Watch This Video Before GCSE Physics Paper 1

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Last GCSE science paper one is here, and it's physics.

[00:00:03]In this video, I'm going to give you guys the best advice that I have to succeed in that paper. I hope that all your exams have gone well so far. I think the impression I've got is that exam season has been pretty good, and I hope that you've used the half-term productively as well. Now, it's time to just focus on these final papers. It's going to go really fast, you know, I imagine those first few exams went fast, but every single paper now that you do after this physics exam, you're going to be ticking off exams, you're going to be ticking off subjects, and it's a great great feeling. So, keep pushing forward because you really are almost there now.

[00:00:32]So, the main thing that you need to know with physics then is that about 30% of this paper is maths. Physics is very linked to maths. There will be a lot of questions that are asking you to complete calculations, but the mark scheme is a lot easier than maths. For physics, you can sometimes get three or four marks by literally putting in numbers into an equation they give you and getting an answer. So, a lot of the strategy for this paper is going to build around those calculation questions. Now, no matter what grade you're aiming for, I don't want to see you leave a calculation question blank.

[00:01:02]Even if you just pick an equation and you plug some numbers in and hope that's right, [clears throat] that's going to be good. Now, they're not just going to give you everything easily. There are going to be a lot of easy calculation papers in that question, right, where you just put in two values and you get the output, but there's going to involve some mathematical skill. Sometimes you'll have to work backwards on an equation. Maybe they'll give you the answer and one of the inputs, and you need to work out by dividing, you need to get the other one of the inputs, okay? So, just make sure you've got some good substitution skills for the equations. Now, one of the best things you can be doing is literally just practicing physics maths questions. Try and get familiar with each of the equations because some of them are a little different than others. They have different operations, they work differently, some are nice and easy. So, go through, you could put your equation sheet into AI or something, ask it to come up with five questions per one for the first half, which is paper one, obviously. So, something like that would be really useful, but you just want to make sure you're very familiar with those mathematical questions. Look through past papers, do only the maths ones. That'll be really helpful. If you're aiming for the highest grades, there are hard maths questions. So, the hardest physics questions, I'll try and find one and put it up there. But, an example of like a hard maths question is when they put two together, and you have to work out one and then put it into another one, and that gives you the answer. So, there are still hard ones, and that's why if you're aiming for really high grade, you really want to find the hardest equation questions.

[00:02:21]But, the core of this kind of exam is going to come from these equations. I really recognize that, and I, you know, it started to click for me when I realized that, and started putting effort into those equations, because that's going to be a lot of your marks.

[00:02:33]Now, along these lines, units are really important. You do need to know the units for physics, right? So, for example, mass is measured in kilograms across physics, and that's quite common.

[00:02:44]There's a lot of common like standard units for measurements, unless they tell you differently in the question. So, a quick thing you could do here is go through the equation sheet, see if you can work out or remember the units for each of those, like each of the units and each of the factors in the question for the equations. So, go through, think, "Okay, right, you know, weight, Newtons." That type of thing. That'll be really helpful just to make sure that you're fresh in terms of that. But, bear in mind, they often try and throw you off a little bit in the actual exam. So, for example, questions commonly have kilowatts, and the answer is in watts or something like that. And so, if you forget to convert kilowatts into watts, then you could get you could miss that final mark. So, keep an eye on the like kilowatts or something like that, kilometers, um in the question, cuz sometimes they put that in, and doing an extra conversion will get you that next mark, which is quite important as well. So, I'll put an example of that there as well. Now, one of the nice things about physics as well is lots of it is there is a fair amount of common sense. It's more natural to think about, in my view, than chemistry, for example. So, one thing that really helped me is just really visualizing a question, really trying to think about it. So, for example, if they're telling me about a pen that's being dropped from a certain height, you know, I would think about that in the exam and really try and visualize, okay, what is going on here?

[00:03:56]You know, there's lots of common like force questions that could come up, for example, and it does depend on the paper and what topics you have on your exam board. But, there's quite a lot of common sense, so really try and think about it and try and like help it make sense in your mind cuz that can often be helpful for me. Like what they're talking about physics, it's not foreign.

[00:04:12]It does feel a bit more grounded in like real life than chemistry does, for example, in my view. And there is still a bit of overlap as well between physics and chemistry in terms of changes of state and that's how that thing as well.

[00:04:23]Or radiation. So, along these lines then, make sure that you know the topics that are on paper one. That's obviously really important and I'm sure you know that by now. But, one thing you need to be doing is thinking about what are the hardest topics for you.

[00:04:34]Now, while physics is in some parts very easy in my view because there's a lot of maths that you just put into these equations, it I had for me some of the hardest topics to understand. So, I hated electricity. Like I really that is probably my single least favorite GCSE topic. I don't know why, I just couldn't wrap my head around that at all. And so, if you are like me and you have some topics in physics that you just don't get, okay, magnetism, electricity, whatever it is, then take some time to try and understand them. So, this is where I'd be looking at YouTube videos, like Free Science Lessons, like Cognito, those type of things, whoever you like, Science Shorts I think is another one, and watch their videos on some of the topics you don't understand. That will get you really far. Don't just like neglect it. Don't just do maths if you're forgetting huge amounts of content because while 30% roughly is maths, you know, if you really want the nine, if you really want the high grades, then there's still quite a lot of content that you're going to want to know about as well. So, pick your weaknesses, especially with the limited time that you have left, and you can you'll be surprised with how much you can learn in that time as well.

[00:05:34]So, alongside that advice then, there's obviously the advice that I give with every science paper, which is learn the practicals, right? That's going to be an easy amount of marks that's going to come up for physics. So, just make sure you know the practicals. Again, for physics, you can often kind of visualize that more naturally than like, I don't know, a titration in chemistry. It's a bit more easy to understand in my view.

[00:05:51]So, learn the practicals and then do loads of questions, right? Just doing loads of questions, if you're really pushing for that nine or any grade really, for me, what really helped was just doing loads of questions. I got really familiar with the type of questions that they ask in physics, cuz they are a little bit different from chemistry and biology, and I practiced them loads, and I got good at them. So, that's what I'd really recommend. And yeah, I hope you find this video helpful. Make sure to leave a like. What And also comment what is going well for you this exam season. What can I help you with as well? And I'll try and do a video on that. But yeah, well done, guys. You've got this. You're almost there now. This paper's going to go well, and I'll see you in the next video.