mention This Before? (Something Else)

Sorry if I did mention this, but Rob (from robonthenet, and of course The Land of Rob) has recently made himself his own forum! You can find it on The Land of Rob. Also, he has revived his good old 'From Rob to Sob' blog, which - it seems - is now going to be about a tale where Rob is stranded in his past, and must get free.

Did I mention this before? Sorry if I did! Carry on, carry on.  ¶ 6:24 pm  

  The Mathematical Challenge (Essay: School)


All Scottish school-children from around P6 and up will know 'The Mathematical Challenge', I should think. I would be overjoyed if they didn't, because I had nothing but painful experiences with 'The Challenge'. It haunted me right up until my semi-final school year, cropping up every year - under the guise of 'National Government Research Project' - to inform me that I was an inferior human. Although I'm sure that the Government never intended for young school-children to feel that they were being intellectually segregated for the purposes of class-distinction, which I trust was not the Master Plan, it struck a '1984' chord within me when the results of those tests floated on to this 'The National Government', whatever it was, never to be heard from again.

However, despite the test-papers' etherie (yes, I made that word up), 'The National Government' did return to us, in spirit, possessing the school-teacher in order to relay to us that some of us were awarded Certificates (Gold, Silver, Bronze), each according to our merits. I never saw any of those certificates, so I don't know what was written on them; but having 'The National Government' indirectly infer that you were unworthy of their certificates, every year, was quite a shame. Still, though.

So, why did I write this? Don't worry, it's not because I feel bitter towards 'The National Government', or 'The Mathematical Challenge'; I never did feel bitter about it, nor did I feel upset in any way. There is just one thing, which I have always felt about THE CHALLENGE; something that I may well always feel. What is that thing? It's just one word: why?

Why, 'The Mathematical Challenge'? All my life, if there were one mystery in life which confounded me, it wasn't this one; however, this was still a mystery in its own right, and one that I never found out. There is something exciting and mystical about mysteries like this, which is not surprising, given that the word contains the 'myst' from mystical, and the 'e' from exciting. Where, just where, did those test-papers go? What was done to them? What was 'The Challenge'? Was it to be the superior person? To answer questions for no reason? What was the right answer to those questions, and why did they never tell us? Did the award certificates contain an access code for that space-shuttle that's geared to blast off to the moon with the world's most superior people in case of the Earth's destruction? Perhaps 'The National Government' never existed, and 'The Mathematical Challenge' was a gateway to another plane of reality, which was passed down the never-ending generations of school-pupils by some group of famous scientists (like Roger Moore), with the hope that, one day, one of them might unlock its impermeable bounds.

Amidst all of this conjecture, I would suggest that perhaps 'The Mathematical Challenge' isn't as indecipherable as that last paragraph might have made it seem. I personally took the assumption that 'The National Government' was taking statistics to help with making decisions on how to structure the national school curriculum. However.

Don't lose the mystery.  ¶ 5:43 pm  

  Brins' Guide to Higher Physics (Essay: School)

It's been a while since I made my guide to Higher English, which I think still needs to be completed, so now it's time to make another guide. As with the last one, this guide is really only useful to Scottish pupils of high schools, sitting SQA 'Higher' examinations. (They're like English A-Levels, only inferior: a topic for another day!)

I mentioned in my English guide about how I feel that the essay section of that subject's exam is quite unfair, particularly in that, depending on your English teacher, it can be hard to get the appropriate information and advice from the class in order to improve your essays, and you can really be left unaware of how you should be writing them. It's a bit like Drama, in the sense that you can easily be put at the teacher's mercy when it comes to development.

Well, not with Physics. Every school should, I think, issue the same syllabus, with the same books, the same universal Physics formulae, and so on. Hurrah! An easier guide! The following isn't a complicated year study layout, or 'revision plan', or indeed anything else. It's just me trying to help (former) fellow school-pupils in their studies.

The Guide

I got through Physics by trying to grasp formulae well as I encountered them; I'm pretty sure that the worst you can do is to ignore all those D = VT s,
P = mv s,
m1 = m0/(1-vsquared/csquared)) to the power of a halfs [don't worry - that's Advanced Higher. Yeesh!] I'm tempted to suggest that you try to memorise all of them, which I did, but I'm confident that it works the same if you can just read them over a couple of times a week, and try to get a good bearing of each of them. The reason why is that, when it comes to revising for exams, you should be surprised to find that it doesn't take long for these same formulae, even though you've forgotten them over time, to sink right back in again. From what I've heard, learning formulae is considered the hardest part of Physics. This always confused me, because with my system, they were no trouble at all! So, my advice is to get them in your head as you encounter them, and by all means backtrack over old ones occasionally; learn to use them in practical problems too, of course. ( Invest in a 'Leckie & Leckie Past Papers' book - those are brilliant experience, if you ask me. Plus the problems in them give you the very 'practical problems' I just suggested you do!)

According to some statistic which I heard once, knowing and being able to apply your formulae accounts for about 50% of the exam marks. Yes! If that isn't true, I don't think it's far off it.

The second half of the exam...? I think that this is where it gets more technical; the other side of the subject is the theory of physics. By that, I mean it's the side that involves not just memorising a bunch of letters and their relationships to one-another; it's the theory of why they are the case, and an understanding of Physics principles outwith calculations. These come in several forms, as I remember, and the best thing to do - with all of them - is read your official subject material, and get a handle on these things. (A note you might find useful: I never used anything in my jotter(s) to revise. The official books/booklets all the way! I never understood the point of revising from your work-book.)

So, the other kinds of exam questions:

1) Graphs. You'll be working with graphs quite a bit, throughout the course, really. Don't be shocked to know that you may have to draw one, or at least work with one. Consult the past papers, since they'll show you the kind of thing you'll be dealing with. This shouldn't be troublesome, so don't worry.

2) Theory of formulas. For example, you have a physics formula. Now, explain what the formula means, why it exists, give an example of its practical application. Etc. Read up around the formulas which you learn, so that you see what they mean, and why they mean them. Again, those past papers should help.

3) General Physics theory. You learn a lot in Physics, much of which doesn't involve formulas. That's the rest of the examinable things! Can you explain momentum? Archimedes' Principle? Those are just thoughts from me, they might not be explainable. Still, I think the past papers are the best source for help as regards showing you what you need to learn.

I think that covers it, really. If there's one investment I think you should make, it's the past papers: buying and reading them fairly early, you'll get a taste for the kind of things you should know, and will have a structure for knowing what to learn and how to revise it.

However, past papers aren't the final answer. I got slightly complacent once I was able to breeze through five years' worth of previous exam papers (well, maybe not that many). I was quite frightened to find that a few questions in our final exam deviated considerably from the kind of question-patterns which permeated those old tests. The best example I can think of to point this out must be the first one (not the multiple choice section): when it usually always asks about acceleration/velocity questions, in my exam I found a picture of a ship, alongside a chart, with the task being to use vectors for working out the answers. Vectors are a part of the course which come so early, and are seemingly never invoked for exam purposes, I had never thought to revise them much. It was still fairly simple, and I did understand it for the exam, but this kind of occurence serves to prove that you shouldn't assume that they can't ask you about things you've never seen in a past paper! Be careful!

I think that covers this guide of mine. I don't act as any authority on the Physics course; I'm just a former pupil, and I would stress that you work through the subject in whatever way comes naturally to you. The way I go through, in this guide, is simply the way that came naturally to me. If it makes sense to you, why not try it? If you don't like it, you might want to stick to whatever you feel is best. Either way, this guide is here as a helping hand for any who might come across it, since I place faith in my personal system. It got me through with little worry, after all.

So, at the end of the day, you might agree with all of this; or you might agree with none of it. Either way, there is one thing that I will maintain: come thick or thin, I never saw any need to revise using your personal work-book - there shouldn't be anything in there that isn't covered in the school-books!

Of course, if you find/found a use for it, please let me know. It might well be helpful to young, Scottish readers.  ¶ 8:41 pm