A large crowd logged on last week for the IoP/ISTA review of the marking for last summer's Leaving Cert Physics Exam. I've uploaded sample solutions to a few of the questions from section B, which are available here, for anybody interested - about half way down on the left I felt that in general the exam paper would have been a fair challenge to any well-prepared student. There are always one or two variations from from what we've seen before and that's as it should be, but nothing beyond that.

One thing I noticed is that in question 7, students were asked to use vector analysis to calculate both the speed and the direction of the wind. It was often the case in the past that the direction of a vector would be required, but in more recent years, students were generally just asked to find the magnitude of a vector, so this is a bit of a change. But - at the risk of saying I told you so - this did not come without warning.* The deferred paper from 2022, sat by students who were unable to sit the main paper in June, also required students to calculate the direction of a vector.

The 2022 deferred paper was published in the spring of this year. My understanding is that very small numbers qualify for the deferred paper, and that for some subjects this means that nobody was sitting one - in which case it wasn't published. I haven't heard of any students who sat a deferred physics paper last summer, so I don't think we will know if it even existed this summer until the deferred papers are published. Presumably in the spring again.

That is unless somebody out there knows of any body who sat such a paper, If so, do let us know!

But if/when one is published, I know I will be looking carefully through it for any shots across the bow that might remind us to cover something for the 2024 students!

2023 Sample Solutions: general resources | PhysicsResourceBank

(* i.e. I told you so)