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WACE Physics is known for its challenging application-based questions, requiring more than just memorising formulas. Here are some practical study tips to help you build conceptual understanding, master exam techniques and maximise your marks.
What score did you achieve?
I achieved an ATAR of 99.40 and a combined score of 92 in Physics. Physics was one of the subjects where I felt that properly understanding the content made a massive difference. Once I stopped treating it as a subject where you just memorise formulas and started trying to understand what was actually happening, I became much more confident with harder questions.
How would you advise students to go about organising their notes?
For Physics, you should try to have notes about the concept itself, organised by topic and then a separate document for exam/practice question specific notes. Your exam/practice question specific notes should include any mistakes that you are making, any common techniques and common phrases that are always showing up in the marking key as well as any alternative techniques that you didn’t think of (you want to expand your physics toolkit). Also when you are going through practice questions or exams, any holes in your conceptual understanding should be addressed and then added to your notes about the concept itself. This means that you can easily go back and revise topics when you forget any concepts and that when you are doing questions, you aren’t finding yourself making the same mistake on questions. If there was something in my notes that I could not explain properly to myself, I would usually go and research it until I understood it well enough that it actually made sense. I mainly used YouTube videos, since visually seeing the problem made it easier to understand.
What is your advice for SACs?
For SACs, I would do as many practice questions as I could on the exact topics being tested. A lot of Physics questions are quite repetitive, which means it is very easy to fall into the habit of memorising the question style and the working-out steps without actually understanding why you are doing them. I tried to avoid that by asking myself why each step was being done and whether I would still know what to do if the question was changed slightly. And when you make a mistake, don’t just read the answer and note down the technique in the answer, understand why your method was not appropriate. People tend to be lazy in improving their conceptual understanding even though it’s the foundation that carries along to application as well as a lot of other topics. Since SACs are a lot more topic specific, it also means that your understanding of the topic should be at a high level to do well on your SACs.
What is your advice for exams?
For exams, I used a lot of past WACE papers and questions from WACEVault, especially the more recent ones because I found the marking keys and question styles matched the current course better. When I marked my work, I would look closely at exactly where I lost marks and whether it was because of a concept gap, a missed step or not explaining enough. I also found that once I understood a topic really well, there were times where I could almost see the whole solution before I even started writing, because I understood the full physical situation and how all the parts connected. But in my opinion, what you should be worried about is not what you should be doing when your exams are already approaching, it should be how you set yourself up leading up to the exams. By the time your exams are approaching, you should not be trying to fix your understanding, your understanding should already be there from studying for past tests. You shouldn’t be slacking off before exams just because they aren’t right around the corner, there should be a huge emphasis on ensuring you fully understand the topic WHEN you learn the topic.
What study techniques and advice do you have?
Because Physics is quite an application-heavy subject most of my Physics study was doing practice questions. Another thing to note is that doing practice questions is the best way to identify any holes in your understanding. It is very easy for you to read your Physics notes and assume you have a full understanding of the topics but your understanding is only tested when you put it into practice. I would constantly ask myself things like why an equation worked, what was actually happening physically, what direction things should move in, or what would change if one variable changed. Physics is also something that can be seen commonly used in the real-world, so a good way of learning is to compare the concept to real-world scenarios when its used. Another thing I personally found useful was to collect any visual information about the topic, some of my best learning moments was when I searched up an image of the topic and tried to understand what was going on in the image (for example, images of motors or generators). YouTube videos are also another great way of studying that I highly recommend due to the visual information that you get.
Do you have any resources that you used?
The main resources I used were WACE past exams and WACEVault. I used them a lot because they gave me a large number of proper exam-style questions and showed me how marks were actually awarded. I generally preferred the more recent papers, and if a marking key still did not make sense to me, I would keep researching the concept until I understood why the solution worked rather than just accepting it.
How did you balance study with the rest of your life during Year 12?
I still played badminton during Year 12 and went to the gym regularly, which gave me a good break from studying. I found that having proper downtime helped me come back to difficult Physics problems with a clearer head instead of just forcing myself to keep working. I do not think doing well means spending every free hour studying; for me, it was more about being focused when I did study and making sure that time was actually useful.
Anything else you would like to add?
For Physics and for any other subject, you should be aiming to create your own system specific to that subject throughout ATAR. Each subject may require different studying techniques since subjects range a lot in how much memorisation and how much application is needed for you to achieve a good score in the subject. The sooner you create a studying and note-taking system for a subject, the earlier you can stick to that system and the more efficient your studying will be.
