I actually like questions involving area and volumes ( integration ) . In SPM , it will always involve geometry . There will always be a line and a curve , but never a curve and a curve . I wonder why .

I was caught up with the election news for nearly a week . I didn't study at all , and exams will commence in two days time .

But I'm saddened by the fact that change didn't come . Oh well .

I'll take it as a study leave , to rest my brain , although it's exhausted with all the news about unfairness .

Anyway , I'll start studying . And my spirits are high .

This thread has been going slow , I guess everyone's busy with their mid-year exams . I am .

I've been here but never really got the chance to post something . If there was , I was too exhausted and wasn't in the mood . But hey , tomorrow's the last day for exams ! I'm looking forward to my last two papers . I've been through a lot these few weeks from surprisingly bad experience with Add Math exam to a car accident . I'll talk about it later .

CriticalFallacy

I haven't received my project work since we're busy with our exams , but I'll get back to you tomorrow . I'll ask my teacher about it . I'll also talk about how , for the first time , I felt really bad after an Add Maths exam .

I'm not letting it get the better of me . There will definitely be a post-mortem on my results , I'll make sure everything , or most of the mistakes will be sorted out .

Thank you !

Freedom for me , at last !
I got 86% for my Add Maths , which is a huge relief . I thought I would obtain a B+ as I remembered having a tough time with both papers , but it turned out quite okay . It's the highest grade in my class but I'm not satisfied as there were so many errors in both papers , I haven't checked them but I'll try evaluating what went wrong and what needs to be done to improve my grade .

Also , KOKO marks are out . I got 8.4 , which is an A . Finally , I don't need to worry about all those crappy activities anymore which weren't fun for me . I'm surprised because I regularly skip KOKO activities in form five ( I'm just too bored and tired to care ) , maybe the national level science challenge did help after all . I don't really care even if I got a B because I'm not aiming for matriculation or public local universities . ( If I run out of choice , form six would be it ) .

As for now , I feel as if two huge boulders had been lifted from my shoulders . It has been 3 weeks of exhausting journey .

A well-deserved break awaits .

Yes , I'll do that later today .

But a word of caution , it'll be embarrassing as I've committed some very silly errors during calculation , and some parts would be messy because I've a habit of not writing my workings neatly , sometimes there will be diagrams where I try to conceptualise what the question is asking .

I wanted to make a brief comment about it with my paper but I'll do it here first before scanning the papers in the evening or around night time .

My main problem , for both papers , was a psychological one . There are several bad Maths outings for me . One was in form two , another form three , and this time it happened during my form five mid-term . The problem is I panic , don't think straight , unable to calm myself and start committing errors .

Second thing is I don't work hard enough for Maths . In form four I had the habit of selecting chapters which I liked , and study them ( functions , quadratic equations and functions , logarithm , and differentiation ) . I didn't really care much about statistics as it was rather mechanical for me . Just arranging data , plugging in values in equations , and occasionally , some quadratic equations would appear ( spm style question ) . I abandoned Index Numbers and Solution of Triangles , I only read and tried to understand those chapters a day before the final year Add Maths exam . With some of the formulae in my head , I sat for the exam , and luckily those questions were simple , I scored full marks for both ( there wasn't a sub question about the ambiguous case ) . I thought it would be the same this time , but both questions were challenging for me , I didn't know how to sketch the triangles and visualise another triangle due to the ambiguous case , so I lost a hefty portion of marks in the last section .

I don't practise much . I had a rough idea about what integrals are , what methods to use , but never really used them or practised any integration questions . When I knew the mid-term exams are around the corner , I scrambled to learn about definite integrals , fundamental theorem of calculus , solving area and solid of revolution questions , and then rushed with Vectors a week before the exams . I think I did okay on integration and vector questions in both papers . I should have paid more attention on Add Maths ; too much time was spent on Biology and History . So I would definitely correct this , my marks reflect my attitude where I'm like a kid who thinks he doesn't need to prepare for an oral test and thinks he can outsmart the examiner .

That's about it for now .

* what can you tell me about the Putnam competition , and have you tried the questions ? The questions are way beyond my skills but the competition itself seems interesting . have you also heard of Maths 55 course ?

Sorry for the delay , my scanner was slow . Scanning 32 individual pages was tedious , like multiplying matrices .

I have a bad cold today , sore throat and a nose that is runny , what a way to start my holidays .

Anyway the reason I'm posting it here is because when I succeed , I want to see the pitfalls I had during the journey . It'll also be a good reference to juniors who'll be going through this . I don't have good teachers , but that forces me to work on my own and that's a good thing .

I noticed that I've committed mistakes that I cannot even fathom , like during expansion , integration and substituting values . Another thing to work on is my carelessness . A lot of marks were lost due to silly mistakes .

Here you go , CriticalFallacy ! Hope it's not too late .

* I'm having a problem with the documents . The file sizes are big and I think it's better to compile them in an album *

The order is as follows :
1 . Paper 2 Questions
2 . Paper 2 Answers
1 . Paper 1 Questions + Answers

http://imageshack.us/g/844/img201305220002.jpg/

CriticalFallacy I missed the last page :



Bonus :

CriticalFallacy I forgot to add , in Paper 1 , I used red ink ( finer than teacher's ink ) to solve 1-2 questions when I received it at school today . I worked them out and it's disappointing because if I didn't panic, I would have been able to solve questions that were impossible for me in the exam itself .

I would like your solution for question 22 , Paper 1 . A shorter , alternate solution .
I'd also appreciate solutions for the last four questions in paper 2 , and the vector question which I failed to solve .

No problem .
By the way , it seems like N.S's Education Dept. hasn't announced the project work , so I'm stuck with Moral project work instead .

This post has been edited by maximR: May 23 2013, 03:15 PM

Which state are you from ?

That part about 'weapon of mass destruction' is funny .
I see you've added some bits of humour in between some quite advanced discussions about mathematical concepts .

I just realised that in SPM Add Maths , we have been doing some very basic " Differential Equations " .

For example , we are required to find the initial function that satisfies an equation which has its derivative .

What we usually do is to integrate both sides to find the function , and then substitute in values to obtain the value of the constant , c .

This post has been edited by maximR: May 26 2013, 01:30 PM

This is bothering me . Why do we observe light as the rays that are perpendicular to the wavefronts and not the wavefronts themselves ? The rays are the direction of propagation of the wave itself .

This post has been edited by maximR: May 26 2013, 08:45 PM

In all the diagrams , the wavefronts are in the 'vertical plane' . The rays are perpendicular to the wavefronts .

My question is , why , at least as humans , do we perceive light as the rays , not the wavefronts ? Why don't we see the 'vertical' wavefronts , but we see the rays that are the 'direction of propagation' of the wave ?

For example , a laser emits a beam of light , we see it as a ray of light , but what about the waves themselves ?

I hope you get what I mean .

Okay , what I'm getting here is the wavelengths of visible light are too small for us to detect , and we perceive the wavefronts as colour .

Is there an explanation on why see light as rays instead ? Are the rays 'physical stuff' where the energy of light is concentrated in them ( photons travel in the direction of rays so the rays consist of photons , or otherwise ? ) , because in diagrams , the rays are drawn as the lines that show 'direction of wave propagation' only . And yet we can see them .

* by the way , care to share the source for the diagram you used in Post #861 ?

This post has been edited by maximR: May 27 2013, 12:19 PM

The bulb will light up with its normal brightness when supplied with 12V , where it'll dissipate 24 J of energy per second . Determine which circuit satisfies this requirement .

Should be easier , because there's Paper Three to help you bring up your overall marks . But it's worrying at least for me , as we aren't too familiar with the format .