A-Level Notes

These are my notes from when I studied Maths, Further Maths, Computer Science and Physics at A-Level. For my notes from university, see [[University Notes]]^U. These notes weren’t written with anyone else in mind, so if they do not make a whole lot of sense or seem strange you might be lacking the context that I had at the time of writing them. There’s also a lot of spelling mistakes (see the Further Maths ‘matricies’ topic for example).

For a list of all the notes for each subject, see:

• [[Maths - Syllabus]]^A, for example:
  • [[Maths - Reciprocal Trig Functions]]^A
  • [[Stats - Variance and Standard Deviation]]^A
• [[Further Maths - Syllabus]]^A, for example:
  • [[Further Maths - Weierstrass Substitution]]^A
  • [[Further Maths - Travelling Salesperson Problem]]^A
• [[Computing - Syllabus]]^A, for example:
  • [[Computing - Finite State Machines]]^A
  • [[Computing - AQA Assembly]]^A
• [[Physics - Syllabus]]^A, for example:
  • [[Physics - Archimedes’ Principle]]^A
  • [[Physics - Hertzsprung-Russell Diagrams]]^A

The main bulk of the notes are flashcards, written in the style described in [[Albatross, how I take notes]]^B. More details about how I practiced questions from each subject can be found in [[Sergeant, applying spaced application to A-levels]]^B.

For people who don’t know or may have forgotten how A-levels are taught, you pick 3-4 subjects you want to study at the start of 2 years and have lessons for each of them. I picked all STEM-related subjects but I promise there are other ones too, like Food Science, Biblical Hebrew and Politics.

The content is divided across the 2 years. If you choose to only study a particular subject for one year, you earn an AS-Level (“advanced subsidiary”) qualification, otherwise you get the full A-Level qualification.

I also did an EPQ or “extended project qualification”. This is an AS-Level qualification where you get to write an essay or build something; I investigated sensory substitution for the visually impaired in an interactive essay that can be found in [[Projects]]^M.

Further Maths is additional maths content that goes above what is taught in Maths. Some schools choose to teach all of Maths in one year, followed by all of Further Maths in the next. My sixth form chooses to teach both simultaneously, which is why there’s a pretty sharp separation in these notes.