ISA Preparation

Past ISA papers are available on the AQA website. The first half of the questions refer to 'your investigation' - you can't really practise these obviously, but you will notice that the questions are very similar in each ISA paper, so it's worth looking at these questions and trying to work out what the answers would be for our 'crumple zones' practical. You will definitely be asked either 'what were you trying to find out?' or to identify what your independent and dependent variables were. The answer to the first question is always 'we were trying to find how changing [independent variable] affected [dependent variable]. The second half of each ISA paper is worth answering and then marking using the mark scheme.

Physics ISA paper - resistance.
Physics ISA mark scheme - resistance.
Physics ISA paper - falling objects.
Physics ISA mark scheme - falling objects.
Chemistry ISA paper - controlling reactions.
Chemistry ISA mark scheme - controlling reactions.

You can find these, and three more papers and mark schemes here.

The glossary of 'how science works' terms is on pages 84 and 85 of the specification.

Here is a very exciting two part video which identifies the key points you need to be aware of when you draw your graph. I will award a small prize to the first person to tell me what non-deliberate mistake I made which would have cost me one mark out of the four available... I have just noticed the most recent comment on the first video - check it out!!