STPM 14/12/2010

Had physics paper 1 this morning, followed by maths in the afternoon.


Barely slept last night. Don't know why, the mind just couldn't stop thinking and kept spiralling into inconsequential matters.


Anyway,

2010 STPM Physics 960/1, Question 43


An air wedge formed by placing a thin metal foil between two glass slides is shown in the diagram below.

(this is not the actual diagram shown in the exam paper.)

When the air wedge is illuminated normally by light of wavelength 670nm, the dark fringes appears at both ends of the glass slides. If the thickness of the metal foil is 60.3 um, what is the number of dark fringes formed?

A. 89
B. 91
C. 179
D. 181
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First calculated answer: 180 =.=

Try another formula: 179.5 :o

Try another method: 180.5 >.<

keksiwah ah......

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* Image of "air wedge" extracted from

http://www.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/phys151/lectures/images/young_prob_37-17.gif

STPM

The exam didn't go well. I messed up all the science papers 2. It was horrible. I never suffered so much while answering exam questions.

I was revising for Biology paper 1 (objective questions) yesterday. Again it struck on me how insensible the questions can be. Sometimes I seriously feel that the exam questions test my exam skills instead of knowledge or anything close to that.

While I was doing some past year questions, I felt that some of the people who set the questions obviously lacked 逻辑概念 (logical concept). For example,

STPM 2008 Biology Paper1

25. What is injected into the body of a person bitten by a dog?

A. Dead bacteria
B. Weakened viruses
C. Serum containing antigens
D. Serum containing specific antibodies

My first response to this question was:
huh? What is injected ah? Dog saliva? Dog can inject one meh? Not snake ah?

Of course, the official answer is D. I think the antibodies is injected as a precaution for rabies (狂犬病?）。What annoys me is the presumptuous attitude of the question. How I know what is GOING TO BE injected ah? Maybe the doctor gila, he inject insulin, cannot ah!

Maybe the victim is a drug user, he inject coccaine, you choy meh!

I mean, can't they just rephrase the question into:

"What is the content of the injection prescribed/administered to a patient who has just been bitten by a dog?"

I know la, my English not good....but at least the meaning gets clearer right?

Of course la....there would still be fussy students who claim that the "content" should be water.

>.<

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Then, I was actually lol-ing when I read this question in the morning.

STPM 2010 Biology Paper 1

34. In a population of 100 000 chickens in a farm, 1000 died due to the chicken influenza virus. By assuming that the virus resistance gene is dominant, how many chickens in the farm are carriers of the recessive gene?

This sounds like the "on the tree got 3 birds. Somebody use gun shoot down 1 bird, still got how many left on tree?" riddle, doesn't it?

So I was joyfully contemplating whether I should include the dead chickens into my count, lol-ing for a few seconds.
Thank goodness, there is no such ambiguity in the answer choices.

Just in case you might be interested, the answer choices to the above question are:

A. 1000
B. 10000
C. 18000
D. 90000

(Bonus mark: Assumption 2: All recessive phenotypes will be infected and will die once infected.)

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Oh. Whatever. I hate Pengajian Am.