Developing a real curiosity for science starts by exploring how things move, change and react visually. Good online Year 10 science tutoring keeps them doing the thinking, with a tutor working alongside them in real time.
Waves and motion is one of the trickiest Year 10 topics, and equations are one of the hardest skills. In our sessions, both start with a gut feel for what’s physically happening, before any numbers go in.
Why a gut feel comes first
A printed wave diagram is frozen, and waves are all about movement. Students who have felt a wave change can predict what happens when one property changes, which is exactly what harder questions ask.
The same goes for equations. A student who knows what each term means, and has seen it in the real world, uses the equation with understanding instead of plugging numbers in and hoping.
How a session works
Sessions run on Google Meet with a shared digital whiteboard. Your child can write with a pen on an iPad, or type and draw with a mouse.
Demonstrations on camera. Many of the best wave demonstrations work at home, so your child can try one on camera and then draw what they saw.
| Demonstration | What to do | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Rope or skipping rope | Tie one end to a door handle and flick the other | Bigger flicks make bigger amplitude; faster flicks make shorter waves |
| Slinky | Push and pull one end along its length | A longitudinal wave, like sound |
| Tray of water | Tap the surface gently, then harder | Energy spreading out from a source |
| Tone generator app | Slide the frequency up and down | Higher frequency sounds higher pitched |
Drawing it live. The tutor draws a low-amplitude and a high-amplitude wave one above the other, then the same for frequency, and your child labels amplitude, wavelength, crest and trough.
Unpacking the equation. For any equation, the tutor and your child work through the same questions: what does each letter stand for, what’s its unit, what does it look like in real life, and what happens to the others if this one doubles? Only then do numbers go in.
Each session opens with a check-in and closes with a review and next steps, written into the shared Google Doc.
How we check it’s landing
The check is a prediction. If your child can say what happens to a wave, or to the other terms in an equation, when one thing changes, before calculating anything, the understanding is there.
Signs it’s working
- They can draw a wave and label amplitude, wavelength, crest and trough.
- They can say what happens to a sound when amplitude or frequency changes.
- They can predict what happens to wavelength if frequency doubles at the same speed.
- They explain what each letter in an equation means before using it.