The Teacher Behind suvatequations.co.uk
Every physics teacher has a moment they never forget. Mine came during a Year 12 lesson on kinematics. A bright student, clearly capable, stared at her paper and said: “I know the answer is in one of these five equations. I just don’t know which one.”
She was not alone. After nineteen years in the classroom, I can say with certainty that SUVAT equations are not where students struggle with the physics. They struggle with the process: the moment between reading a problem and writing the first line of working. The right equation is always there. The confidence to reach for it is what most students are missing.
That moment is what suvatequations.co.uk was built to fix.
Who I Am
My name is Maurice Cotterell. I hold a Master of Education (MEd.), a BSc. in Physics, and Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). I trained at the University of the West Indies before building a career in secondary education in the United Kingdom, where I have spent the past two decades teaching Physics and Mathematics.
I currently teach Physics at Davenant Foundation School in Essex, a school I am proud to be part of. Over the years I have also served as acting Vice-Principal and Head of Physics, roles that gave me a wider perspective on how schools succeed and, more importantly, how individual students do. Leading a department and sitting in on hundreds of lessons beyond my own subject made one thing unmistakably clear: the students who struggle most are rarely those who lack intelligence. They are the ones who have not yet been shown a reliable system they can return to under pressure.
For nineteen years I have been refining that system in my own classroom, incorporating discovery learning, practical problem-solving, and cooperative activities specifically because I know that no two students learn the same way. What works for one learner may be invisible to another. The teaching has to meet students where they are, not where the textbook assumes they should be.
Why I Built This Site
SUVAT equations are one of the most predictable topics in A-Level and GCSE Physics and Maths. The five equations do not change. The variables do not change. The method for selecting the right equation is always the same. And yet they remain one of the most commonly dropped topics in examinations, year after year, because most resources either list the equations without context or explain them without showing students how to choose.
I wanted to build something different: a single resource where a student at any level, from GCSE right through to A-Level, could arrive confused and leave with a working method they could apply under exam conditions the following morning. Not a textbook. Not a video course. A guide written the way a good teacher explains things: directly, with examples that progress in difficulty, and with the hard parts named and addressed rather than glossed over.
The interactive equation selector on this site came directly from the classroom. Before I built it digitally, I used a laminated card with five rows. Students crossed out the variable they did not need. The right equation was always left standing. It worked in Loughton. It works here.
What You Will Find Here
suvatequations.co.uk covers all five SUVAT equations, their derivations from first principles, sign conventions, fully worked examples, projectile motion, when SUVAT does not apply, memory techniques, a free interactive calculator, downloadable worksheets, and a practice question bank. Every section was written with the same student in mind: the one sitting at the desk at ten o’clock the night before an exam, looking for something that actually explains it.
If you are that student, or if you are a teacher looking for something to point a struggling class toward, you are in the right place.
Start with the equations. The rest will follow.
Maurice Cotterell MEd., BSc., QTS Physics Teacher, Davenant Foundation School