Studying GCSE Physics provides the foundation for understanding the material world. All students should learn essential aspects of the knowledge, methods, processes and uses of science. They should gain an appreciation of how the complex and diverse phenomena of the natural world can be described in terms of a small number of key ideas that relate to the sciences and that are both inter-linked and of universal application.

These key ideas include:

● the use of models, as in the particle model of matter or the wave models of light and sound

● the concept of cause and effect in explaining such links as those between force and acceleration, or between changes in atomic nuclei and radioactive emissions

● that differences, for example between pressures or temperatures or electrical potentials, are the drivers of change

● that proportionality, for example between weight and mass of an object or between force and extension in a spring, is an important aspect of many models in science

● that physical laws and models are expressed in mathematical form.