6 Do's and Dont's for your IB Physics Exams

Today I'm sharing some of my expert advice for all you IB Physics students preparing for your upcoming exams. Let's keep this short and sweet - here are the key things you need to think about:

DO's:

DO practice understanding the markscheme

• In IB Physics, it is incredibly important to understand what exactly gets you the marks on the exam. You can write a lot of correct things for a question, but unless they are exactly the things the examiners are looking for, you will not get the marks! Some examples:

  • For questions where you want to explain the bright and dark fringes in double-slit interference, they usually want you to mention constructive and destructive interference and the phase difference between the waves. Unless you talk specifically about those things, you will not get full marks.

  • When you need to explain something related to equilibrium of forces or Newton's first law, make sure to mention the direction of the forces. Sometimes this is so obvious that you don't even think to write it, but you should say that gravity goes downwards and the normal force upwards!

  You will usually get the hang of these types of things once you have actually studied some markschemes and noticed what they actually give marks for. The best way to do this is to try a past paper on your own and then go through the entire markscheme after. Here at Lindahl Tutoring, we are happy to provide this and guide you through it when you connect for a tutoring class.

DO read the questions VERY carefully

• In exams, every single word of the question is there for a reason - you will not be given any unnecessary information. So make sure you read each part extremely carefully to catch everything they are actually telling you. Some examples of key phrases people often miss:

  • "Starts at rest" -> The object has an initial velocity of zero

  • "At constant speed" -> The object has zero acceleration

  • "Negligible thermal capacity" -> There is no heat transfer to the container

  And those are just some quick examples. There are plenty more from each topic that you should always pay attention to when reading through the questions.

DO remember what the symbols mean in each equation

• You would be surprised how common it is to use the equation 𝐸 = 𝐹/𝑞 in an energy question, for example, even though the E there stands for electric field. There are many cases like this, where the same or similar symbols mean different things in different equations. Just think about the equation for number of moles: 𝑁 = 𝑛/𝑁_𝐴. Here we have three variables with the letter "N" that all mean different things! So it is very important that you learn the meaning of the symbols in the equations, not just using the equations themselves.

DONT's:

DON'T practice only from your textbook

• Although textbooks can be great for learning, they’re not always your best bet for exam practice. The people who write textbooks tend to have their own ideas about what is important and not, and what you should focus on in your answers - which might be quite different from what the IB examiners think. Now, this doesn’t go for all textbooks, and there are indeed some good ones that are focused on IB exam revision specifically, but as a general rule you should try to stick to past papers and IB materials in the lead-up to the final exams.

DON'T assume that something is true unless it is stated

• It is unfortunately very common to take certain things for granted in a question, such that a surface is frictionless, or that internal resistance can be neglected. Keep in mind that if these things are true, the question will always state that directly. Don’t imagine information that is not there - and always re-read the question 1 or 2 times more if you are unsure.

DON'T leave questions completely blank

• Even if you have absolutely no idea what to do, you should never leave a question without writing down something. It could be just some wild guess at an equation, or a vague idea about some information that could be relevant; even if it is far away from being a final answer, it could still give you marks. Method marks are indeed awarded even if your starting equation didn’t leave anywhere. So it might just be that you get a mark for a lucky guess - always write something down!

Was this useful? You can get more advice like this, and further help with your understanding of each topic, by connecting with a tutor. Here at Lindahl Tutoring, we have a proud reputation of helping students overcome their hardest challenges, as evidenced by our reviews. Try out our trial class here to see if a personal tutor might be exactly what you need: Trial class.

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