My students said it was difficult but no one expects the Spanish inquisition (Monty Python). Why has this years paper caused such a fuss? Maybe it's the same as the reason why some video of a cat falling off a table went viral, good social media connections and timing. If I put up a video of my dog drinking from the shower I'd be lucky to get 20 views, so how did that petition get 10,000 signatures? I don't know the answer to that but its not just because of the exam paper.

One of the problems of the new subject guide is that there are no command terms in the content statements. This means teachers don't know whether to state, derive or explain. Authors of books and websites don't know this either so have to make some guesses. The general idea is that the students should understand certain key concepts so they can apply them to novel situations. Let's have a look at some of the questions.

1. Is about a machine for loading ice. Never seen this before but the question is just about conservation of energy and Newton's laws. Tricky bit towards the end but enough for most students to score marks on.

2. Concept: Gravitational field strength is a vector, so need to add the fields vectorially but hang on the vectors aren't perpendicular. The angle is 69° how are students supposed to add the vectors? The vertical components can be added which will give the result but how do they find the angle? The diagram is to scale so i suppose they use a protractor but I doubt my students will be carrying one. I think I've got it, they are supposed to make a scale drawing using the diagram. When reading the question properly I see this gets led in by part (a) so that's OK.

3. Concepts: Heat flows from hot objects to cold. Latent heat and specific heat capacity. Looks OK

4. Concepts: Longitudinal wave motion can be represented by a displacement position graph. Particles along a wave execute SHM.

5. Concept: Escape speed is the speed required to reach infinite distance. Conservation of energy. Write equation for the change in energy as in the derivation of escape speed (ΔKE = ΔPE) then use the equation in databook to substitute for v. Not sure what is required for 3 marks in section (c).

6. Concept: Around a closed loop sum of EMF = sum of PD. Only 2 marks so look for an easy way, and there is one. Most students will start to plug in Kirchoffs laws which might take longer. part b diagram is a little unclear, looks like parallel plates but probably doesn't matter.

7. Concept: The charge on a charging capacitor is related to time by an exponential equation. Looks OK.

8. Concept: Conservation of lepton number. Binding energy. Plus an NOS add on about quarks.

9. Concepts: Inverse square law of radiation. Albedo. Equilibrium. Students need to know the surface area of a sphere which is fair enough.

10. Concept: Multiple slits give narrow fringes. The fact that this example has 4 slits is not a big problem provided they know to ignore the subsidiary maxima. use of resolvance formula.

11. Concepts: Conservation of energy. Uncertainty principle. Looks Ok , need to know volume of a sphere. Uncertainty part is about KE but could find momentum then the velocity which would lead to the KE.

It's a long paper but I don't see it as being so controversial, but no one expects the Spanish inquisition.