These pages are for students of GCSE, AS and A2 Physics and AS Electronics. You will also find material for ICT AS and A2.

Although the pages are particularly designed for AQA, they also will help with the syllabi from other boards.

New Year

I enjoy the "The Grumpy" series on TV.  These mostly middle aged people were the tear-aways of their generation (and mine).  The rebel youths have now become the well-heeled with more than a hint of middle-aged spread.  As a baby-faced twenty year old, I always enjoyed Rick Wakeman, along with the rest of what was called Progressive Rock.  It amuses me that he and others are as much a curmudgeon like me.  And the very anti-establishment figures like Charles Clarke, a radical leader of the National Union of Students, served has Home Secretary.  I even remember one James Gordon Brown, a real radical, being elected to being the student rector for Edinburgh University.  Jack Straw was on an MI5 surveillance list.  Now you can't get more establishment figures than these.

The newspapers are awash with reviews of the past year and past decade.  They make for cheap journalism.  I can do better.  My journalism doesn't come much cheaper;  you don't have to pay anything for this tosh.  So let me come up with a few of my own:

Highlights

• I continue to be amazed at the number of people who use this site.  Since I get between 30 000 and 50 000 unique visits a week, I must be teaching many thousands of students.

• I thank all students and teachers who have taken the trouble to e-mail me.  Your comments are much appreciated.

• The students whom I have taught as part of the day-job, whose achievements have been a credit to the hard work and effort that they have put in.  For some, a Grade E or D was an achievement; for others, nothing less than an A would have done them justice.

• My colleagues with whom I have worked, or have written to me, who were always there to support me when I needed it, and vice versa.

• I moved back to Yorkshire to a job that I enjoy.  I am not a Yorkshireman; I was born and brought up in Cheshire.  My son is, having been born near Skipton, so he will be eligible to play for Yorkshire County Cricket Club.  After the flat lands of Cambridgeshire, I will never take Yorkshire for granted again.

• It was a genuine white Christmas (very rare).

In other words, the decent majority who have worked hard to achieve, and will continue to achieve (probably much more than I have).

Low Lights

• Politically I have always been left-of-centre, believing very much in meritocracy, i.e. the best get to the top.  From my armchair, I would rant about the Thatcher Government and its successors.  I was delighted when the May 1997 Election allowed Labour to sweep into power.  That lasted a few years until the Prime Minister got bewitched by the Imbecile of the Decade, and lied to lead our country into an illegal war, which cost many thousands of lives.  We do well to remember that the enemy combatant, however brutal, is someone's son, brother, father.  I am not suggesting that Saddam Hussain Al Tikriti was not one of the world's most odious dictators.  Nor that he did not get his just desserts on a hangman's noose.  But to base a case for war on what was, as it seems, a casual remark from an Iraqi taxi driver seems flimsy to say the least.  Careless talk costs lives.

• And of course, the bankers who have beggared this country and still regard themselves worthy of massive bonuses that serve nothing other than to put house prices up and make housing unaffordable for young people.  Possibly a stretch inside for the worst may well act as a deterrent, but I don't think so.  Well, at least the king of fraudsters, Bernard Madoff, will not be spending the rest of his life in luxury.

• The spreadsheet is a wonderful piece of software.  It is quite easy to use and it takes away a lot of the sheer tedium of lots of number-crunching.  My mark book is a spreadsheet and I can get an instant average and grade for my students.  I also use it to show students the idea of exponential decay and other quite difficult numerical concepts.  It's brilliant for that.  However, it has spawned a whole industry of little people who measure the unmeasurable to set targets.  And everything from health to education to policing is now governed by targets.  Started by the Major government, quangos of dubious effectiveness have blossomed under the current Government at vast cost.  In these days of public spending cuts, could we possibly go for the cheaper option called common sense?  And get the "Miracle Marks and their born-again spreadsheets" to do something rather more useful?

• OFSTED and other apparatus of the nanny state that removes all common sense. 

• Energy "saving" light bulbs.  They are expensive, dim, giving off a harsh light, and are full of noxious heavy metal. 

• The Copenhagen Summit which, as I predicted, was a load of hot air from the politicians, their limousines, their aeroplanes, their pampered lifestyles...

I have one hope for the next decade:

• An outbreak of common sense.  Any political party that offers common sense will get my vote.  And those of you who are old enough, please use your vote.

All the very best for your January Examinations.

CLICK HERE  (or on the logo) TO ENTER THE SITE

Please Note:

These pages are offered in good faith. The notes have been written with a great deal of care, and every effort has been made to ensure they are accurate.

However, since I cannot control the way in which they are used, I accept no responsibility whatever for any student's failure to achieve their desired result.

If you do find anything that is not accurate or can think of other ways of improving the site, please let me know.

admin@antonine-education.co.uk

or

webmaster@jirvine.co.uk