How to Prepare for A-Level Physics: A Five-Section Study Plan

A-Level Physics, as Physics Zen teaches it, selects skills from across the app. Sixty skills. Five sections. Gravity at $9.81\,\mathrm{m/s}^2$. That is a different object from the AP Physics 1 path, which stops after mechanics and uses $9.8$.

UK A-Level courses are set by several boards, and their papers are not identical. This guide does not pretend to be AQA, OCR, Edexcel or Cambridge International. It is a plan for the in-app path: exam-style practice across a selection of the skills Physics Zen currently generates, with the A-Level gravity convention already applied.

The app is not affiliated with any examination board. The problems are not official past papers.

What the Path Actually Contains

Mechanics (26 skills). A selection overlapping the AP path: kinematics, dynamics, work and energy, momentum, circular motion and gravitation, SHM, rotation, fluids. Teach this first. Later sections assume you can already split a projectile (our projectile motion worked examples show how), draw a force diagram, and write a conservation statement.

Electricity and magnetism (12 skills). Coulomb's law, field and potential. Ohm's law, series and parallel, power, Kirchhoff. Capacitors and RC circuits, magnetic force, Faraday induction, alternating current and transformers. AP Physics 1 in this app does not include this section. If you are on A-Level, it is not optional colour. It is the next substantial block of the path.

Waves and optics (10 skills). Wave speed and graphs, the electromagnetic spectrum, sound and Doppler, intensity, standing waves, Snell's law, thin lenses, interference and diffraction. Again, out of scope for the current AP Physics 1 course here, in scope for A-Level.

If you are revising that sound skill, the Doppler effect formula guide works through its source and listener signs.

Thermodynamics (5 skills). Specific heat, phase changes, gas laws in kelvin, the first law, engines and the Carnot limit.

Modern physics (7 skills). Photon energy and the photoelectric effect, matter waves, atomic transitions, radioactive decay, mass-energy, quarks and leptons, pair production and annihilation.

That list is the product. Do not add electricity to an AP session because the A-Level path has it, and do not drop fluids from A-Level because an older AP book never mentioned them.

How to Use It

Start on Kinematics if that topic is not already fluent. It is free end to end. Then open the A-Level path. The path itself is Premium, with one free first lesson so you can see the format before paying. After that, follow the teaching order rather than skipping to nuclear physics because it looks like the end of a textbook.

Generated items change the numbers. Instant checking and a worked solution sit on the same screen. Theory, including diagrams for circuits, waves, rays and energy levels, stays in the session. Five mastery levels per skill hold you on a concept until the method is stable.

If the loop itself is the thing you want to fix, read how to study physics effectively first, then come back to the path.

Conventions That Matter

Use $g = 9.81\,\mathrm{m/s}^2$ on this path. Temperatures in gas-law and engine items belong in kelvin. Closed versus open pipes are not the same standing-wave rule. Kirchhoff needs a two-source circuit, not a single series loop you could have done with Ohm's law; our Kirchhoff's laws guide works one through.

None of that is a secret of a particular board. It is the difference between a model you can name and a formula you hope is on a sheet.

AP or A-Level?

If your course is the current eight-unit AP Physics 1, use the AP path and the AP study plan. That path is mechanics only. Adding circuits there is practising the wrong exam.

If your course spans electricity, waves, heat and modern physics as well as mechanics, the A-Level path is the one that matches the app. Same solving loop, larger map, different $g$.