Those of us who teach physics know that, since the specification change 3 years ago, recall of equations has taken on a new importance. Around that time, I was in a meeting with some senior people from Ofqual, one of whom said that she was entirely comfortable with students not being able to access four and five mark calculation questions if they could not recall the equation.
With this in mind, I created the equation recall sheet which is shared in the revision resources section of this site. I tried to keep it as consistent as possible with all of the formulae rearranged to make them multiplications. I tried to make the sentences simple and with a silly picture to aid memory.
There were 3 I could not do. Efficiency and Acceleration are always divisions so they did not fit the format. But the bigger issue came with the wave equation. How does one deal with an equation with a letter not in our alphabet?
I shared this with Jim Henderson of @KaleidoscopeEd1 and he liked the idea and made a suggestion to recall the wave equation which had something to do with llamas. It was good and I did remember it (honest, Jim!) until I tried to share it with a colleague.
“That’s sorted now,” he said.
When I asked why, he said that a bright girl in his class simply said “It’s easy. Just remember it’s a Very Funny Y.”
I couldn’t get over the simplicity and aptness of that simple sentence. Of course a lambda is a Very Funny Y and it matches the wave equation exactly.
Perhaps everyone already uses this but it was a real eye opener to me.
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