Possible final exam questions for A Level

Instructions: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions.
Time limit: 2 hours. Begin immediately.

Physics
Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics on science.

Chemistry
You must identify a poison sample which you will find at your lab table. All necessary equipment has been provided. There are two beakers at your desk, one of which holds the antidote. If the wrong substance is used, it causes instant death. You may begin as soon as the professor injects you with a sample of the poison. (We feel this will give you an incentive to find the correct answer.)

Biology
Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English Parliamentary System circa 1750. Prove your thesis.

Art
Given one eight-count box of crayons and three sheets of notebook paper, recreate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Skin tones should be true to life.

Mathematics
Derive the Euler-Cauchy equations using only a straightedge and compass. Discuss in detail the role these equations had on mathematical analysis in Europe during the 1800s.

Music
Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.

General Knowledge
Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.


and for those in university...

Medicine
You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until you work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.

Economics
Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist Controversy and the Wave Theory of Light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.

Engineering
The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In 10 minutes, a hungry bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel necessary. Be prepared to justify your decision

History
Describe the history of the Papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Be brief, concise and specific.

Physchology
Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodisis, Rameses II, Hammuarabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.

Political Science
There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects if any.

Religion
Perform a miracle. Creativity will be judged.

Reference:
http://www.ahajokes.com/impossible.html

A note for students studying in public places

It was 6pm on a Saturday evening and I was in a McDonalds at Raffles City. The weather was pouring and the place was crowded. A group of 4 women, having just purchased their food, were stranded in the middle of the restaurant with trays-in-hand, but no available table. The women obviously weren't Singaporean and they looked like they were tourists visiting Singapore.

A McDonalds staff member immediately came to their assistance. He approached a group of 2 students who had their notes and textbooks sprawled over a four-seater table and told them to leave (politely of course). The students eventually did but I wondered if the women would develop an image of Singaporean students as being not-so-considerate.

The first thing that came to my mind was: what a bunch of airheads. Dinner-time. Saturday evening. McDonalds in City Hall. Studying whilst occupying seats meant to accommodate twice the number of people. You'll never get away with that.

However, I suddenly remembered a blog entry that I wrote in September (10 places to study other than at home) and it killed me to realize, that by listing fast-food restaurants as one of the alternate places to study, I was, to a tiny extent, actually propagating such inconsiderate behavior. Damn! And all I wanted to do was provide a list of alternative places to study for students who don't have a conducive home environment.

Lesson learnt: if you are one of those students who like to study in such places, be sure to exercise some discretion. While it is important to study hard for exams, it is also equally important to exercise basic social graces.

And if I were to add another suggestion, paying for membership to use the community center study rooms will actually be cheaper than buying multiple drinks in fast-food restaurants over the long haul.

Answers to the suitcase problem

If you are on a boat and toss a suitcase overboard, will the water level rise or fall?

Normally, we wouldn't be interested in the rise or fall of the water level in a body of water large enough to permit boating. In fact, tossing a suitcase out of a boat is not going to change the water level perceptibly. The question is whether it changes the level in principle.

We can try and imagine the problem. Anytime you throw weight out of a floating boat, the boat gets lighter and rises. However, that's not what this question asks. It asks whether the water level rises or falls.

If the suitcase were to be magically removed or evaporated into thin air, the answer becomes more straightforward because the boat would simply be lighter and float higher. This makes the water level decrease.

However in this question, the suitcase is tossed out of the boat, and into the water. This begs us to question further. What if the suitcase sinks? What if the suitcase floats? Will the answer be the same for both cases?

In the case of the suitcase sinking, pretend you throw a heavy suitcase overboard, having first secured it to the boat with fishing line. The boat briefly rises, then the line draws taut as the suitcase sinks as far as the line permits. This makes the boat dragged down by the weight of the suitcase. The displacement of the boat plus suitcase is identical to what it was originally. If you snip the fishing line, the suitcase will sink to the bottom while the boat's hull rises upward. This decreases the volume displaced and hence lowers the water level.

In the case of the suitcase floating, we would be more interested in the weight displaced. In school, we learnt about Archimedes principle, which states that the upthrust acting on an object is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. If I have a 5kg beach ball floating in a bathtub, the beach ball displaces 5kg of water. Similarly, if I have five 1kg beach balls floating in the same body of water, the total weight of water displaced is still 5kg. This means that the volume displaced is also the same. Hence, if the suitcase floats the water level will remain the same.

Conclusion: tossing a suitcase off a boat makes no difference in water level if the suitcase floats. If the suitcase sinks, the water level falls.

Trivia: Rise or fall?

Here's our trivia for the month of October.

If you are on a boat and toss a suitcase overboard, will the water level rise or fall?

Getting started is always the hardest

The hardest part of studying for exams is getting started itself. Once you get started and develope a rythm, studying becomes less painful.

It is one of the laws of the universe. Newton's first law tells us that things in motion tend to stay in motion, and things at rest tend to remain at rest.

The more we procrastinate and avoid doing the unpleasant stuff, we are actually setting ourselves up for failure. But once we get through the starting phase and make studying habitual, it doesn't become so hard to study.

Just like riding a bike, starting a business, swimming, or training for a marathon, the hardest part is actually getting started itself.

Children's Day

I miss my primary school days when life was simple and plain fun. I miss all the recess times when we would run to the school field to play football during that short 30 min break. Who cares if our white school shoes got caked in mud. Mum would wash it for us anyway. I miss the happiness that erupted whenever the fire-drill bell rang. It means 20 mins of official goofing off! I miss the chit-chat with friends on the school-bus ride home. The school bus was also a place where students waged their pocket money on the buying and trading of dragon ball cards. I miss the days when school ended at 1. This would be followed by an afternoon nap in the comfort of home. I miss all the excursions during after-exam periods. The post-examination period when teachers were busy marking scripts was the best time to go to school.

Here's wishing all children a happy children's day! Enjoy your childhood years and don't be in such a hurry to grow up so fast. Study hard and play hard.

For the P6 students, all the best in the upcoming PSLE exams!

Curve of Forgetting

For many school-going students, it's the time of the year again when exams are just around the corner. Orchard Road gets less crowded while McDonalds observes increases in beverage sales!

We try and review one whole year's worth of academic workload in the hope that we can recall them and apply them cometh the hour.

Hopefully, while it's not too late, I'd like to share with you a little something called the Curve of Forgetting.

The Curve of Forgetting describes how we retain or get rid of information that we take in. It's based on a one-hour lecture.

Day 1
At the beginning of the lecture, you go in knowing nothing, or 0%, (where the curve starts at the baseline). At the end of the lecture you know 100% of what you know, however well you know it (where the curve rises to its highest point).

Day 2
If you have done nothing with the information you learned in that lecture, didn't think about it again, read it again, etc. you will have lost 50%-80% of what you learned. Our brains are constantly recording information on a temporary basis: scraps of conversation heard on the sidewalk, what the person in front of you is wearing. Because the information isn't necessary, and it doesn't come up again, our brains dump it all off, along with what was learned in the lecture that you actually do want to hold on to!

Day 7 onwards
By Day 7, we remember even less, and by Day 30, we retain about 2%-3% of the original hour! This nicely coincides with midterm exams, and may account for feeling as if you've never seen this before in your life when you're studying for exams - you may need to actually re-learn it from scratch.

Changing the shape of the curve
You can change the shape of the curve! When you are exposed to the same information repeatedly, it takes less and less time to "activate" the information in your long term memory and it becomes easier for you to retrieve the information when you need it.

Here's the formula and the case for making time to review material: Within 24 hours of getting the information - spend 10 minutes reviewing and you will raise the curve almost to 100% again. A week later (Day 7), it only takes 5 minutes to "reactivate" the same material, and again raise the curve. By Day 30, your brain will only need 2-4 minutes to give you the feedback, "Yes, I know that..."

Often students feel they can't possibly make time for a review session every day in their schedules - they have trouble keeping up as it is. However, this review is an excellent investment of time. If you don't review, you will need to spend 40-50 minutes re-learning each hour of material later - do you have that kind of time? Cramming rarely stores information in your long term memory sucessfully, which makes it harder to access the material for assignments during the term and exam preparation.

Depending on the course load, the general recommendation is to spend half an hour or so every weekday, and 1.5 to 2 hours every weekend in review activity. Perhaps you only have time to review 4 or 5 days of the week, and the curve stays at about the mid range. That's OK, it's a lot better than the 2%-3% you would have retained if you hadn't reviewed at all.


Reference: http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infocs/study/curve.html