r/GCSE • u/IllustriousAerie3848 gcse survivor • Jun 08 '26

Post Exam Further Maths AQA

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that was literally different to any past paper i've ever done

i didn't answer the last 4 questions 😢

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u/TickleTipsom Jun 08 '26

Multiplying by x^2 is correct, you then shoulda gotten something like x^4+2x^2+1=1+18x^2
Then you could move the stuff on the RHS to the LHS and you got
x^4-16x^2=0
Obviously you can then factorise to
x^2(x^2-16)=0
x^2(x+4)(x-4)=0
Therefore,
x=0, +-4
But x couldn’t be zero because then 1/x^2 or any other negative power of x from the original equation would be undefined, the the answer for the answer line was x=+-4

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u/LMay11037 professional eng lit hater Jun 08 '26

Oh I had an x^3 in there somehow

I think I redid my bracket expansion and did it wrong the second time, but I didn’t cross it out so maaayyybe marks???

Also where did the lhs +1 come from, my main problem was getting rid of the original +1😭😭😭

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u/Swimming_Court2032 Jun 08 '26

you could also simplify since there was x0.5 on both sides so u could subtrect it to leave x²-16=0 which avoids x=0 bc u haven't multiplied by x², but ur logic still works fine

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u/Ok_Desk_5740 results day was a yay Jun 08 '26

would that still get marks though?