Thirty short reading articles covering the whole AQA GCSE Physics specification. Each one tells a real-world story, then has 8 exam-style questions (about 20 marks, including a calculation and a 6-mark extended response). Answers are hidden under a “Show answers” button, so try the questions first.
1. Energy
- The Day Britain Stopped Burning Coal: energy resources
- Why Your House Loses Heat: insulation and efficiency
- Why the Sea Is Still Cold in June: specific heat capacity
2. Electricity
- Inside Your Phone Charger: charge, current and a.c./d.c.
- Why There Are No Plug Sockets in Your Bathroom: resistance and mains safety
- The Sensors That Switch On Streetlights and Heating: thermistors and LDRs
- Sparks at the Petrol Pump: Static Electricity: static electricity (Physics only)
3. Particle model of matter
- Why Diet Cola Floats: density
- The Physics of a Cup of Tea: changes of state and latent heat
- Why Car Tyres Go Flat in Winter: gas pressure
4. Atomic structure
- The Story of the Atom: the atomic model
- Marie Curie’s Radioactive Notebooks: decay, half-life and contamination
- Radon: The Invisible Gas in British Homes: background radiation
- Seeing Inside the Body with Radioactive Tracers: medical uses (Physics only)
- Could Fusion Power the Future?: fission and fusion (Physics only)
5. Forces
- The Physics of a Skydive: resultant force and terminal velocity
- Bungee Jumping and Hooke’s Law: forces and elasticity
- Levers, Spanners and Bike Gears: moments (Physics only)
- Phones, Reaction Times and Stopping Distances: stopping distances
- What Happens in a Car Crash: momentum (HT)
- How a Giant Steel Ship Floats: pressure and upthrust (Physics only)
6. Waves
- Seeing a Baby Before It Is Born: Ultrasound: wave properties and ultrasound
- How Earthquakes Revealed the Earth’s Core: seismic waves (Physics only)
- The Chocolate Bar That Invented the Microwave Oven: the electromagnetic spectrum
- How Glasses Fix Your Eyesight: lenses (Physics only)
- Why the Inside of a Car Gets So Hot: black body radiation (Physics only)
7. Magnetism and electromagnetism
- How Electric Cars Use the Motor Effect: the motor effect
- How Wireless Charging Works: induction and transformers (Physics only, HT)
8. Space physics (Physics only)
- The Life and Death of Stars: life cycle of a star
- The Expanding Universe: red-shift and the Big Bang