OCR runs two A-Level Physics specifications. This guide is Physics A, H556. The other is Physics B, Advancing Physics, H557, which teaches physics through contexts and is organised completely differently.

The code is on your exam timetable and on the front of most endorsed textbooks. If yours says H557 you need the Physics B guide instead.

Yes. 25 topics across the six modules, 156 subtopics, 1,862 questions. Modules 1 and 2 are the practical skills and the handling of physical quantities that the rest assumes, and both are in the guide because both are examined on the written papers.

The full topic list is here, grouped by module.

The Endorsement itself, H556/04, is marked by your teacher across the course and reported separately as a pass, so it is not examined and not in the guide.

Practical work is also examined on all three written papers, and that content is in the guide as two topics: Practical Skills in the Written Papers, 86 questions, and The Practical Endorsement, 82 questions, covering apparatus, technique, uncertainty and the analysis of results.

The mathematical requirements are examined throughout rather than as a separate paper, and they are in the guide where they belong: logarithms in radioactive decay and capacitor discharge, gradients and areas under graphs, the small angle approximation, radians in circular motion and oscillations, and the handling of uncertainty and significant figures.

Some of them. OCR supplies a Data, Formulae and Relationships booklet in the exam, but it does not carry everything, and an equation you have to look up costs time you do not have. The guide asks for the equations, what each symbol means, and the conditions under which each one applies, which is the part the booklet never gives you.

Unified Physics draws on all six modules and joins topics that were taught apart. That is a recall problem before it is a technique problem, and the guide is the whole course in one file, so a synoptic round is a pass over every topic rather than a hunt through six sets of notes.

About twenty minutes for one subtopic, all three steps. Topics vary from 25 questions to 179, so work by subtopic and the size of the topic stops mattering.

Write. You write the paper by hand, and step 2 only works written out because that is where the wording is corrected. Physics definitions are marked on precision, so the difference between your version and the printed one is the thing worth seeing.

The method page sets out the evidence.

H556 is linear, so everything is examined at the end of Year 13. Work each subtopic in the week it is taught, or start a first full pass in the January of Year 13 and run returns from there.

Yes. The method puts the specification into memory. Past papers train the multi-step calculation under time, the unfamiliar context and the six-mark answer. OCR publishes them free.

A PDF, emailed on purchase. The questions for a topic print together and the answers for that topic follow directly after them.

A PDF of 1,862 exam-style questions covering the whole of OCR A-Level Physics A, with the answers printed after each topic.

It is not a textbook. It is the tool for moving taught content into memory and for showing whether it went in.

There should be handwritten answers on paper and three passes over the same questions. The method produces two numbers each session, the score on the first closed-book pass and the score on the third.

Both are true and they are not in competition. A student who cannot state Newton’s second law precisely, or who has to derive a relationship they should know, loses the marks and the time. The understanding is taught in lessons. This is the part that makes it retrievable in a hall with a clock running.

£8.00 for the whole specification. An endorsed OCR A-Level Physics textbook is usually £30 to £40, and covers one of the two years.

Find the specification code. OCR runs Physics A (H556) and Physics B Advancing Physics (H557), and they are different courses. The code is on the exam timetable. This guide is H556.

156 subtopics at roughly twenty minutes each is about 52 hours for a full first pass. Spread across Year 13 that is under two hours a week.

Past papers, which OCR publishes free, a calculator, and their own notes for anything not yet taught.

With Module 2, Foundations of Physics, then Module 3, Forces and Motion. Both are examined on Paper 1 and Paper 3, and the rest of the course assumes them.