AQA's PSA - top marks!

Whether you do, or do not, score one of the top PSA marks is not a major concern, but it can't hurt to aim high! Here we show you what your teacher will need to see you do if to justify giving you 5 or 6 marks.

AQA says that to gain 5 or 6 marks, you must:

1. be competent with much equipment, some being quite complex
2. take measurements to an appropriate level of accuracy
3. present, while working, data in a suitable table.

These points agree with the descriptions in level 6: you can do practicals very well, without help and can cope with complex situations.

Translation Please!

AQA consider a "demanding context" to be one where you have to use more than one instrument at the same time to take readings. In Physics, for instance, this might include using a voltmeter and an ammeter at the same time so you can study resistance. However, it would be more demanding still if the meters were analogue and not digital.

In chemistry, you might record the temperature of a liquid as you heat it, using a stopwatch to time the experiment. It would be silly to record times to an accuracy of 1/100 s if the times were quite large - say several minutes. This is needless precision and anyway no human can use a stopwatch accurately to 1/100 s.

If, however, you were timing the fall of an object over a certain distance, this could happen quite quickly: say about 1 or 2 s. Recording times then to the nearest whole second is unhelpful: you need the high precision of a stopwatch so you can compare your data properly.

PSA Level 6 - recording data suitably

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