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Medical Physics--what did you think? (1 Viewer)

Dumsum

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This section was probably the best part of the paper, but it was still screwed. The 7 mark question on ultrasound absolutely screwed me over, I just ended up describing how each image is produced but forgot wtf a phase scan actually was, and made up some crap about this being because of advances in technology and then went on about ethical issues to do with sex-determination and abortion (ultrasound shows deformities -> abortion... = ethical issue). The rest wasn't too bad, except that we've never looked at what gadolinium does in class. I think that was a component B question though, I got an answer out that I thought was pretty good (to do with clearer images because of increased difference in signal strength).

So yeah, that's my rant. How did you guys find it?
 

chooette

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I'm not sure I talked about technology enough, and maybe did the phase thing a little wrong for the 7 marker... But I thought it was ok overall. I wrote heaps for those 2 mark questions... Like almost a page for the first one... Ah well, NO MORE HSC!
 
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GaNeSh

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yeh i rekon the second part of that question was pointless...who cares about issues this is physics not society and culture....the short answer needed too long of an answer 4 my liking
 

Jago

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how much did you guys write in the options? i only got 4 and a bit pages..
 

jess_83839

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i used 7 pages, 2 pages for the ultrasound - yeah confused about the technological advances (i talked about transducers, computers, etc... not sure what a phase scan is). overall, a challenging paper.
 

asimz

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7 marker shouldn't be on ultrasound and society too limited.
 

Haku

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i got 8 pages, but technology didn;t describe too much for the 7marker. also the issues i also said abnormalities ---> abortion but i think now its good cause u can treat it with early detection

but the whole option was damn 4 pages...
 

Ben-d0g

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To be honest, I thought the med phys was harder than in recent years. It was still manageable, but we might all get a bit worked over on that ultrasound one.
 

Abtari

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i thought the medical physics questions were the hardest ever asked in the new hsc - not necessarily because of their content. they were certainly longer questions, even two mark questions required a fair bit of writing to get a good explanation down. this was because the questions were so general that you had to make sure you covered what they were actually looking for. as for the 7 mark question, it was a killer - they specified it down to ultrasound, and in particular, a-scans, sector scans and phase scans.... and asked how advances in technology have impacted on these developments, and how these developments have in turn, had 'effects' on society. it was a very convoluted question, and responses will vary inevitably...

but as long as you have a fairly detailed discussion of the technological advancements that have allowed the development of the 'images given' and their resultant effects on society, you should be expecting to get 5-7.

in a nutshell, medical physics sucked real bad.
 

steamroller60

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med p[hysics

yeah. on the ultrasound q i rambled and talked about how you can tell the sex of a foetus and poeple migh abort.....then i talked about the elderly living longer and being a burden on the health system.

i wrote (for the option) 8 pages (biggish writing tho...)
 

mikey11

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i wrote 14 but i think i was just inlcuding usless stuff as well as the important i aced this section i think i may have screwed up the middle section
 

CoFFee BreAk

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Mann... I didn't even talk about abortion! Damn, how could I forget it!? I lost a lot of marks on that question already. But then again, my mind seem to be limited to some extent during exams, especially Physics. I wrote about 7 pages for Med Physics, but I just jottted down all that was still stuck in my head.
 

Celestgirl

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uhmm it is... not really hard i guess

for q 29 a (i) i guess you just explain how the radioisotopes used to identify, you say that is chemically attached to molecule that take part in the biochemistry of the body and say that it can produce the structure and functioning and you can also say that radioisotope produce positron antrimatter of electron and when they collide they annihilate producing 2 gamma rays that can be detected by the computer and the computer will for the graph. moreover you can say that PET can be used to trace a metabolic change so it can confirm the correction made

ii just say 99TC for it is technetium 99 and that is the most widely used in medical physic (if you read the PET scan in internet) why? because it get shor half life and since it is emitting gamme, it is suitable because the short half life enables the PET to confirm the correction for 6.02 hours eq the patient will never be corrected for 20.30 minutes isnt it? and don't ever justify that you will do twice PET scan, since the scan is expensive, and you can also say it is non alpha emitter

b (i) just calculate it, and remember you can eliminate 10^6 since it is just the same amoung as the Z2 and Z1

ii just compare it, the x-ray uses cathode rays, fast moving electrons suddenly stopped by the high atomic number and somehow you can further says that the x-rays is get accelerated with more high speed to make the kinetic energy get transferred to heat at a single collision to make the softer x-rays becomes harder x-rays

for the endoscope you can say that it uses the TIR (total internal reflection) and using the snell's law

(c) just explains what is a-scan, b-scan(sector scan) and phase scan.. and you must explain the advances of each scanning system e.g. you could say in a-scan the transducer is stationary and it also measure distance or depth, but in b-scan the transduer is circling around a sector or moved backward or forward to get different spot with different intensity to form 2 dimensional images and the phase scan uses the phase array transducer that allow a real time image to be captured... for the current issues you can just explain that more abortion since some cultural fact that states some people would prefer boys/girls or if they know the baby is twin they would do abortion

d(i) this is very easy since the superconducting magnet is used to exert magnetic field to the atomic nuclei to make it in the two states antiparallel and paraller and the magnetic also produces the lamour precession and lamour frequency and Radio frequency you can justify it by saying that it is used to detect the signal, why? because if we supplied the radio frequency equal to lamour frequency the magnet will turn to spin down state and when we cut it off the spin down magnets get back to its state give up the same energy frequency that is given and this frequency allows the signals to get detected

q29 ii Gadolinium,, you can say that is has increased the signals or the amount of proton in the atomic nuclei

iii quite tough one, but it is clearly known that CAT is more invasive and MRI is non invasive because CAT uses x-ray that is ionizing radiation that can knock off electron in the atom and creates ion, this ion can cause the DNA break down or mutate to becomes cancerous cells, you may say that MRI is good at give the detail of the image of soft tissues rather than CAT because MRI can detect the watery organ of the body, MRI can get clear image of the internal organ, and the last you could say that it can prevent further cost of medical and extensive surgery

it is not hard actually but i guess it is not easy tooo
 

exa_boi87

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For the ultrasound question I also looked at how technological advancements in ultrasound haev allowed the development of CAT scanning :s
 

Haku

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lol

what are some of the technological advancements?

i only faster computers and transducers for the phase scan. thats about it.

damn i concentrated more on how it was produced
 

Abtari

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exa_boi87 said:
For the ultrasound question I also looked at how technological advancements in ultrasound haev allowed the development of CAT scanning :s
what? CAT scans had nothing to do with the question, i mean u could mention it, but just means u have less time to respond to the focus of the question..:p
 

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