An award winning sixth-form college in the heart of Central London offering a wide range of GCSE and A-Level courses
The quality of the curriculum, teaching and learners' achievements is excellent
ISI INSPECTION REPORT - APRIL 2023
A-Level Course Outline
What is Physics?
As you probably know from GCSE, Physics is the science of the physical world. There are few completely new topics at A-Level that you won't have come across. Higher Level GCSE calculation topics are revisited in greater depth, e.g. acceleration and kinetic/potential energy, voltage-current-resistance, while others e.g. heat, energy, electromagnetism and astronomy have calculation introduced at A-Level, while only descriptive at GCSE. Maths is involved in A-level Physics, and it is highly recommended that Maths is taken in tandem with Physics (you will even repeat the same Mechanics material in both Maths and Physics!). However, you don't need A-Level Maths to be successful in Physics, you just need to be comfortable with most of the higher-tier GCSE maths, e.g. formulae (using and re-arranging them), graphs e.g. y=mx+c, Pythagoras, sin, cos and tan percentages and standard form.
In the second year of the AL course, A2 Level, you will study further mechanics, the kinetic theory of gases and astronomy in module 5. In module 6 you will encounter capacitors, electromagnetism, radioactivity, particle and medical physics. A significant portion of the exam material in the A-Level exams will be AS content so you will revise all of this in the A2 year as well.
There is no “coursework” or practical examinations to worry about. Instead, you will do experiments on most topics throughout the course and will answer exam questions about the experiments you did. In the second year of A-Level there is the “Practical Endorsement” which you will pass based on your practical work during the course. This is the teacher saying they have confidence in your ability to set up and conduct the experiments done over the course and is a similar procedure to that in chemistry and biology.
Students will face questions based on:
What Skills Will Students Develop by Studying Physics?
PHYSICS (OCR) A Level Specification |
|
Paper 1
Modelling physics (mechanics and astrophysics)
Paper 2
Exploring physics (electricity , waves particle physics radioactivity medical)
Paper 3 Unified Physics Practical Endorsement (pass or fail, reported separately) |
Module 1 Development of practical skills in physics-i.e. experiments and data analysis. |
Course structure
Core Textbook |
![]() |
Further Reading
Introducing Quantum Theory J.P McEvoy, Oscar Zarate
Six Easy Pieces Richard Feynman
Advanced Physics Steve Adams Jonathan Allday
A-Level Physics Roger Muncaster
Practice in Physics Tim Akrill George Bennet Chris Millar
A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking
©2025 Copyright Albemarle Independent College. Tel (+44) 20 7409 7273