How to revise

How to revise A-level physics

Most revision advice is about feelings. This is about marks: what actually moves them, in the order that works, and the traps that waste whole evenings.

Do the thing the exam does

The exam asks you to answer questions from memory under time pressure. So the activity that trains you fastest is answering questions from memory under mild pressure, and checking yourself against a mark scheme. Reading notes feels like progress because it is comfortable; answering questions feels worse because you keep being wrong. Being wrong and finding out why is the part that changes your grade. Testing yourself is one of the better-evidenced things you can do with revision time, and most people do far less of it than of reading. There is no magic ratio to hit; the useful move is to shift the balance towards flashcards, exam-style questions and past papers, and to notice when an evening has been all reading.

Draw the situation before you reach for an equation

Most physics questions describe a situation in words and expect you to turn it into a model: a diagram with the forces or the fields on it, a graph with labelled axes, a circuit redrawn so the series and parallel parts are obvious. That translation is where the marks are won and lost, far more often than the algebra afterwards. Practise it deliberately: read a question, draw the diagram, mark on what you know and what you want, and only then choose the equation. Say out loud what each symbol stands for in this particular situation, because a symbol you cannot name in words is one you will substitute into the wrong place.

Units and rough sizes catch what checking the algebra will not

Two habits cost seconds and save whole questions. First, carry the units through the working: if the two sides of an equation do not balance dimensionally, something is wrong before any number is substituted. Second, ask whether the answer is the right size. A capacitor of 3 F, a resistor dissipating 40 kW, a car decelerating at 200 m s⁻²: each is arithmetic that finished cleanly and still went wrong. Estimation is a taught skill on every specification for this reason, and the maths bridge has the standard-form and rearranging practice that makes both habits quick.

Little and often beats heroic and rare

Spreading the same total time over more days is one of the most reliable findings in the study of memory: you remember more when you come back to something after a gap than when you sit with it once for as long. So twenty minutes on most days will usually do more for you than one five-hour Sunday, even though the Sunday feels like the bigger effort. That is what spaced repetition is: the cards you get right come back later, the ones you miss come back tomorrow. The day planner runs this for you and sizes each day to the time you give it, and the app carries the same plan in your pocket.

Learn the definitions like lines in a play

A surprising number of marks are given for saying a sentence correctly. Specific charge, electromotive force, the principle of moments: each has a wording the mark scheme is built around, and a nearly-right version that can miss the mark entirely, depending on what that scheme allows. The definitions page keeps the careful versions in one place. However you rehearse them, rehearse them from memory: closing the book and saying or writing the definition is the part that does the work, and reading it again is not.

Know which equations are yours to carry

The AQA data sheet prints most of the equations, so memorising all of them is wasted effort. What earns marks is knowing the handful that are not on the sheet, and being fluent enough with the rest that you recognise which one a question is asking for. Practise choosing the equation as well as using it.

Treat the practicals as content, not memories

Every board puts a meaningful slice of the written papers on practical skills and data analysis (AQA sets a floor of 15% of the marks), and questions about them are answerable from knowledge you can revise: the independent and dependent variables, why the method controls what it controls, where the uncertainty comes from. The required practical guides here follow AQA's twelve activities, which overlap heavily with what the other boards ask for, and are written for exactly that kind of revision.

Save past papers for when they count

There are only so many past papers, and the first time you sit one tells you the most. Early in the year, practise topic by topic instead, and let the checklist show you where you are weak: rate yourself honestly on the revision checklist and spend your time at the bottom of the list, not the top. In the last six weeks, switch to full papers under timed conditions, marked with the real scheme.

The traps

Highlighting and re-reading feel far more productive than they turn out to be: they make a page familiar, and familiarity is easy to mistake for being able to recall it. They are not worthless, but they give back less per hour than testing yourself on the same material. Copying out notes is the same activity wearing a disguise. Watching someone else solve problems is useful exactly once per problem type; after that you have to do the solving. And revising only your favourite topics is the most expensive comfort there is, because marks lost on your weakest unit cost the same as marks lost anywhere else.

Everything linked above is free and works without an account. If you take one thing from this page: draw the situation before you reach for an equation, and check the size of every answer you get.