Physics

Overview

Links to Foundation to Year 10

Progression from the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Science

The Physics curriculum continues to develop student understanding and skills from across the three strands of the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Science. In the Science Understanding strand, the Physics curriculum draws on knowledge and understanding from across the four sub-strands of Biological, Physical, Chemical and Earth and Space Sciences.

In particular, the Physics curriculum continues to develop the key concepts introduced in the Physical Sciences sub-strand, that is, that forces affect the behaviour of objects, and that energy can be transferred and transformed from one form to another.

Mathematical skills expected of students studying Physics

The Physics curriculum requires students to use the mathematical skills they have developed through the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Mathematics, in addition to the numeracy skills they have developed through the Science Inquiry Skills strand of the Australian Curriculum: Science.

Within the Science Inquiry Skills strand, students are required to gather, represent and analyse numerical data to identify the evidence that forms the basis of their scientific arguments, claims or conclusions. In gathering and recording numerical data, students are required to make measurements with an appropriate degree of accuracy and to represent measurements using appropriate units.

Students may need to be taught inverse and inverse square relationships as they are important in physics, but are not part of the Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Mathematics.

Students may need to be taught to recognise when it is appropriate to join points on a graph and when it is appropriate to use a line of best fit. They may need to be taught how to construct a straight line that will serve as the line of best fit for a set of data presented graphically.

It is assumed that students will be able to competently:

• perform calculations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of quantities
• perform approximate evaluations of numerical expressions
• express fractions as percentages, and percentages as fractions
• calculate percentages
• recognise and use ratios
• transform decimal notation to power of ten notation
• change the subject of a simple equation
• substitute physical quantities into an equation using consistent units so as to calculate one quantity and check the dimensional consistency of such calculations
• solve simple algebraic equations
• comprehend and use the symbols/notations <, >, ∆, ≈, , ≤, ≥,∑
• translate information between graphical, numerical and algebraic forms
• distinguish between discrete and continuous data and then select appropriate forms, variables and scales for constructing graphs
• construct and interpret frequency tables and diagrams, pie charts and histograms
• describe and compare data sets using mean, median and inter-quartile range
• interpret the slope of a linear graph
• calculate areas of right-angled and isosceles triangles, circumference and area of circles, areas and volumes of rectangular blocks, cylinders and spheres
• use Pythagoras’ theorem, similarity of triangles and the angle sum of a triangle.