Subject Content for GCSE Physics

Assessment:
Candidates may be entered for either Foundation or Higher Tier. All candidates take one 90 minute paper on the core content of the subject (Sc4). They also take a 45 minute extension paper. Coursework assessment is based on the common scheme used by all GCSE science specifications.

The core paper will be the paper taken by double award candidates for OCR Science A (code 1983). OCR publish a support document which provides cross-matching between the Salters support materials and the Science A content.

Candidates may take either extension paper option A or option B.

Coverage of Core Content:
Several different arrangements have been used in schools. These fall into two main categories.

Students for 'triple science' may be taught following the double award scheme, perhaps in classes with double award candidates. They are then given extra tuition to cover the extension material (ideally by timetabling one extra single lesson per week for each subject). Because of the common coursework scheme, sufficient coursework marks can be accumulated through investigations carried out as part of the double award lessons. Schemes of this type are particularly popular where the numbers taking separate sciences are very small.

Where classes are larger, or in FE colleges, where only one subject is being taken, the physics course may be taught as a completely separate course, occupying a single option band in the timetable. In this case, coverage of the core content of the specification can be based on the following units from the double award course:

Moving On; Energy Matters; Electricity in the Home; Communicating Information; The Earth in Space; Energy Today and Tomorrow; Seeing Inside the Body; Section 3 of Restless Earth and Sections 3 and 4 of Sports Science.

Extension content:
Each of the options contains three 'blocks' of content to be covered. Where physics is taught as a completely separate subject, it is often possible to treat some of the blocks as extension of work begun in a core unit, so giving a smoother progression and saving some teaching time. Both options represent considerable change from the earlier Salters syllabus, but option A is the more applied.

Option A:
A1: Electronics and Control (logic gates, truth tables, latches, potential dividers)
A2: Processing Waves (light waves, refraction, dispersion, lenses in optical devices, resonance, sound quality, interference)
A3: Energy and Forces (equations of motion, projectiles, momentum, rockets, safety devices in vehicles, energy resources and energy efficiency)

Option B:
B1: Computational Physics (force and extension, force and acceleration, equations of motion, projectiles, momentum, gas laws, modelling random processes)
B2: Communication (codes and communication, recording and reproducing sound, digital and analogue recording, optical fibres, the CRO)
B3: Energy Transfers (energy transfers and efficiency, monitoring transfers, specific heat capacity, resonance)

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