Last minute GAMSAT 1 month study plan days 11-20

Days 1-10
Days 11-20
Days 21-30

• Day 11: Look up the human heart and how it works. What’s the pressure in different areas of the heart? What would the pressure look like graphed over time in the aorta? In the left ventricle? If you were graphing the sound of the heart over the space of one heartbeat, at what point would you hear the biscupid valve close? The tricuspid? What would happen if blood was noisily flowing past a blockage in the aorta, or in the pulmonary artery? Which point in your graph is systole? Diastole? Which vessels carry oxygenated blood? Nutrient-rich blood?
  

• Day 12: Optics. Firstly, the important thing to remember with mirrors is that the angle of incidence should be equal to the incidence of refraction. This and some simple geometry should be sufficient to solve the mirrored table tennis table problem – can you solve these in less than a minute?
  

• • A table tennis table with a mirrored surface is set up in a room with a single window. The table tennis table has an opaque net 10cm high. The sun shines through the window, off the surface of the table, and projects a light patch onto the opposite wall. What is the height of the shadow caused by the net? If the table is moved 1m closer to the window, how does the image on the opposite wall change?
  Also have a look at the optics section of your physics textbook - or an online resource - to check up on lenses. Which is the real and the virtual image? What changes in size occur?
  

• Day 13: Section 1 comprehension. Poetry and cartoon comprehension. Read through some cartoons like xkcd. What’s funny about each cartoon? What’s implied, but not stated? Find some somewhat obscure poetry. What’s the poem about? How does the poem use rhythm, rhyme and choice of words to get across the poet’s message? Look at poetry analysis– the Wikipedia article has several examples that talk you through the process of analysing poetry for meaning and intent. Be able to use literary terms to describe what you are reading.
  

• Day 14: Take second half-length practice test, again to time. Try practicing moving through the questions you know fastest and making sure you don’t run out of time.
  

• Day 15: Recap on test. Homeostasis and hormones, feedback loops. Drawing hormone interaction diagrams to simply understanding.
  

• Day 16: Membranes exist in many forms. They form a barrier between two areas. If the membrane is semi-permeable, or has small holes, then solutes - molecules dissolved in a solvent like water - can pass through it. If a solute such as salt is introduced to one side of a membrane, then it will slowly move through the membrane until the concentration on both sides is equal in a process calleddiffusion. Water will similarly move to equalise concentration - this is called osmosis.
  Examine the lipid membrane. Understand polar and non-polar molecules. How does soap work to break up fat? How does the lipid membrane separate the interior of the cell from the exterior?Ion channels and pumps are proteins that form channels to cross over the lipid bilayer. What parts of the proteins are polar? What parts are non-polar? What molecules require energy to pump across the membrane?
  

• Day 17: Fun day!
  

• Day 18: Read a book on being a doctor, with personal experiences. Look up a series of medical school interview questions and take some time to think and answer each one. Then think about how you would use this material in your reflective essay. It may be on a topic such as intelligence or the importance of family or social networks.
  

• Day 19: Meiosis and mitosis. Get out the spoons and forks from your kitchen, chuck them on the table, and poof! they're chromosomes. Practice running through the different cell divisions. How many offspring cells at there at each point? When do chromosomes mix up and cross over? At what point is the DNA collated into chromosomes, and at what point is it spread out? If you had a graph of the DNA concentrations within cells, can you pick the different phases?
  

• Day 20: F=MA is one of two equations you will need to memorise for physics. Force in newtons equals mass in kilograms times acceleration in metres per second per second. This may seem a little confusing but distance is measured in metres, speed is measured as change in distance per second, thus metres/second, and acceleration is change is speed per second - thus meters/second/second. You can rearrange this equation as needed.
  
  For example, if a 60kg sprinter leaves the blocks at an acceleration of 5m/s/s, what force would the sprinter need to push back on a block of a 30 degree angle from the ground? In this case you would need to break work out the unknown force on the 30 degree block into a vertical and a horizontal component using trigonometry. The horizontal component is known - the 5m/s/s.