physics a level

[bluetoon]

can anyone give me an explanation on this question.

Show that there are about 200 million atoms in the 20mm width of a postage stamp.

All help greatly accepted. i think it has to do with logarithmic scales and x10 powers

[theprof]

As a Russell Group Science Dean, I can verify that achieving a good grade in current science "A" levels is not as difficult as it was during the sixties and seventies when I was taking my "A" levels.

Over the years, "A" level papers have been adjusted to take into account gender, social group, quality of teaching and a whole host of other factors in order to achieve theoretically comparable results over a given time-span.

Oxford and Cambridge have compelled students to undertake their own entrance examination for many years due to these anomalies, Both universities have had the foresight to see this trend for many years. To those that consider my view to be wrong, I'd say this: How else can you explain the fact that virtually all Russell Group Universities have now followed the lead of Oxbridge?

[jake-the-peg]

NJ
I also find it most surprising you could answer so many of the questions (correctly).

Standard fare in A level papers also includes fields -do you know the left hand rule fron the right?

Without that you'd not questions right about particles moving in fields?

I'm at a loss to explain your ability - you weren't perhaps looking at a GCSE paper?

Try this one from January 2010

http://store.aqa.org....HYA4-2-W-QP-JAN10.PDF

Is it as easy as the one you saw?

Which of them can you answer

[jake-the-peg]

PS appologies for earlier errors - attempting to answer on a blackberry and I guess my eyesight's not what it was

[New Judge]

Thanks for the paper, Jake.

No, it certainly was not a GCSE paper I saw in 2007. It was indeed an A-Level paper very similar to the one you have provided. I still do not know what is meant by “fields”. Perhaps the terminology used has changed over the years. The last I heard was that Woodwork and Metalwork had become “resistant materials” and I believe it has changed again since so I’m sure terms in Physics have undergone similar changes. But with a bit of revision I could certainly answer three of the four questions in that paper. I would struggle with Q3 as that was not a topic we dealt with at ‘O’ Level but I certainly dealt with a number of other equally complex studies. Short of completing the paper and submitting it to you for marking (which I am not going to do) I cannot prove this to be so but I have no reason to tell porkies about it. Perhaps theprof may care to comment.

The issue here is that if standards have improved so much as we are led to believe I should not even be able to understand the questions in a subject that I never took at A Level and indeed have not properly studied at all for 45 years. But I can, and more than that I can answer three out of four of them, probably successfully. I have no reason to doubt that other subjects have been similarly “dumbed down” (although I have not got the evidence as I have with Physics) and it is my firm belief that A Levels now are no more difficult – if indeed they are as difficult – as the O Levels I took all those years ago.