GCSE Physics for CCEA second edition

The Controlled Assessment Task (CAT)

Whether you are taking GCSE Physics or DAS (Physics) the CAT is exactly the same.
It has three parts.

Part A is concerned with Planning and Risk Assessment

Part B is about Data Collection
Part C is concerned with Processing, Analysis and Evaluation

All of this work must be done in school. You will not be permitted to take the material
home. The total mark for the CAT is 45.

Part A Planning and risk assessment

You will be given a short scenario and will be asked to plan an investigation which
relates in some way to your course. The plan and risk assessment together are worth
18 marks.

You need to consider very carefully how you propose to carry out the investigation.
Your written work should include:
Your background knowledge of the topic
A hypothesis this is your idea as to what you think your investigation will
show
A detailed explanation as to the reason for your hypothesis
A suitable apparatus list and how it will be assembled
An identification of the key factors you will vary, measure and control these
are sometimes called the independent, dependent and controlled variables
A blank table with appropriately labeled headings for your experimental results
A detailed method describing what you plan to do
A statement about what you propose to do with your results to prove your
hypothesis is true or false

In this section you should be able to plan how you are going to carry out the task and
state a hypothesis (what you think your results will show). Remember, your hypothesis
is a prediction what you predict may not necessarily happen. This is not a problem as
long as your prediction is a reasonable one based on the background information you
bring to your planning.

To gain full marks in this section you need to be able to develop a hypothesis but also
explain why you have produced your hypothesis. You should use scientific knowledge
and terminology relevant to the topic under consideration.

The plan you devise will need to be valid, i.e. that it will test what you are asked to do
and will allow you to accept or reject your hypothesis. It also needs to produce reliable
results. Reliability is affected by both the range of results you plan to take and also the
number of results (including repeats where appropriate).

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Part of the plan is to do some risk assessment. This means you will have to consider the
safety aspects of your plan, identify the dangers and state what you propose to do to
minimise the risk to yourself and your fellow students.

The Plan and Risk Assessment is then collected by your teacher and marked. What
happens next depends on how well you do in Part A.

Part B Data Collection

If your plan is OK or it needs only very small changes your teacher will tell you so and
you will go on to carry out your investigation by doing one or more experiments and
recording your results.

However, sometimes your teacher has to amend your plan. This might be because your
proposed method wont work; or perhaps it is too dangerous; or maybe there is limited
apparatus of the type you want to use. If this is the case, your teacher will give you a
new plan and ask you to use it rather than your original plan.

Before you start doing any experimental work you should have clear in your mind
exactly what you intend to do, how you will set up the apparatus, the measurements you
propose to make, how you propose to record your results and what you propose to do
with them to confirm the hypothesis. Your results should be recorded in the blank table
you drew in Part A.

It may surprise you to learn that there are no marks for the Data Collection part of
your investigation. However, you do need to collect data, because it is almost certain
that you will be asked to do something with the numbers obtained in Part C.

Part C Processing, Analysis and Evaluation

This is very like an ordinary examination and must be done by you alone, without
help from fellow pupils. You may be asked to plot a suitable graph to show the data
you collected in Part B and to draw conclusions based upon it. You may also be asked
questions about how you kept the controlled factors constant and other details relating
to your experiment. You will generally be given some external data on which you
must do some calculations or describe trends.

Finally you will be asked to do a piece of extended writing of some topic related to
your investigation. In this writing you will be assessed on the quality of the science in
your response and on your written communication skills, including the use of science
terms.

Part C is worth 27 marks (or around 60% of the entire CAT), so it is important that you
gain as much practice as you can on this type of activity.

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An Example of a CAT
Below is an example of the type of activity you might be asked to do in a CAT.

In the presence of a beam of light opaque shadows like golf balls, coins
and sticks cast a shadow. Shadows are important! Stage lighting
engineers often have to try hard to avoid shadows on the stage. Town
planners and others try to ensure that street lamps are arranged so that
few areas of the pavement are in shadow, causing a hazard for people
walking after dark.

Plan and carry out an investigation on one or more of the different factors
that affect the size of the shadow cast by an opaque object on a screen.

Planning and Risk Assessment

In the first few paragraphs you need to state briefly what you already know about light.
You can use your previous work in class as a basis for this.

Where do you begin to plan this investigation? The first thing to think about is the
apparatus you would need to produce a shadow. Look carefully at the task again. It tells
us we need a source of light, an opaque object and a screen. A lamp house can produce
a shadow of a coin on a screen think of the entertainment acts when a persons hand
is made to produce a shadow which looks like the head of a rabbit or a dog!

Now you can draw up an apparatus list, the diagram shows how it can be arranged. But
what is to be done with it? You are asked to investigate the size of the shadow. So you
might make the diameter of the shadow the dependent variable. You must now think
how the arrangement above could be changed to make the shadow bigger. Here there is
a choice. You could decide to:
change the diameter of the opaque object by using different coins
change the distance between the lamp house and the opaque object
change the distance between the opaque object and the screen
change the diameter of the hole in the lamp house.

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Suppose you decide to change the distance between the opaque object and the screen.
Then that distance becomes our independent variable.

Our controlled factors are then:

the diameter of the opaque object
the distance between the lamp house and the opaque object
the diameter of the hole at the lamp house.

So what will you actually do? This is your procedure or method. You might write it out
as shown below:

Method
Set up the apparatus as shown on the previous page.
Set the distance from the lamp house to the coin at 100 mm and do not change it
throughout the experiment.
Use a ruler to set the distance between the opaque object and the screen at
300 mm
Use a ruler to measure the diameter of the shadow on the screen.
Record these two measurements in a previously drawn table.
Move the screen 50 mm further from coin and measure the new distance and the
new diameter of the shadow on the screen and record these two measurements
in the table. Repeat this for screencoin distances ranging from, say, 300 mm to
650 mm in steps of 50 mm.
Repeat the experiment from the beginning and in each case calculate the
average diameter of the shadow.

Now that we know what we will be doing we can draw up a blank results table.

Distance between coin

300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650
and screen in mm
Diameter of shadow in
mm (first set)
Diameter of shadow in
mm (second set)
Average diameter of
shadow in mm

What do we expect the results will show? Look at the diagrams below.

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The diagrams show that as the distance, d, from the coin to the screen increases, the
diameter of the shadow increases also. This allows us to state a hypothesis:

Hypothesis
As the distance from coin to screen increases, the diameter of the shadow
increases also.

You can test this hypothesis by plotting a line graph of diameter of the shadow (in mm)
against distance from coin to screen (in mm). You would expect to see a line of positive
gradient (or slope).

Risk Assessment
The lamp house in this experiment is operated using mains electricity and should have a label
attached which shows when it was last tested for electrical safety. You might mention in your
risk assessment that you need to check that the label showed the inspection took place recently.

The lamp house itself can become very hot. You might mention that the lamp house should be
switched off when not in use to avoid such high temperatures. It might also be a good idea to
have a label near the lamp house saying CAUTION: LAMP HOUSE MAY BE VERY HOT.

Data Collection
This part of the CAT is simply your completed results table.
Typically your results table might show:

Distance between coin

300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650
and screen in mm
Diameter of shadow in
79 91 102 110 121 131 140 154
mm (first set)
Diameter of shadow in
81 91 98 108 119 131 142 146
mm (second set)
Average diameter of
80 91 100 109 120 131 141 150
shadow in mm

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Processing, Analysis and Evaluation

This part of the CAT consists of a number of questions relating to the experimental
work you have done. Below is a list of typical questions for this type of investigation.

1. On a sheet of graph paper, plot an appropriate graph to show the information in

your results table. Remember to draw the line of best fit.

2. a) What did you find out in your investigation? Use your results and information
from your graph to support your answer.
b) Does what you found out in your investigation agree with the hypothesis you
made in your planning? Explain your answer.

3. a) State one variable that you kept the same and explain why you did this.
b) If you were doing your experiment again, state one improvement you would
make and explain why you would make it.

It is very likely that you will be given data which you did not collect in your
experiment and be asked to analyse it. Below is a question of this type.

4. Tests were carried out on the shadows obtained from street lamps using circular
opaque objects of different diameters and the results obtained are shown below. The
distance between the lamp and the opaque object and the distance between the
opaque object and the shadow were constant throughout.

Diameter of opaque object in mm 100 150 200 250 300 350 450 500
Diameter of shadow in mm 80 120 161 201 242 280 320 400
a) Circle the anomalous result in the table.
b) Describe what else should have been done when collecting these results to
ensure that errors or anomalies could more easily be identified.
c) Use the data in the table above to describe fully the relationship between the
diameter of the shadow and the diameter of the opaque object.
d) Use the data in the table above to estimate the diameter of the shadow of an
opaque object of diameter 175 mm.

It has been suggested that the diameter of the opaque object and the diameter of the
shadow are related by the equation:

diameter of shadow
0.8
diameter of opaque object

e) Use this equation to predict the diameter of an opaque object if its shadow has a
diameter of 224 mm.

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5. The 12 lamps used by a stage lighting engineer all have an input electrical power of
500 W.
a) Explain what it is meant by the statement that the input electrical power of a
lamp is 500 W.
Each lamp has an efficiency of 0.19.
b) Calculate how much useful power is produced when all 12 lights are switched
on.
A stage manager has suggested that the existing 12 lamps should all be replaced
with energy efficient lamps.
c) Calculate the efficiency of the proposed new lighting system if each new lamp
produces the same useful power as the old lamp, but its input electrical power is
only 100 W.

The final question may be one which requires you to write several complete
sentences to gain full marks. In this question you are likely to be assessed on your
written communication skills and your ability to use specialist science terms.
Below is a question of this type.

6. Read carefully the short newspaper article below.

Using the information in this article and you knowledge of polluting and non-
polluting energy resources, describe and explain the impact of the widespread use
of more efficient lighting systems.

In 1961 over four million filament lamp CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. It
bulbs were made in Britain every week. is believed that improvements in lighting
Today we manufacture much less than that efficiency alone could reduce our greenhouse
every year. More and more householders are gas emissions by around 8% over the next 10
turning to the new energy efficient bulbs. years.
This is all part of the governments plan to Improving the quality and efficiency of
make us consider very carefully the use of our street lighting has also a role. Over the
energy in our homes. next five years there are plans to replace
According to a government spokesperson inefficient street lamps with the much better,
we all need to change our behaviour is low power lamps. And according to one
respect of energy efficiency. Increasing the spokesman this does not necessarily mean
efficiency of all our appliances in the home poorer lighting.
has a major role to play in cutting down

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Controlled Assessment Task Questions

An energy efficiency rating must, by law, be shown on all fridges, freezers,
fridge/freezers, washing machines, tumble dryers, washer dryers, dishwashers, electric
ovens and light bulb packaging in the UK. A more energy efficient product will help
you cut down your energy usage, and therefore reduce your gas and electricity bills.
Many of these products contain electric motors, the efficiency of which contributes
to the overall energy efficiency rating of the product.

Plan and carry out an investigation on one or more of the different factors that affect the
efficiency of an electric motor.

Part A: Planning and Risk Assessment

In the next two sections (your hypothesis and your plan) you will be assessed on your
written communication skills, including the use of specialist, scientific terms.

(a) Your hypothesis Say what you think will happen.

(b) Your Plan What, in detail, will you do?

(c) Your Risk Assessment Consider Health and Safety issues. State how you can
make your results reliable.

Part B : Data Collection

Draw a blank results table and use it to record and process your data.

Part C: Processing, Analysis and Evaluation

1. Use the information in your results table to plot and interpret an appropriate graph. (4 marks)

2. a) What did you find out in your investigation? Use the results and information
from your graph to support your answer. (3 marks)
b) Does what you found out in your investigation agree with your hypothesis?
Explain your answer. (1 mark)

3. a) State one factor that you kept the same in your investigation. Explain how this
made it a fair test. (2 marks)
b) If you were doing your experiment again, state one improvement you would
make and explain why you would make it. (2 marks)

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4. An electric crane manufactures carries out a number of tests on the efficiency of

the electric motor used in one of its electric cranes. The results for each test are
below.
a) Which graph is from an investigation similar to your own? Explain your answer. (2 marks)

The following questions relate to the graph you have chosen in Question 4 a).

b) Are there any anomalous results in the graph you have chosen? (2 marks)
c) i) Describe fully the trend shown by the results shown on the graph. (3 marks)
ii) Does the trend shown by these results reflect that of your own
investigation? Explain your answer. (1 mark)

5. Look carefully at Graph 3.

a) Draw a best fit line for this graph. (1 mark)
b) Estimate the efficiency of the motor when the operating voltage is 40V. (1 mark)
c) The manufacturer recommends that the motor should not be used at an
operating voltage of less than 100V. Explain why this is the case. (2 marks)

6. Look carefully at Graph 1.

a) What load gives the maximum efficiency for this motor? (1 mark)
b) Describe the relationship between the load lifted and the average efficiency
between 0 kg and 125 kg. Explain your answer. (2 marks)