Update 22 May 2010: If you have downloaded the notes last night, please re-download Chapter 4. There was a minor error that has been updated since.

Ms Yee Weng Yan is one of the Biology teachers in school. I was chatting with her today, and I took a look at the Biology Paper 3 (mid-year examinations are going on right now. I’m sitting in front of the laptop with a huge stack of Chem papers to mark – I’ve gotten as far as Question 2 on Paper 2; I mark everyone’s paper at the same time, one question at a time) and compared it to the Chemistry Paper 3.

Honestly, I am so not familiar with the Biology paper format or answering style, but that’s because I’ve never taught Biology, and I never continued learning Biology after my SPM years and years ago (Gosh, I sound so old!). And Biology has never really been my favourite or strong Science subject (though I still got an A).

Well, anyway, so I took a look at the Bio Paper 3 and compared it to Chemistry Paper 3, and found the format to be almost identical. Even the answering scheme was the same (3 marks for writing just one hypothesis! And you can still get 1 mark if you got it wrong, as long as you write SOMETHING! …. provided it’s a visible attempt at answering the question, not some random “Miss Hoo you’re so pretty” kind of answer). The marks allocated per question are the same, and the total for the paper is the same (50). But Physics Paper 3 is so different. There’s no pity mark for a wrong answer, and the total for Physics Paper 3 is 40.

And when I started explaining to Weng Yan about the answering scheme for Physics Paper 3, she interrupted with an observation. “You really love Physics!”

Err, yes. I didn’t realise how obvious it was. Apparently my entire face and demeanour changes and I become quite animated when I start talking Physics.

Lydia totally agreed.

Gosh, I miss Physics already. I mean, Chem’s cool and all… really. The experiments for Chemistry are quite exciting compared to Physics (how fun can it be to roll a trolley down a plane?…. dohhhh). But gosh, with Physics… I can come up with near-impossible questions for tests, which can be answered based on the principles you learn in Form 4 and 5. You know, the type you can’t do during the exams but when you see the answer you go, “OH MY GOD!!! THAT’S IT?!!?!?!”

Did I say that loud? Oops.