A-level Physics: improving the accessibility of Paper 3A (7408/3A)

Published: Friday 16 Feb 2024

We're making a change to the stem of some of our questions to help students identify the required practical activity that's being assessed. This will help improve the accessibility of our 2024 A-level Physics Paper 3A (7408/3A) exam paper.

This improvement will support students by identifying the appropriate area of the specification to help them answer the question.

These are examples of sentences that could be added to the stem of a question, as appropriate:

• "This question is based on required practical activity 8 – Investigation of Boyle's law and Charles's law for a gas."
• "This question is based on a method to determine g by free-fall (required practical activity 3)."
• "This question is about a method to investigate the inverse-square law for gamma radiation (required practical activity 12)."

To show you how the additional wording would support students, we've added examples of this text to some questions from the A-level Physics Paper 3 Section A June 2022 exam paper so you can see it in context. The 2024 paper will include additional text similar to the italicised text in the examples below.

We hope you and your learners find this change helpful.

Example 1:

02 This question is based on a method to determine the Young Modulus (required practical activity 4).

Figure 5 shows a strip of steel of rectangular cross-section clamped at one end. The strip extends horizontally over the edge of a bench.

(This figure is taken from the A-level Physics Paper 3 Section A June 2022 exam paper. You can also find it on page 6 of the modified June 2022 Paper 3 Section A diagram booklet)

Example 2:

03 This question is based on Required practical 5: Determination of resistivity of a wire.

Conductive putty can easily be formed into different shapes to investigate the effect of shape on electrical resistance.

Help and support

If you have any questions about this change or need any support with A-level Physics, please contact us at alevelscience@aqa.org.uk or call 01483 477 756.

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