I post the following in this thread as I know that the other SS forum won't be looked at for about 6 months and this post will either be deleted or bumped down to the last thread over such a long period of time)
Senior Science is a little unfair. People who do biology have a much greater advantage in Senior Science:
NOTE THE FOLLOWING IS IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE DOING PHARMACEUTICALS AS YOUR OPTION (as a lot of biology parallels pharmaceuticals {trust me})
For example in biology we learnt about the inflammation response (e.g. macrophages, neutrophils {both responsible for phagocytosis}, eosinophils, lymphocytes, basophils, histamines, vasodilation and oedema) as well as devices that parallel it for defense (acid, skin, mucous, enzymes) way before Senior Science, so that when we did start in SS, me and my friend (the only people in SS who did bio as well) really stayed ahead of the curve picking up things quickly because we had to do it previously.
Like with the question in this years HSC about the FHI culturing bacteria, what are the dangers... now if you don't do biology your still going to do fine but I was able to talk about stuff like before culturing pathogens in the air are in a concentration that can be handled by mucous secreting membranes and expelled by cilia, destroyed by digestive enzymes found in tears and saliva called lysozymes and a bunch of other stuff, and then go on to talk about what increasing this concentration as well as culturing deadly pathogens blah blah blah. Now while a lot of it may be overkill, when your aiming high markers like to try and cut down people marks because SENIOR SCIENCE IS SO EASY. So they'll get strict on some qs and really easy on others.
(I know this is a long rant but this is mainly focused at anybody that did Senior Science this year and has siblings who also want to do well, or even Year 10's or 11's who may breeze through these forum's. Often getting a good UAI can be based on the COMBINATION of subjects you do. E.g. bio and Senior Science really go well together (at least for pharmaceuticals) {there is a syllabus point in biology that asks you to describe the structure of arteries and capillaries, and in SS we learn about the inner epithelial layer, mid layer of elastic and smooth muscle and outer elastic layer, far greater detail than in biology but will get you marks} and Yr 11 and 12 physics teaches you additional more advanced information about the information systems part in SS)
In the 2005 HSC they had a 7 or 8 mark qs about Pasteur, Koch, Lister and some other guy, and you had to choose 2 and talk about them for 8 marks. Well you do Pasteur AND Koch in biology so that you kind of get "insider information". BY this I mean you can talk about extra stuff u don't learn in SS as well as the stuff you do to get the 8 marks:
Pasteur:
# Credited with the birth of microbiology with his discovery that the fermentation of sugar was not purely a chemical reaction but due to the presence of yeast. This led to the realisation that microorganisms can affect biochemical reactions which inevitably led to the discovery of our many pathogens cause disease in their hosts;
# He also showed that the spread of said disease can be slowed or prevented by sterilising food and water. He did this through his development of pasteurisation in which wine, which normally spoiled (later found to be due to the action of bacteria), could be stored longer without spoiling by heating it to 55C for 30 min.
# Disproved the theory of spontaneous generation through his experiments with swan necked flasks (in which he showed that microorganisms were actually present in air)
# Which led to his development of the Germ Theory of disease, which increased our understanding of disease by showing it is caused by pathogens.
# After Koch developed his Postulates, Pasteur produced the first ever vaccine for Anthrax, with a greater understanding of bacteria causing disease leading to preventative technologies.
Koch:
# Conclusively proved the Germ Theory of disease by infecting healthy animals with Anthrax resulting in their death, showing that it was the bacteria that caused the animals death
# Developed Koch's Postulates (Its very important that you list them in an exam. I won't hear because its to long but they are easy to remember).
Given that the marking guidelines for 2005 said almost everyone went VERY BAD on this question, doing biology would have immediately put you ahead by at least (I'd say) about 4 marks (if other people got 4 or less which is likely given the whole very bad thing). This would give you a serious lee way if you made silly mistakes in the paper, allowing you to still get a very good mark after scaling.
Just think about the importance of subject combination when doing the HSC as (IF you enjoy this stuff) Biology and Senior Science are excellent subjects to do together (with physics helping out a bit for information systems, and Chemistry giving you a head start with the colloid/surface tension topic).
Crazy boring rant over.
Good luck peoples