How difficult is an A1 in Applied Maths?

Aspiring

I've seen this somewhere before but thought I'd ask a few questions anyway.

Basically I'm in fifth year, and I've been doing a lot of messing in applied maths not taking it as serious as I should. I've only realised this now and am hoping to salvage an A1 or A2.

Just browsing through a few past exam papers I can answer 4 or 5 questions fairly well, but I just keep getting f**cked over by those wedge questions and the pulleys and whatnot.

As I said I'm in fifth year, and we've already covered all the wedge and pulley stuff and are doing collisions at the moment which isn't too bad in fairness and I know there's a lot of stuff left to cover.

Anyway, back on topic how difficult would an A1 be for a young lad like myself.

bren2001

I did something similar in fifth year. Got grinds in sixth year in it and got 270/300 in the exam, bang on 90%.

If you study the exam questions and are mathematically inclined its an easy subject. Pulleys and wedges is also one of the easier questions once you get your head around it.

Liveforrugby

How difficult? ~ 500 hours if your brainy, 800 if your not

Derpington95

Aspiring wrote: »

I've seen this somewhere before but thought I'd ask a few questions anyway.

Basically I'm in fifth year, and I've been doing a lot of messing in applied maths not taking it as serious as I should. I've only realised this now and am hoping to salvage an A1 or A2.

Just browsing through a few past exam papers I can answer 4 or 5 questions fairly well, but I just keep getting f**cked over by those wedge questions and the pulleys and whatnot.

As I said I'm in fifth year, and we've already covered all the wedge and pulley stuff and are doing collisions at the moment which isn't too bad in fairness and I know there's a lot of stuff left to cover.

Anyway, back on topic how difficult would an A1 be for a young lad like myself.

I'm in 5th year doing Applied Maths as well and I only improve after doing exam questions and looking at solutions. Doing exam questions is the only way you can get better which is working for me right now. Also those wedge and pulley problems 25/30 marks for part b go for getting the diagrams and equations right (usually) and getting close to the final solution. So if you mess up the algebra for the final answer you may get 25 or 27 marks out of 30 which is great for a part b. So basically keep doing questions and the exam becomes a breeze (so I've heard )

Aspiring

Derpington95 wrote: »

I'm in 5th year doing Applied Maths as well and I only improve after doing exam questions and looking at solutions. Doing exam questions is the only way you can get better which is working for me right now. Also those wedge and pulley problems 25/30 marks for part b go for getting the diagrams and equations right (usually) and getting close to the final solution. So if you mess up the algebra for the final answer you may get 25 or 27 marks out of 30 which is great for a part b. So basically keep doing questions and the exam becomes a breeze (so I've heard )

Thanks to everyone for the replies.

My problem is making the equations tho once I get my head around it it'll be easy but I'm struggling at the moment. My diagrams are beautiful of course

ED E

Its a really short syllabus. If you have a good teacher and put enough hours in it should be quite doable. There are never any surprises on an AM paper(our old teacher submitted many of the questions the appeared in past papers).

Aspiring

ED E wrote: »

Its a really short syllabus. If you have a good teacher and put enough hours in it should be quite doable. There are never any surprises on an AM paper(our old teacher submitted many of the questions the appeared in past papers).

The teacher is great I just have trouble concentrating a lot of friends are in the class, thanks!

aarond280

Aspiring wrote: »

The teacher is great I just have trouble concentrating a lot of friends are in the class, thanks!

What you should do is move away from your friends, perhaps up the front, you can always mess with friends at break and lunch :P

UrbanSea

I know plenty of people who picked it up as late as halfway into sixth year. Generally if you're good at physics and maths you'll do well. Put the head down if you are and you should be fine.


If not it may be a long year

Maybe_Memories

I did it on my own outside school. Got 99%. So it's very doable.

You should get full marks on question 10, it's by far the easiest. No excuses.

Question 9 is incredibly easy after you've studied a few examples. They also tend to make this question very easy because pretty much no one answers it for fear of getting something crazy like that tilted box half filled with water that showed up in the 80s/90s.

The collisions projectiles questions again are very easy. Full marks easy to achieve.

Questions 1 and 2 tend to be the hardest.

The inertia one is easy too since the first part is just vomit up a proof and the second part is using the shape from part a.

The rest of the questions are doable but sometimes ask ugly things so watch out.

Derpington95

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

Questions 1 and 2 tend to be the hardest.

It's not that Q1+2 tend to be the hardest it's if you get what you have to do straight away then it can be easy enough especially with q1. If you dont get what you have to do straight away then you can get bogged down and end up going in circles. While all the other questions it's like boom do this and you get there quickly thats why it's advised to leave q1 till last. But 99% fair play what did you lose the 1% in?

Maybe_Memories

Derpington95 wrote: »

It's not that Q1+2 tend to be the hardest it's if you get what you have to do straight away then it can be easy enough especially with q1. If you dont get what you have to do straight away then you can get bogged down and end up going in circles. While all the other questions it's like boom do this and you get there quickly thats why it's advised to leave q1 till last. But 99% fair play what did you lose the 1% in?

Yup, that's exactly it!

Lost 1% on the statement of Archimedes' Principal, despite writing it word for word as written in the book. :pac:

On that topic, they probably want you to write the statement that was in the marking scheme a few years back; it's a monstrosity of a thing.

Derpington95

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

Yup, that's exactly it!

Lost 1% on the statement of Archimedes' Principal, despite writing it word for word as written in the book. :pac:

On that topic, they probably want you to write the statement that was in the marking scheme a few years back; it's a monstrosity of a thing.

It was probably some cranky old man who refuses to ever give 100%'s :pac:

thisisadamh

If you practice a few questions a day from the past papers you will get an A1. If you get stuck, there are good videos on youtube.
Applied maths was the best decision I ever made.

Aspiring

Thanks so much to everyone, glad to see so many applied maths-ers on boards haha. I'd say I'll be fine see we start something and I've no idea what were doing and then one day (usually when we're just about finished it!) it just clicks and I'm like "wow that's easy why didn't I realise this before". You know yourself what it's like anyway but I was originally thinking of dropping it but now I think I'll keep it up because I'm thinking of doing computer science or theoretical physics and i'm sure it'd be somewhat beneficial for that. Also someone else mentioned physics, Applied maths makes physics SO EASY.
Anyone going into 5th year next year and thinking of doing physics, please do applied maths as well. Even just for a year it is incredibly beneficial.