ICSE X Physics (Science I) Post Paper Analysis 2019

Tricky, lengthy, challenging

By 05th Mar, 2019 | 05:32 pm

The Physics examination for ICSE Class 10 was conducted today, 5^th March 2019.

This year, students got two days to swot up for their Physics exam.

The ICSE X Physics (Science I) theory paper was of 80 marks and had two sections, Section I (40 marks) and Section II (40 marks), for which 2 hours were allotted.

Section I was compulsory and had 4 questions which were ‘short answer type’ questions.

Section II had six questions, out of which students were required to attempt any 4 questions of their choice.

Here, you can see the comparison of today’s paper with the previous year's Physics paper based on the unit-wise marks’ distribution of the 100 marks paper (without considering options).

On observing these pie charts, it is clear that the allotment of marks for ‘Heat’ and ‘Sound’ has increased substantially. While the corresponding weightage has decreased for ‘Light’ and ‘Modern Physics’, and the weightage for the unit ‘Force, Power, Work and Energy’ was maintained.

Based on our analysis, we have classified the question paper into three types for better understanding:

The first type is subjective questions in which theoretical questions test the remembering and understanding capability of a student. The next type is diagram-based questions. These questions are based on evaluation, drawing or explaining the concept with the help of a diagram. The third type is numerical questions which evaluate the understanding and application skills of students.

The following table shows the distribution of marks as per the typology for each unit in the Physics paper for 2019:

Unit	Question Type
Unit	Subjective	Diagram Based	Numerical Problems	Total
Force, Work, Power and Energy	2	6	8	16
Light	7	7	6	20
Sound	10	-	8	18
Electricity and Magnetism	2	7	12	21
Heat	9	3	6	18
Modern Physics	6	-	1	7

This year’s ICSE X Physics board exam paper was designed such that out of 100% of the marks (without considering the options), a student would be able to score about 64% marks by just answering the diagram-based and numerical-based questions, and 36% marks by attempting the subjective questions. All the units in the syllabus fairly found their way into the paper through these three types of questions.

Students with a thorough knowledge on the units of ‘Light’, ‘Electricity and Magnetism’ and ‘Heat’ would find this paper to be very scoring.

All in all the paper was a bit tricky, lengthy and challenging at the same time. But yes, it made for a great scoring opportunity for students who were regular with their learning of concepts and practising with sample papers.