The five mathematical skills AQA tests only in the full A-level, and the two Year 13 topics they exist for.
Book a Free ConsultationA Year 13 student on AQA A-level Physics 7408 sits three written papers in June 2027 for 250 scaled marks. Almost all of the specification's mathematics is what they already did in Year 12 — but not all. AQA's mathematical requirements appendix lists 35 skills and marks exactly five as tested only in the full A-level: MS 0.5, 2.5, 3.10, 3.11 and 3.12. Four are one technique.
Is your Year 13 confident with log-linear plots yet?
Leading Tuition provides one-to-one AQA A-level Physics tutoring built around 7408's own assessment structure. Our Physics tutors work through the five A-level-only mathematical skills, capacitor discharge and radioactive decay with the specification open, so a student is drilled on the analysis Paper 3 actually rewards.
91% of our students achieve their desired grades.
Book a Free Consultation The full AQA 7408 specification guide →Those five codes, and the two Year 13 topics AQA says they exist for, are what this page sets out. Every figure below comes from AQA's live 7408 specification, checked on 26 September 2026.
Appendix 6 of the 7408 specification is a coverage table rather than a syllabus. It sets out every mathematical skill a physics student is expected to have, grouped into five headings: 6.1 arithmetic and numerical computation, 6.2 handling data, 6.3 algebra, 6.4 graphs, and 6.5 geometry and trigonometry. Counted on AQA's live specification on 26 September 2026, those five groups carry 35 skills between them, running from MS 0.1 to MS 4.7.
Most of that table applies equally to AS Physics 7407 and to the full A-level. A small number of rows do not, and AQA distinguishes them with typography: skills shown in bold type would only be tested in the full A-level course
. Reading the table that way gives a short and very specific list.
| Code | Skill, in AQA's words | AQA's own exemplification |
|---|---|---|
| MS 0.5 | Use calculators to find and use power, exponential and logarithmic functions | Solve for unknowns in decay problems such as N = N0e−λt |
| MS 2.5 | Use logarithms in relation to quantities that range over several orders of magnitude | Recognise and interpret real world examples of logarithmic scales |
| MS 3.10 | Interpret logarithmic plots | Obtain time constant for capacitor discharge by interpreting plot of log V against time |
| MS 3.11 | Use logarithmic plots to test exponential and power law variations | Use logarithmic plots with decay law of radioactivity / charging and discharging of a capacitor |
| MS 3.12 | Sketch relationships modelled by y = k/x, y = kx², y = e±x and others, as applied to physical relationships | Sketch relationships between pressure and volume for an ideal gas |
Five rows out of 35. That is the whole of the mathematics AQA flags as belonging to the second year of the course, and it is worth being precise about what the claim is: these are not the only calculations a Year 13 student will do, because the Year 13 physics content applies the shared skills constantly. They are the only skills AQA says are not examinable in the AS qualification at all.
Set the five side by side and the list collapses. MS 0.5 names power, exponential and logarithmic functions
. MS 2.5 is use logarithms in relation to quantities that range over several orders of magnitude
. MS 3.10 is interpret logarithmic plots
. MS 3.11 is use logarithmic plots to test exponential and power law variations
. Four of the five name logarithms in the skill itself.
The fifth, MS 3.12, is the exception and a genuinely different thing: a sketching skill covering curves of the form y = k/x, y = kx², y = e±x, y = sin x and others, exemplified by sketching the relationship between pressure and volume for an ideal gas. It is the only one of the five that does not ask a student to take a logarithm.
What makes the other four a single item rather than four is AQA's exemplification column, which names the physics each skill is for. MS 0.5 gives decay problems of the form N = N0e−λt. MS 3.10 gives the time constant for capacitor discharge from a plot of log V against time. MS 3.11 gives logarithmic plots with decay law of radioactivity / charging and discharging of a capacitor
. Between them the four A-level-only logarithmic skills point at two topics and no others: radioactive decay, and the charge and discharge of a capacitor.
For a student in Year 13 that is an unusually actionable piece of information. The new mathematics of the year is not a broad front. It is one method, and there are two places in the specification where it is examined.
Working through capacitor discharge or nuclear decay this term?
These are the two topics AQA's own A-level-only mathematics exists to serve. A Leading Tuition Physics tutor will take a Year 13 student through both with the log-linear method AQA names in required practical 9, rather than treating them as two unrelated chapters.
Book a Free Consultation A-level Physics tutoring →The appendix is not the only place these codes appear. AQA's subject content pages carry an opportunities for skills development
column, and that column cites the MS codes by number against individual topics. Section 3.8.1.3, radioactive decay, is marked (A-level only)
and prints the reference MS 1.3, 3.10, 3.11 / PS 3.1, 3.2 beside its content. Two of the five A-level-only skills are named, by code, against the topic they were written for.
The content in that section is the expected set: the random nature of radioactive decay, the relation ΔN/Δt = −λN, the decay law N = N0e−λt, activity A = λN and the corresponding A = A0e−λt, and the half-life equation T½ = ln2/λ. AQA then asks for the determination of half-life from graphical decay data including decay curves and log graphs
. The log graph is not an optional flourish; it is written into the content statement.
The capacitor half of the pairing sits in section 3.7. Every one of the 23 subsections listed under 3.7 Fields and their consequences carries the (A-level only)
suffix, and capacitance is 3.7.4. Its fourth subsection, 3.7.4.4 Capacitor charge and discharge, sets the time constant RC, the time to halve as T½ = 0.69RC, and a quantitative treatment of discharge through Q = Q0e−t/RC together with the corresponding charging relation.
And then AQA says it a third time, in the practical assessment section. Required practical 9 is the investigation of the charge and discharge of capacitors, and the specification does not stop at naming the experiment: it adds that analysis techniques should include log-linear plotting leading to a determination of the time constant RC
. That sentence is the same instruction as MS 3.10's exemplification, written into a required practical.
So the chain runs in one direction and closes: an appendix flags a technique as A-level only, the content pages cite its codes against the two topics that use it, and a required practical names the method outright. A Year 13 student who can read a log-linear plot and extract a gradient has covered the specification's own answer to what is new in Year 13. A student who cannot is exposed in three separate places rather than one.
My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.
We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.
I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.
Knowing that the new skill is analytical raises a fair question: where is analysis actually worth marks? AQA answers it directly, publishing assessment objective weightings for each component rather than only for the qualification.
| Assessment objective | Paper 1 | Paper 2 | Paper 3 | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AO1 — knowledge and understanding | 34% | 32% | 31% | 33% |
| AO2 — apply knowledge and understanding | 38% | 53% | 35% | 42% |
| AO3 — analyse, interpret and evaluate | 28% | 15% | 32% | 25% |
| Weighting of component | 34% | 34% | 32% | 100% |
Source: AQA A-level Physics 7408, scheme of assessment, read 26 September 2026. Figures are AQA's own approximate percentages.
Two things stand out. Paper 3 carries the highest AO3 share of the three papers at 32%, against 28% on Paper 1 and 25% across the qualification as a whole. Paper 2 sits at the other end: its AO3 share is 15%, so Paper 3's analysis weighting is more than twice Paper 2's, 32% against 15%. Paper 2 is instead the application paper, with AO2 at 53%, the highest assessment objective figure in the table.
That is the assessment-level reason the log-plot skill is worth front-loading. It is examined as analysis, and analysis is weighted most heavily in the paper that also carries the practical and data-handling work. On raw marks the three components run 85, 85, and 45 plus 35, each scaled by a factor of one, for the 250-mark total. The qualification is linear, and AQA is explicit that students must complete all exams in May/June in a single year
, with all assessments taken in the same series, so there is no opportunity to bank a component early.
Targeting an A or A* in the June 2027 series?
Tell us which Paper 3 option your school entered and where the marks are being lost, and we will put a specialist AQA Physics tutor with your child for the run-up to the written papers. Programmes are built on 7408's own AO weightings, not a generic revision plan.
Book a Free Consultation The Year 12 AQA Physics route →Our AQA A-level Physics tutoring for Year 13 starts from the specification rather than from a generic revision scheme. The first session establishes which Paper 3 option the school entered the student for, because that determines a third of Paper 3, and then works out whether the student can already linearise an exponential and read a time constant off the gradient. Those two questions place a student more usefully than a mock percentage does.
From there the programme is built around the material this page describes: capacitor charge and discharge in 3.7.4.4, radioactive decay in 3.8.1.3, and the log-linear analysis AQA names in required practical 9 and codes as MS 3.10 and MS 3.11. Because AO3 is weighted at 32% on Paper 3 against 25% across the qualification, tutors spend proportionately more time on data questions, gradient work and uncertainty than a topic-by-topic plan would.
Sessions are one-to-one and online or in person, and our Physics tutors are specialists who teach this specification rather than physics in general. Parents get a written note after each session saying what was covered and what remains.
Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.
Five of them. AQA's 7408 specification lists 35 mathematical skills, numbered MS 0.1 to MS 4.7, and prints five of those rows in bold: MS 0.5, MS 2.5, MS 3.10, MS 3.11 and MS 3.12. The appendix states that skills “shown in bold type would only be tested in the full A-level course”. Everything else in the table is shared with AS Physics 7407. That makes these five the only mathematics on the specification that a Year 13 student meets as genuinely new examinable material.
Because four of the five A-level-only skills are the same technique. MS 0.5 covers “power, exponential and logarithmic functions”, MS 2.5 is “use logarithms in relation to quantities that range over several orders of magnitude”, MS 3.10 is “interpret logarithmic plots” and MS 3.11 is “use logarithmic plots to test exponential and power law variations”. Only MS 3.12, a sketching skill, sits outside that group. AQA's own exemplification column names just two physics contexts for the four: radioactive decay and capacitor charge and discharge.
In the subject content itself. Capacitance sits at 3.7.4 inside 3.7 Fields and their consequences, and every one of the 23 subsections listed under 3.7 carries the suffix “(A-level only)”. Section 3.7.4.4, Capacitor charge and discharge, sets the time constant RC, the time to halve as 0.69RC, and the discharge relation Q = Q0e^-t/RC. None of this appears in the AS specification 7407, so a student meets the whole of it after the Year 12 content is finished.
AQA names the method rather than leaving it to the teacher. Required practical 9 is the “investigation of the charge and discharge of capacitors”, and the specification adds that “analysis techniques should include log-linear plotting leading to a determination of the time constant RC”. That is the same skill the appendix codes as MS 3.10, whose exemplification is to “obtain time constant for capacitor discharge by interpreting plot of log V against time”. The practical and the mathematics appendix are describing one technique in two places.
Paper 3. AQA publishes assessment objective weightings for each component, and AO3, which covers analysing, interpreting and evaluating, runs at 28% on Paper 1, 15% on Paper 2 and 32% on Paper 3, against 25% across the qualification. Paper 3's AO3 share is therefore more than twice Paper 2's, 32% against 15%. Paper 1 also sits above the 25% qualification average, at 28%, so Paper 3 is the highest of the three rather than the only one above average. That is the paper where log plots and data handling are worth the most.
250 scaled marks. AQA's scheme of assessment gives Paper 1 a maximum raw mark of 85, Paper 2 a maximum of 85, Paper 3 Section A 45 and Paper 3 Section B 35, each with a scaling factor of one, for a total scaled mark of 250. The three components are weighted 34%, 34% and 32%. The qualification is linear: AQA requires that students “complete all exams in May/June in a single year” and that all assessments are taken in the same series.
AQA does not require it. The specification states that at least 40% of the marks will require mathematical skills, and that those skills “will be at least the standard of higher tier GCSE Mathematics”. That is the only standard AQA sets. In practice the five A-level-only skills are logarithmic and exponential work, which a student taking A-level Maths will already have met in another context, so the gap for a physics-only student is narrower than it looks but real, and it is worth closing early in Year 13.
Checked 26 September 2026 against AQA's live A-level Physics 7408 specification: the mathematical requirements and exemplifications appendix, the scheme of assessment, the practical assessment section, and the subject content pages for fields and nuclear physics. Related reading: the full AQA A-level Physics specification guide, the Year 12 AQA Physics route, and A-level Physics tutoring across all boards.
Book a free consultation and we will put a specialist AQA A-level Physics tutor with your child for the run-up to the 7408 written papers, working from the specification's own content and assessment weightings.
Rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews. See the AQA A-level Physics guide or A-level Physics tutoring.
Book a Free Consultation