Term 3 Week 4 Reflection

For the Sec 4E and 5NA pupils, a 2006 Science (Phy) Exam Paper on the 'Pendulum' Experiment was conducted. As a similar experiment was done previously, the focus of the exercise was not on performing the experiment but rather the processing of the data, graph plotting and answering the questions.

Therefore, pupils were instructed to only setup their apparatus individually and to collect only two sets of data. After the pupils had verified that there collecting reading were close to the teacher's results, they proceeded to process the data and to copy down the rest of the reading from the solution.

Pupils were given adequate time to plot the points and sketch the best fit straight-line. After the best fit straight line was sketched, the pupils proceeded to obtain the gradient of the line and subsequently to the answering of the question.

Things to be improved further

1. Pupils need to be given time to familarise themselves with the apparatus needed for the experiment - electronic stopwatch.

2. Pupils need to be sure of the precision of the instrument used and the subsequent precision and significance figures for the processed data.

3. For the precaution question on how pupils can improve the accuracy of their results, pupils are quite unconfident of this aspect.Having a ready-made guideline of practical skills list and precaution for different type of experiments would hellp pupils to answer this question more confidently. For the next practical session, pupils would be brief on the various forms of precautions to improve the accuracy of their measurement.