6.1 Reasoning Through Unfamiliar Problems

6.1 Reasoning Through Unfamiliar Problems

Most school tests ask you to show what you remember. ICAS Science does something sneakier and more interesting: it gives you a situation you have almost certainly never seen — a robot exploring Mars, a new kind of fishing net, a strange plant from the desert — and asks you to think your way through it. This is the Reasoning & Problem Solving skill area. ICAS does not publish how many questions each skill area gets, but it is the broadest of the five - it appears in all four knowledge areas on every paper from Introductory to Paper J, and the official framework's examples for the higher papers lean heavily on it, from calculating speed and acceleration to determining the trophic position of living things. The good news: because the scenarios are new to everyone, nobody has an advantage from having memorised more facts. The marks go to the student who reasons calmly.

Why ICAS Uses Scenarios You Have Never Seen

If every question came straight from the textbook, the exam would only measure memory. The writers at ICAS Assessments (run by Janison, formerly UNSW Global) want to measure something more useful: whether you can apply science you already know to a new situation, exactly like a real scientist does. So the question about a Mars rover is not really about Mars — it is about forces, or energy, or friction, wearing a costume. Your first job is to see through the costume.

The Read-Stimulus-First Method

When a long question with a diagram or paragraph appears, resist the urge to jump straight to the options. Work through three questions in order:

1. What is given? Read every word of the stimulus and every label on the diagram. The exam writers never include information for decoration — if they tell you the rover's wheels are wide, that detail matters.
2. What is asked? Underline or mentally mark the exact question. Are you being asked for a cause, an effect, the best explanation, or what would happen next?
3. What science applies? Ask yourself: which topic from my ordinary science lessons does this connect to? Floating and sinking? Heating and cooling? Food chains? Circuits? Once you name the principle, the question shrinks from scary to normal.

Eliminating the Impossible First

You rarely need to spot the correct option straight away. It is usually easier to spot the options that cannot be right:

• Options that break a basic rule of science (something gaining energy from nowhere, an object falling upwards).
• Options that ignore a fact stated in the stimulus (the stimulus says the water was cold; the option blames warm water).
• Options that answer a different question from the one asked.

Crossing out two impossible options doubles your chance of choosing correctly between the survivors — and usually makes the right answer obvious.

Units and Magnitude as Sanity Checks

Numbers in the options can fail a common-sense test before you do any real working. Ask: are the units right, and is the magnitude (the rough size of the number) believable? A speed measured in kilograms is nonsense. A family car travelling at 900 km/h is nonsense. A puddle of water with a mass of 200 kilograms is nonsense. Rough real-world anchors — a person walks about 5 km/h, a cup of water is about a quarter of a kilogram, a hot day is around 35 °C — let you delete absurd options in seconds.

Worked Example: From First Read to Answer

Here is a Reasoning & Problem Solving question in ICAS style, solved slowly on purpose.

The stimulus: A team designs a cart to roll across the dusty surface of Mars. They test two designs on Earth. Design A has four narrow wheels; Design B has six wide wheels. Both carts have the same total mass. On soft sand, Design A's wheels sink in and the cart gets stuck, while Design B keeps rolling. The question asks: which statement best explains why Design B performs better on soft ground?

Step 1 — What is given? Same mass, different wheels, different result on soft sand. The words "soft" and "sink" are the clues the writers planted.

Step 2 — What is asked? The best explanation — not a prediction, not a description of the result.

Step 3 — What science applies? This is really a question about pressure: how a force (the cart's weight) is spread over an area. Same weight spread over a larger area means less pressure on each patch of ground, so less sinking. You probably met this idea when comparing standing on snow in shoes versus snowshoes, or when learning why a sharp knife cuts better than a blunt one. Mars is just the costume.

Now the options: one says Design B is lighter (impossible — the stimulus says the masses are equal, so eliminate it); one says Mars has no gravity (breaks a basic rule — gravity exists everywhere, so eliminate it); one says wide wheels spread the weight over a larger area, reducing the pressure on the ground (matches the principle); one says six wheels always roll better than four on every surface (the word "always" plus a claim the stimulus never tested — a weak answer). The pressure explanation wins.

The Takeaway Pattern

Notice what happened: no Mars facts were needed. The marks came from careful reading, connecting to a principle, and deleting impossibilities. Practise that routine and unfamiliar scenarios stop being scary — they become the questions where you gain marks on everyone who panics.