Examinations

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Please note there is no coursework requirement for AEA Physics.

However, students must complete one written examination. We set and mark the exam, which lasts three hours. The examiners take care to ensure that the questions are equally accessible to all students, irrespective of the specification studied. The exam does not include questions on topics which are in one specification but not in others.

Students must answer six to eight questions. All questions require written answers and/or calculations. The exam does not include any multiple-choice questions, and the paper does not offer a choice of questions. Apart from one, all questions are structured. One question is unstructured and offers students a choice of areas to address. Where there are alternatives within a question, these:

  • are based on the same approach;
  • are of a similar style; and
  • assess similar skills.

The approximate time students should spend on a question is indicated at the start of each question. The number of marks for each part of a question is also indicated.

Questions use the following, or similar, approaches:


  Nature of Question
(a) Students are provided with unfamiliar information. This normally includes a passage of writing and an extract from a scientific text. They must demonstrate their understanding by providing explanations, carrying out calculations and applying principles of physics to it. In doing so, students need to interpret the information and context and demonstrate a thorough understanding of the related physics.
(b) Students are provided with data related to experimental work in physics or from other sources. They must analyse this critically and use the analysis to propose a solution to a problem, to provide explanations of observations, to propose additional data to be collected or to comment on the validity of the data.
(c) Students are provided with a context or situation and must apply knowledge and understanding from more than one area of physics to it. The question may require students to demonstrate and use connections between these different areas of physics by making and using relationships between the different areas.
(d) Students are asked to write an account in which they apply their knowledge and understanding of a particular area(s) of physics. Students may be provided with a choice of areas of physics drawn from the assessed content listed in Appendix 1 of the specification. Such questions will be ‘open ended’ and unstructured. Students must present an extended structured response which demonstrates how relevant principles and concepts apply to a particular context of problem, for example demonstrating the effects of electric, gravitational and magnetic forces in particular situations, or applying principles of energy and momentum conservation to atomic and nuclear processes.
(e) Students are provided with a description and other data about an application of physics in modern technology. They must demonstrate their understanding of the physics principles associated with it.
(f) Students are provided with a discrete problem to solve in a novel context and are given little or no guidance on the principles to be applied. The question may require a numerical calculation or a written explanation. This requires deep understanding and application of basic principles of physics to the situation, for example explaining the light emitted by a stroke of lighting.
(g) Students must use estimates or orders of magnitude to carry out calculations. They receive limited or no data to assist them. For example a question might ask the student to estimate the energy needed to inflate a balloon.