Approximately 4-6 weeks before your exam, transition to full, timed mock exams under realistic conditions.
To get the highest return on investment from your study hours, follow this structured workflow when tackling past papers by topic.
Here is the issue with that approach:
If you skip Phase 2, you risk being the student who knows the physics perfectly but cannot identify the topic under exam pressure.
Highly useful for practice after you’ve learned a topic. Just supplement with full, recent past papers to get used to time pressure and mixed-question order. ib physics past papers by topic
The student community frequently shares crowdsourced question banks, study guides, and past paper repositories organized by topic.
Practice interpreting graphs of displacement against time versus displacement against position. Mixing up these two axes is the most common student error. 4. Energy Transformations (Thermal & Nuclear) Approximately 4-6 weeks before your exam, transition to
In the early stages of your revision, avoid tackling full, timed papers. Instead, focus on specific topics where you need the most improvement. Use question banks from resources like Save My Exams or Exam Papers Practice to filter questions by topic (e.g., "Mechanics," "Electricity & Magnetism").
: If you do a full Paper 1 and score 60%, you know you are struggling, but you don’t exactly know where . If you do 30 questions exclusively on Topic 5: Electricity and Magnetism and miss 15 of them, your weak spot is crystal clear. Highly useful for practice after you’ve learned a topic
Highly recommended for anyone aiming for a 6 or 7 — especially in the final months before exams. Just make sure you’re using the latest syllabus version if you’re taking the current course.
: Provides downloadable PDFs of exam questions and answers organized by syllabus themes like Space, Time & Motion and Fields .