Laura hadn't done a great deal of physics before but she had done enough to ignite her interest in the subject and was keen to learn more. That is much more important than being trained in the art of applying rules that you don't understand. Her EE was not the conventional how does y vary with changing x but a more general investigation on using sound to model Hubble's law. She mounted a speaker on a cart and pushed it away at different velocities. By measuring the Doppler shift at the same time for all the carts she was able to perform an analogous situation to the expanding universe. The experiments weren't easy but it gave something to write about. Her IA was an excellent investigation into ski-jumping. Using physics from the course she made a prediction regarding the relationship between the velocity at take off and the distance jumped down the slope. The experiment gave consistent results with a value for g that was close to that expected. By modelling in Algodoo she managed to investigated the effect of air resistance. I gave this 24/24 but it was slightly downgraded to 22 by the external examiner, I can live with that.

My classes are totally student centred, I never lecture although I do sometimes ramble. Students work independently through the series of activities on this website using my textbook for backup and StudyIB for revision. Not all of my students follow this religiously but Laura did. In my experience, clever students who follow the course conscientiously end up with a 7. This is what she had to say about it:

So Chris asked me to write how I managed to achieve a 7 in physics and an A on my EE. You probably expect me to say that I studied a lot, but the truth is I didn’t study that much until the last months before exams. However that doesn’t mean that I just magically one morning woke up and understood physics (I mean that would have been nice). I think the key to my success was consistent work and use of the available resources. This mean that I spend the time in physics class working on the assignments and asking Chris questions, and I asked a lot of probably stupid questions over and over, I think Chris might have gotten a little tired of me asking the same thing 30 times. From the beginning of my first year I sat down every week and looked how many physics class I had in a week and my goal for how many assignments I wanted to complete from thinkIB in the different lessons, if for some reason I didn’t manage to do so I would finish them after class. At the same time I made use of studyIB following the units in the same speed as the assignments on ThinkIB. In that way I could, read watch videos and do quizzes on what I had worked on making sure I catches the things I didn’t understand from ThinkIB. Sometimes I watched the video 5-10 times before I got it, and if at that point I didn’t understand the concept I would turn to the physics book which had clear and good explanations and exercises. About 2 months before the physics exam I had finished the physics syllabus, chose to prioritise spending a weekend finishing up the activities on ThinkIB. That was super nice because then I could spend the rest of my time in and out of class on past papers. Firstly however I choose to read the physics book to refresh the things that I haven’t worked with for a long time, then after I did a past paper I carefully checked my mistake and made sure to ask Chris of figure out how to answer the questions correctly. As for my EE I finished it quite early, again I choose to spend a weekend only doing the EE. I think my EE succeeded because I was interested in it and concentrated about for a short period of time instead of spending many months on it. This is an advice I will give to everyone with their EE, both because it is easier for you when you have it fresh in your mind, and you can have a relaxed summer break. Then lastly as you may have heard a few times before when it comes to EE and IA listen to Chris and ASK, he knows what he is doing and don’t be afraid to ask the same question until you understand it (I for sure did ask Chris the same thing many times). And then ofc don’t skip anything on the ThinkIB website, especially the experiments and the exercises as they really help the theory to stick in your brain and understand the IBs way of examining your knowledge.

Just for the record, I never get tired of being asked the same question. What sends me to sleep is not being asked questions.