It is really important that you check your understanding as you work through a topic. With that in mind, I have created a short online test that you can use to check your recall and understanding of some of the basic knowledge required for the Electricity module. You can access the test, which is hosted … Continue reading Electrical Circuits: mini-test
Current and Voltage rules
There is a clear pattern to the measurements of current and potential difference (voltage) in electrical circuits - which, for us, means series and parallel circuits. These two patterns were identified by Gustav Kirchhoff and are therefore known as Kirchhoff's Laws. Kirchhoff's current law states that the sum of the currents flowing into a junction … Continue reading Current and Voltage rules
Series and Parallel Circuits
Electric circuits are all about energy transfers: they allow the energy in the original source to be transferred via electricity into some other form. In the classic torch-bulb circuit, for example, chemical energy (in the cells) is converted into electrical energy, which is then converted into light (and heat, for old-fashioned bulbs). The amount of … Continue reading Series and Parallel Circuits
What is Static Electricity?
When work is done on an object, by moving a force through a distance, the object gains energy. As a result, the object might get hotter (gain thermal energy) or accelerate (gain kinetic energy) or be lifted upwards (gain gravitational energy). There is also another possibility; the object could gain electrical energy in the form … Continue reading What is Static Electricity?
Electrical Energy Calculations
The equation for electrical energy is tricky because it contains four components whereas many of the common GCSE equations contain only three components - or can easily be reduced to three because one of the components can be treated as a constant. The best way to handle a four-component equation is to fill-in the values … Continue reading Electrical Energy Calculations
Specific Heat Capacity
Heating a substance can cause either an increase in temperature or a change of state. This is not completely obvious, so let me put it another way; sometimes when we "heat up" a substance it doesn't actually get any hotter. The reason for this is that the energy supplied is being used to break bonds … Continue reading Specific Heat Capacity
Power is the Rate of Change of Energy
There are two booklets available on physbang.com to help you revise the equations that you are expected to know by the end of Y10. These booklets were posted a few months ago (click here to read that post and download the booklets) but it has since been pointed out that one equation is missing: sorry … Continue reading Power is the Rate of Change of Energy
Energy Summary
There are several posts about energy on physbang. You are welcome to explore these posts at your leisure but this one draws some of them together into a logical sequence: it also links to an online worksheet for practising kinetic energy calculations. Although explanations often start by talking about different types of energy, I feel … Continue reading Energy Summary
Tricky “relationships”
Sometimes in an exam paper you will see a question that reads something like: "State the relationship between speed, distance and time". This can seem confusing unless you know that, in this context, the word "relationship" means equation. So what you are really being asked to do is write the equation that contains the quantities … Continue reading Tricky “relationships”
BBC Bitesize – Paper 1 Revision
November's trial examination will include everything in Paper 1. This means everything that was due to be covered in Y10 - and that in turn means a fair amount of content that you had to study at home during the lockdown. Now you are about to be tested on what you know and it is … Continue reading BBC Bitesize – Paper 1 Revision
Mr Tarrant's physbang 'blog 