A quick story before we start
The night before a mock, you promise yourself you’ll “just revise the basics.” Then forces and motion shows up and suddenly everything feels slippery: arrows point everywhere, formulas blur, and your sporting examples sound like guesses.
If you’re revising IB SEHS, the fix usually isn’t more memorising. It’s building a small set of repeatable explanations you can apply to any sprint, jump, throw, or tackle.
IB SEHS forces and motion checklist (fast, exam-focused)
Use this mini-checklist each time you revise IB SEHS forces and motion:
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Define force as a vector (magnitude + direction)
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Identify all forces acting (not just the “main” one)
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Decide if forces are balanced or unbalanced
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Link net force to a change in velocity (speed and/or direction)
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Anchor the explanation in one sport movement
For the full syllabus-aligned subtopics, keep a tab open to B.2 Forces, motion and movement.
Start with the foundation: forces cause change
A common IB SEHS trap is describing motion without explaining the cause. In biomechanics questions, marks tend to live in cause-and-effect language.
A clean sentence template:
“An unbalanced net force acts in (direction), causing acceleration, so velocity changes by (speed/direction), affecting performance by (outcome).”
