Welcome!

Hi everyone, My name's Jenny, anyone who might be doing year 12 or are doing the subjects and course that I'm doing might find these notes useful. If you have any comments or find any mistakes in the notes please email me. 

- Friday, 11th May 2002 : Just got an email telling me about the troubles with the chemistry notes, I've fixed it. 

- Monday, 13th May 2002: Just got an email telling me that the electronic summary was linked to the electronic formulae. Fixed that too.

- Monday, 20th May 2002: Good luck on everyone's mid year exams. If you haven't had a look at the Education Age/Herald Sun (I think it's Tuesday for the Herald, and Wednesday for the Age) on the 14th or 15th May (I think. it could've been the week before, I don't remember), you really should try and grab a copy of it. They give great exam tips for each subject. Also read last year's examiner's report (available on vcaa), pay attention to the questions that they said most students made a mistake on last year, that usually gives you an idea on what's going to be on the exam this year. 

Unit 3 notes

Unit 3 chemistry - 14 pages of notes (zipped), with summaries on analytical chemistry (spectrosopy, chromatography etc), Acid and bases, Volumetric analysis, Gravimetric analysis, Equilibrium, Sulfuric Acid, Ethene, hydrocarbons etc etc etc. And some information about answer question in the mid year exams.

Sound (zipped)- 10 pages of summary (based on the Nelson physics book), includes: the nature of sound, sound level and intensity, reflection, diffraction, interference, vibration in air columns and information on how to answer those annoying theory questions in exams. Be careful if you're using words 97 or down, some of the format of the pictures just doesn't seem to come out right if you don't use words 2000. It's annoying.

Electric power - Magnetism, Electromagnetic induction, transformers, AC and DC current, Power generation and supply, how motors and generators work.

Electronic systems - 6 pages of summary. Information on Diodes, capacitors, rectification, flip-flops, logic gates etc. It isn't a very good summary because I rushed it and I didn't have enough time to perfect it.

Sound formulae

Electric power formulae

Electronics formulae

Unit 3 physics cheat sheet - this is my unit 3 cheat sheet. I it's only suppose to be 2 pages (back and front) but I shrank 2 of them on to one page on a photo copier.

Unit 4 notes

Unit 4 physics notes - light, photoelectric effects, structures, materials and motion stuff.

Unit 4 chemistry notes - atomic structure, food chemistry, thermo chemistry, energy, galvanic cells, electro plating, famous scientist, etc.

Unit 4 physics formulae sheet

Specialist Maths formulae sheet

Maths methods formulae sheet - not a very good cheatsheet b/c I never took methods very seriously.

Sample mechanics question - some sample mechanic questions that I wrote for VCEnet. 

Helpful Websites

VCEnet - A good VCE website (which I contribute to) which good free resources for all VCE subjects.

Tutornet -  Lots of free resources, and they run some really good workshops and seminars for VCE students which are worthwhile to go to, even if they are a bit expensive.

VCAA - They're the people who'll be marking and setting your exams, no matter how much you might hate them you still need them to get you into Uni. Get pass exams (even though your teacher should be giving them to you) and make sure you read the examiner's reports for last years exams.

Othello - Pretty helpful stuff on Othello if you're studying it for English.

The things they carried - an interesting and helpful essay on the book.

Most of the English texts we have to study during VCE has websites that's got really good information. Don't rely too much on the study guides that you can buy at the stores because just about everyone in VCE has them and if you want to write an essay that's new and interesting to the examiner (which means you'll get the better mark) you can either A) be smart and write something new, or B) Don't be lazy and research for stuff on the internet because not much people does that. You can search in Yahoo, or googles or any other search engine and you're bound to find a website for it (try putting the name of the book in quotes, or just the name of the author).  The books I had to do were Othello, The Things They Carried (great book), Montana 1948 (the book that just about every single school does) and The Riders (horrible scary crap that I was glad to see the end of). I didn't do too well in English, but if you're really desperate and I mean REALLY desperate, you can email me and tell me which book you're doing (out of the 4 that I did) and I'll try and email you one of my essays. 

Some VCE tips:
Well here are my tips for VCE, they worked for me (I think) so I hope they’ll work for you as well.

Firstly you should do as much practice exams as you can, and do each of them in a shorter time limit than the real exam time, this way, you'll make sure that you'll not only finish on time but you'll also have time to spare so you can check all your answers. This will also mean you'll go through all your practice exams faster. Oh and it’s very important that you READ THE QUESTION. It’s really easy to think that you’ve read it when you’ve just glanced over it. They like to trick you by adding little words that can totally change what the answer should be. Read through the exam during reading time, read the question again during writing time, read it again when you’ve finished the question, then read it again when you’re checking. It might sound stupid, but it’ll save you some marks and in VCE every mark counts.

Try and know the formulas really well (where it comes from, how to manipulate it etc), remember it off by heart. The formulae sheets are just there for insurance, people who know their stuff won't need to look at their formulae sheets at all during the exam.

Oh and do the checkpoint questions. Don't leave your checkpoints till the last minute. Do the checkpoint questions after you finish each topic. Circle the questions that you had trouble with so that you can go back and do them before exam as revision. This way you save yourself a lot of stress and time during revision time.

Make sure you show your workings out in the exam. So that if you don't get the answer right, you'll at least get partial marks for your working out.

Last Updated: Thursday, 01 August 2002