Feedback on MATH35001 exam Jan 2015 ----------------------------------- Overall the paper was done extremely well. Marking it, I actually felt that the paper was "too easy" and expected to have to scale it down, but the mark distribution was exactly as it should have been (based on the students' previous averages, which we use as guidance for scaling). Lots of people got grades in the 90s and only very few did really badly (and those tended to truly beyond hope). Re the specific questions: Q1: Mainly fine; some (though very few) students are (still!) confused by index notation... Q2: Again mainly fine; some people struggled with the non-dimensionalisation. Q3: Another easy one (it seemed); the only problems arose from the complex roots of the characteristic polynomial. Q4: A surprising number of students skipped essential steps in the derivation of the parallel flow equation. E.g.: Why is grad p = G(t) e_x? Q5: Generally well done. If anything, people struggled with (i.e. cheated) with the derivation of Bessel's ODE (always a temptation when it's a "show that" question -- I do actually read the derivation and don't just look at the final result!). Many people omitted the final question re the physical interpretation. Q6: Generally OK; lots of people got stuck in the application of the boundary conditions (because of the slightly lengthy algebra), messed up the argument that shows why the shear stress is singular, or provided an unconvincing (a.k.a. wrong) explanation of where it comes from.