PHYSICS160

I am by no means the biggest fan of physics, so I really wasn’t looking forward to this paper. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised by the difficulty (or lack thereof) of the actual physics in this paper. I did not have to put much work in to do well. However, this paper had the tendency to drive everyone mental in one aspect — workshops. Hopefully all of that is sorted out in future years to come, as our year was the first year of a new system.

This paper started with the most hilarious and crazy lecturer you will have all year. In my year, he ended up teaching half the course and spent that half banging his head against a wall, willingly electrocuting himself and shooting rockets through the lecture hall. He always seemed slightly disorganised, and always somehow ended up behind, but he makes up for that in his quirks. Good ol’ Conway.

Structure

Lectures

There are five blocks in this course, three of which are taught by the same lecturer.

1. Mechanics — you will learn about unit conversion; vectors; rectilinear motion; constant acceleration; projectile motion; circular motion; Newton’s 1st, 2nd & 3rd Laws; static & kinetic friction; force diagrams; work & energy; impulse and momentum.
   If you have done Level 3 Physics (or even Level 2) you probably won’t learn much — you will know it all already. I think the only thing that was new was learning about static and kinetic friction. I kept waiting for this section to pick up in difficulty, but it never did.
2. Thermal Physics — you will learn about density; pressure; temperature; thermal expansion; the Ideal Gas Law; the Kinetic Theory of Gases; evaporation & condensation; vapour pressure & humidity, specific heat capacity; phase changes; latent heat; calorimetry; heat transfer; diffusion and the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.
   Coming from NCEA Physics, all this content was entirely new to me however, I still found the unit relatively straightforward.
3. Electricity — you will learn about electrostatics; electric fields; potential difference & voltage; capacitors; electric circuits and alternating current.
   Similarly to mechanics, I already knew most of the content of this unit coming from NCEA Physics. There are some new concepts and new equations but these weren’t too difficult for me to get my head around.
4. Optics & Waves — you will learn about periodicity of waves; describing waves using mathematics; how waves interact & carry energy; sound & hearing; electromagnetic waves; reflection, refraction & dispersion; mirrors & lenses; light as a wave and as a particle (wave-particle duality).
   A fair chunk of this topic was new to me (or at least presented in quite a different way to NCEA Waves. I found the lecturer for this topic a little confusing, as I had no idea what was and wasn’t examinable, and to me, things were explained in quite a confusing way. In the end, to work out what parts I had to know, I just matched learning objectives with equations and theory and then left the rest, as it was all a bit over my head.
5. Medical Physics — in this unit, you will learn about biomechanics; fluid statics; fluid dynamics; the human ear; hearing loss; the human eye; vision correction; and medical imaging.
   This unit ties everything you have learnt over the semester together and puts it directly in a health context. This was the best section out of the whole semester for me, because the lecturer was really clear on what you needed to learn. She would go through the notes, and the courseguide is in a logical order (unlike the rest of physics) and you just made notes as you went, and she would work through class examples, which you had space to answer in your book. She was an awesome lecturer.

Workshops

These were straight-up painful. Disorganised and pointless in most people’s opinions. However, we all gave our feedback, so hopefully you will get the new and improved version!

There is one 3-hour workshop…every. week. As part of this, you must do a pre-workshop assignment, an experiment in a group, a full scientific report write-up, and in-class physics exercises/problems. Ridiculous, I know. If you don’t finish your report in class (which most often you won’t), you have to finish it outside of class time, ours were due 24 hours after the start of our workshop (but I think they are going to extend this).

The preparatory assignment is detailed in your workshop manual, and your work needs to be printed out and brought into your workshop to be marked by the supervisors.

I would recommend printing out a copy of the workshop manual (they only provided it to us in digital format) and bring that along every week as well as your courseguide/your notes.

You don’t need to have a lab coat or safety glasses and you don’t need to tie long hair back for these workshops.

There are nine workshops in total.

1. Introduction — this workshop gives you an overview of workshop structure, helps you get into groups for the year (you can pick your groups of three). The group tasks for this lab are just setting up and getting everything ready for subsequent workshops. You must hand in a team contract online as your group submission to get your marks. At the end of the workshop you will do some physics questions together with your group. You must get your answer marked off by the supervisor, and be able to explain how you got the answer (this is the same in every other workshop).
2. Quantifying Motion I — in this workshop you will analyse the linear motion of an amoeba from stop-motion images, and you will also learn how to use Excel. You must then do a full write-up on your results and conclusions — fun, right? At the end, you will do some physics questions with your fellow group members.
3. Quantifying Motion II — in this workshop you will use computer software called ImageJ to analyse videos of wound healing, neutrophil motion and bacteria motion to determine their relative speeds. You will use this to determine whether the patient will need antibiotics. This sounds super cool, but using the software was super confusing and was not explained in a good way. Feel free to pester your supervisors with endless questions about what you are supposed to be doing and how you should be doing it. Again, a full write-up is required and problems at the end of the workshop.
4. Calorimetry I — in this workshop, you will be given a “mystery metal” which you have to evaluate. As part of this you must determine the specific heat capacity of your metal by making it hot and then putting it in cold water and then measuring the amount of energy exchanged between the two. After all this, you must deduce what the metal is. Again, a write-up and problems are required. In your write-up (in all the workshops) you need to do error calculations and propagation (without being taught how to), so just be prepared for that.
5. Calorimetry II — this week, you will give your peers your report from last time and they will peer review your report and you will review theirs. You then have the opportunity to go and edit yours before submitting it as this week’s report. I mean, it’s great you don’t have to write a whole entire other report, but yea, not exactly thrilling. There are still physics problems to do at the end of the workshop.
6. Resistance and Resistivity — you will have two nichrome wires of different diameters and an unknown wire. You are to study how the size and length of a conductor affects its resistance despite being made from the same metal. After this, you will measure the resistivity of the unknown wire. As always, a report and problems are required.
7. Charging and Discharging a Capacitor — the name of this workshop pretty much says it all, you will be making RC circuits, and then charging and discharging capacitors. You will have to discuss the implications of this and then write your report and do your problems.
8. Thin Lenses I — in this workshop you will be investigating how images form and examining different lens properties. Before you do any experiments, you must write your predictions for what you think will happen. You will record your observations and complete the majority of the report apart from the discussion, which you will do in the next workshop. Before you leave, you’ll have to do a problem — surprise!
9. Thin Lenses II — in this workshop you will test and explain the observations from the last lab and will include these explanations in your write-up which is continued from last week. You will submit this to be marked, and do your final problems at the end of the workshop. You are freeeeeee!!!!

I really liked the people in my group which helped the process exponentially. Our whole table ended up bonding over our shared dislike for being in the workshops — which I guess is a plus??

Hopefully they are better in your year, but yea, just survive them, and try not to let them stress you out too much, because in the end, each workshop isn’t worth that much towards your final grade, and it is only a non-core subject.

Assessment

From the questions we asked in our year, it seems you must pass the workshop component on its own (so 50% of the marks available over all the workshops), however, there seems to be no requirement of getting 50% of the marks available in the theory component. It seems to be as long as you pass the workshops and then get a minimum 49.5% overall in the paper, you will pass.

Theory Component (85%)
- Evening Test 1 (7.5%)
- Evening Test 2 (7.5%)
- WileyPlus Assignments (10%)
- Final Exam (60%)

Practical Component (15%)
- Workshops (15%)

Evening Tests

There are two evening tests, each worth 7.5%. The tests are both one hour long consisting of 20 MCQs. You are allowed to bring in one double-sided A4 sheet of whatever notes you want to each test. You need to put formula on here, as you are provided no formula sheet. But, if you write small, you can fit a whole lot of other notes on this sheet of paper. I would suggest making them really nice and neatly and keeping them both, because you can reuse them for the final exam!

The first evening test was on Mechanics and Thermal Physics. The second evening test was on Electricity and Optics & Waves. You will be supplied with practice tests closer to the test. These tests are usually not too hard, just make sure of your answer, cause often the other answers are what results from making some easy mistakes.

WileyPlus Online Assignments

My family learnt to avoid me on the days I was doing these. They made me so so so so so mad. You have to be so precise in your answers and it just takes sooooooo much time. There are four of these to do over the course, meaning each is worth 2.5% towards your final grade. The first is the longest and makes you dread all the others. Whilst they are easy marks, I was tempted to just not do them, that’s how mad they made me.

I found it was faster to just Google the questions, because whilst you won’t find someone with the exact values as you (the change the values for each person), you can follow someone else’s method, which is heaps faster than trying to figure it out yourself. You get five attempts on each question (I think). Each assignment took me 5–6 hours. Do not leave it till the last day. Try to keep on top of them as you learn the stuff in class, I found that this was the least frustrating way to do them, as you weren’t having to do a whole lot in one go.

Final Exam

The final exam tests everything from the entire course. It involves 35 MCQs and 5 written, long answer questions. There is one question from each block. Although it says long answer, it asks similar questions to the MCQs, you just must show your working.

You are allowed to bring in 2 double-sided A4 cheat sheets. I had saved my cheat sheets from the two tests, which had everything for the first four blocks. I had written quite small on my cheat sheets and ended up having spare space meaning I was able to fit the notes for the Medical Physics section into the spare space. This saved quite a bit of time in my exam prep, as I didn’t have to go through my notes to make more cheat sheets. I did go through and write a little more theory for each of the blocks in the spare space I still had at the end, just to be safe. It was such a nice feeling to walk into an exam with cheat sheets in your hand.

Workshops

There are a few elements that make up the marking for the workshops. Apart from the Group Coordination element, your final mark for the element is determined by the best 7/9 submissions. So technically, you only need to go to 7 workshops, but that is a tad savage to the rest of your group.

Preparatory Assignments (2%) — your best 7/9 preparatory assignment marks from when you brought them in at the start of every lab.

Group Submissions (8%) — this is from your written reports that get graded by supervisors between your workshops. Your group’s best 7/9 counts towards your final marks.

In-Class Exercises (2%) — these are the physics problems you do at the end of each workshop. You must show and explain your working to a demonstrator each time and get marked off for it. Your group’s best 7/9 marks count towards your final grade. You must participate in it to get marked off.

Group Coordination (3%) — you must be the Group Coordinator at least three times over the course. You will get 0.5% each time depending on whether your report was handed in on time. The other 0.5% each time depends on the quality of the report your group handed in that week (0.5 x report grade%). Thus, when it’s your week, it is a good idea to make sure you are happy with the submission.

So your 7 physics reports only count for 8% of your final grade, meaning they are worth just over 1% each. Just keep this is mind while you are stressing over perfecting your reports and spending lots of time on them. In the end, they are not worth too much.

How I Studied

A lot of people took notes during the lecture directly into the courseguide, but I found this to be actually harder than it was worth. The physics courseguide is organised terribly and has a whole lot of extra notes — I did not know where the lecturer was in the courseguide. So, I would take a notebook in with me and make really messy rough notes.

When I got home, after doing BioSci106, I would write these notes neatly into the courseguide where they fitted and highlighted key notes in the guide. My courseguide was a lot neater doing it this way, and it meant I did have to go over the stuff from the day just to work out where it went and to copy the notes out. I did this every day just to stay on top of it. I would then try do the WileyPlus questions that related to what I learnt that day. That is literally all the study I would do on a day-to-day basis.

Around test time, I made a rough list of everything I wanted on my cheat sheet by going through my notes. I then made my cheat sheet by writing quite small, and in different colours to make sure everything was clear. I would then do the two practice tests provided and added to my cheat sheet if anything was needed.

During exam time, I added Medical Physics to my cheat sheets and did some practice exams.

For the group reports from the workshop, we agreed in our group that if we didn’t finish the report in class, the person who was Group Coordinator would finish it in their own time. This way we didn’t have to try and organise a meet-up, which takes more time, and the work was evenly spread out, as we each had to take work home. Judging by other group’s stories of trying to organise meet-ups, I think this was the best way to do it. If you trust the work ethic of your group members, I would suggest doing it. Plus, the Group Coordinator would be losing more marks than the rest of us so it provided more motivation to get it done to a high standard.

Overall, this course pleasantly surprised me with its level of difficulty, however it also frustrated me a lot more than any course because of the worskhops and the online assignments.

Ultimately, this course doesn’t require too much time on a daily basis unless you have never done physics. People who haven’t done physics would find this paper more difficult, and would probably have to do practice questions everyday to solidify the information in their head. This is completely okay, and people that have to do this still perform equally well in this subject and others. I would say it is definitely an advantage to have done high school physics though.

Goodluck!!