Pan Asia Publications, RM39.90, ISBN 978-967-466-731-3
Education, 2023

Spotlight A+1: Physics proves that Pan Asia Publications is one of those underestimated publishing houses when it comes to reference books.

Sasbadi and Pelangi Publishing are often hailed as the leaders of the pack, and let’s be honest, most people buy especially the Pelangi Publishing books because schoolteachers love to crib questions from those books for homework as well as school exams, and having those books—and the answers to those questions—is always a smart decision.

However, for the real deal that is the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM; the Malaysian equivalent of the Cambridge IGCSE exams), this book blows its counterparts from those two publishing houses like it’s Oppenheimer time.

The Authors

Koay Kheng Chuan and Chia Song Choy are textbook authors. A search online fails to reveal the credentials of Ooi Boon Thai.

Design

• Just like the other SPM Pure Science reference books from the publisher, this one is colorful, has many nice illustrations, and great neat layout,
• Great use of tables and diagrams to reduce the “wall of text” effect.
• Also, hallelujah, this book has a comprehensive list of all the formulae listed early in this book. You’d think this would be SOP for all Physics reference books but tell that to the people at Sasbadi and Pelangi Publishing!

Content

While it covers the standard stuff found in the syllabus, what sets this book apart and ahead of its counterparts from the two publishing houses that I’ve mentioned are:

• Lots and lots of practice questions.
• This book also includes practice questions for Paper 3, the practical exam, with mock set of data provided for candidates to get the hang of answering the questions in that paper.
• A much welcome spotlight on Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi (KBAT; High Order Thinking Skills or HOTS in English) components in the SPM paper. I’ll delve more into that in the next section of this review.

One possible weakness of this book is that the calculation examples can be on the basic and simple side, thus keeping the candidate from being exposed to the occasional nasty complicated or convoluted calculation question that may pop up in the actual SPM Physics paper.

However, such nasty surprise is fortunately quite rare in the actual paper. If anything, one should fear instead the paper bringing up a scenario that is wildly unlike anything presented in the textbooks or reference books and asking candidates to apply familiar Physics principles into that scenario.

For this kind of question, the calculation part isn’t that tough once the candidate correctly deduces the proper principles and the corresponding formulae to apply.

However, coming to the correct deduction can be tough for some candidates!

So, the KBAT Stuff

Now, from the perspective of a non-candidate, KBAT is a great thing. Instead of focusing solely on calculations like Physics is the new Mathematics paper, KBAT shifts the focus to understanding how Physics operate and fit into the world. Instead of just thinking of Hooke’s law in terms of springs hanging from various configurations with the expectations of calculating the k value and what not, the candidate should also understand how this law allows for wonderful things to be invented and improvised.

From an aceing the SPM Physics paper perspective, getting a good hang of KBAT also means being better prepared to deal with things in that paper that they may not encounter in their textbooks and reference books.

This is a good thing because in Paper 2, the longer essays are worth 20 marks each, and the KBAT component itself are worth 10 marks, or 50% of the total marks in each essay question. One of the essay questions is compulsory, no escape, and the KBAT component is not split into smaller parts to allow one to still score a few marks even if they have no idea what the question is asking. It’s all or nothing, so it can make a difference in keeping the candidate from getting the next higher grade.

Now, this book offers plenty of KBAT stuff along with the usual calculate this and that stuff. There are KBAT sections in the reference text, pretty good delve into applications of the Physics principles in each chapter in various tech and natural phenomena, and links to videos that further delve into these matters.

Also, the practice questions contain KBAT questions in a pretty up-to-date format.

All in all, therefore, this book has a solid balance of old-school calculation and memorization along with KBAT, one that is much better than its counterparts from the other two publishers.

Oh, and this is the only SPM Physics reference book in the market that talks about green homes, a topic that showed up as a compulsory KBAT question in a recent year. Many candidates that year experienced a pretty nasty surprise when they were asked to design a green home based on what they have learned about specific latent heat of construction materials, placement of windows, et cetera—and that was a solid 10 marks on the line, ouch!

Conclusion

• Very solid balanced approach to meet the present-day expectations of the SPM Physics paper.
• The content is written and designed in a way that pushes candidates to think and explore as well as to memorize and learn how to calculate stuff, thus helping to reduce the chances of encountering a nasty surprise in the exam hall during the actual exam day.
• With its solid design and approach, it’s definitely much better than the so-called leaders of the market when it comes to preparing a candidate for the paper!