IB DP Physics Syllabus Guide.
Every unit of the IB Physics course, mapped for revision: what it covers, the formulas you must command, and practice questions with full answers. Free, no sign-up.
24
Units covered
137+
Key formulas
144+
Practice questions
Space, Time and Motion
The mechanics core: kinematics, forces and momentum, work and energy, rigid bodies, and Einstein's relativity.
Kinematics
Kinematics is the language physics uses to describe motion — where something is, how fast it moves, and how its velocity changes. Everything rests on three ideas: position, velocity (the rate of change of position) and acceleration (the rate of change of velocity). Master the four 'suvat' equations for uniform acceleration and you can predict where a body will be at any instant. The unit's showpiece is projectile motion: by splitting a projectile's velocity into independent horizontal and vertical components, a curved flight becomes two simple one-dimensional problems solved simultaneously.
4 formulas · 6 practice questions
Forces and momentum
This is the heart of mechanics: Newton's three laws tell you how forces change motion, and momentum gives you the bookkeeping tool that survives even violent collisions. You will learn to draw free-body diagrams — the single most valuable habit in physics — and to recognise the standard cast of forces: weight, normal force, friction, tension, spring force, drag and buoyancy. Conservation of momentum then lets you analyse collisions and explosions without knowing anything about the complicated forces inside them, and circular motion shows that a force perpendicular to velocity changes direction, not speed.
12 formulas · 6 practice questions
Work, energy and power
Energy is physics' universal currency, and this unit teaches you the accounting rules. Work is the mechanism that transfers energy ($W = Fs\cos\theta$ — only the force component along the motion counts). Mechanical energy comes in three interchangeable forms — kinetic, gravitational potential and elastic potential — and when resistive forces are absent, their total is conserved. Energy methods often crack problems that would be miserable with forces alone: no vectors, no components, just a before-and-after balance sheet. Power and efficiency then connect the physics to engines, motors and the real-world cost of wasted energy.
6 formulas · 6 practice questions
Rigid body mechanics
Everything you learned about linear motion has a rotational twin, and this HL unit introduces the full dictionary: force becomes torque, mass becomes moment of inertia, momentum becomes angular momentum, and Newton's second law becomes $\tau = I\alpha$. The deep new idea is that how mass is distributed matters as much as how much there is — a hollow cylinder is harder to spin than a solid one of equal mass. Conservation of angular momentum explains why an ice skater spins faster when pulling in their arms, why neutron stars rotate hundreds of times a second, and why helicopters need tail rotors.
9 formulas · 6 practice questions
Galilean and special relativity
Relativity begins with a deceptively simple question: how do measurements made by two observers in relative motion compare? Galileo's answer — velocities simply add, time is universal — works beautifully until speeds approach that of light. Einstein's two postulates (the laws of physics are identical in all inertial frames, and light travels at $c$ for every observer) force a radical revision: moving clocks run slow, moving lengths contract, and simultaneity itself depends on the observer. The Lorentz transformations encode all of this, spacetime diagrams let you see it, and muons created in the upper atmosphere — reaching the ground only because of time dilation — prove it happens.
9 formulas · 6 practice questions
The Particulate Nature of Matter
From molecules to machines: thermal energy, the greenhouse effect, gas laws, thermodynamics, and electric circuits.
Thermal energy transfers
Heat is energy on the move, and this unit explains both why it moves and how fast. The molecular picture comes first: temperature in kelvin measures the average kinetic energy of particles ($\bar{E}_k = \frac{3}{2}k_BT$), while internal energy adds up all the random kinetic energy plus the potential energy stored in intermolecular bonds. That picture explains phase changes (energy rearranges bonds at constant temperature) and the workhorse equations $Q = mc\Delta T$ and $Q = mL$. Then come the three transfer mechanisms — conduction, convection and radiation — with the Stefan–Boltzmann and Wien laws powerful enough to take the temperature of a star from its light alone.
8 formulas · 6 practice questions
Greenhouse effect
This unit applies radiation physics to the most consequential system there is: Earth's climate. The Sun delivers a measurable intensity (the solar constant); geometry spreads it over the globe to an average of $S/4$; and the planet's albedo reflects a fraction straight back to space. What remains warms the surface, which re-radiates in the infrared — and there the greenhouse gases (water vapour, CO₂, methane and nitrous oxide) intercept the outgoing energy because their molecular energy levels resonate at infrared frequencies, re-emitting it in all directions including back down. The physics is careful and quantitative, and it explains precisely why enhancing this natural effect shifts the planet's energy balance.
4 formulas · 6 practice questions
Gas laws
The ideal gas is physics' most successful simplification: model molecules as point particles in random motion with no interactions except collisions, and the messy behaviour of $10^{23}$ particles collapses into one clean equation, $PV = nRT$. This unit connects the macroscopic (pressure, volume, temperature — the empirical gas laws) to the microscopic (kinetic theory, where pressure comes from molecular impacts and $P = \frac{1}{3}\rho v^2$). You will also learn when the model breaks: at high pressures and low temperatures, real molecules' size and mutual attractions start to matter.
6 formulas · 6 practice questions
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is the physics of what is possible. The first law ($Q = \Delta U + W$) is energy conservation for gases: heat in becomes internal energy plus work out. The second law is deeper — it introduces entropy, the measure of disorder, and declares that in an isolated system it never decreases. That single statement explains why heat flows hot-to-cold, why no engine can be perfectly efficient, and why time has a direction. You will trace the four named processes (isothermal, isobaric, isovolumetric, adiabatic) on p–V diagrams, assemble them into engine cycles, and prove with Carnot that even a perfect engine pays an entropy tax set by its reservoir temperatures.
8 formulas · 6 practice questions
Current and circuits
Electric circuits are controlled rivers of charge. A cell's emf sets the energy given to each coulomb; resistance determines how the current responds ($R = V/I$); and resistivity separates what is due to the material from what is due to geometry ($\rho = RA/L$). The series and parallel rules — same current versus same voltage — let you reduce any resistor network step by step, and the internal resistance of real cells explains why a battery's terminal voltage sags under load. Power dissipation ($P = VI = I^2R = V^2/R$) connects the circuit diagram to heat, light and your electricity bill.
8 formulas · 6 practice questions
Wave Behaviour
Oscillations and waves: simple harmonic motion, the wave model, interference and diffraction, standing waves, and the Doppler effect.
Simple harmonic motion
Simple harmonic motion is nature's default oscillation: whenever a system is disturbed and pulled back by a force proportional to displacement, you get SHM. The defining equation $a = -\omega^2 x$ says it all — acceleration always points home and grows with distance. Two model systems dominate: the mass–spring ($T = 2\pi\sqrt{m/k}$, gravity-independent) and the pendulum ($T = 2\pi\sqrt{l/g}$, mass-independent). At HL you add the full time-dependent machinery — sine solutions, phase angle, and energy sloshing between kinetic and potential twice per cycle. SHM is also the gateway to waves: every wave is SHM passed from particle to particle.
9 formulas · 6 practice questions
Wave model
A wave is a disturbance that carries energy without carrying matter. This short unit builds the vocabulary everything else in Theme C depends on: wavelength, frequency, period and speed, tied together by $v = f\lambda$. The key classification is transverse (oscillation perpendicular to travel — light, water surface waves, waves on strings) versus longitudinal (oscillation parallel to travel — sound, with its compressions and rarefactions). Mechanical waves need a medium; electromagnetic waves are self-propagating oscillations of fields that cross empty space at $c$ — which is why you see the lightning before you hear the thunder.
1 formula · 6 practice questions
Wave phenomena
This is where waves do things particles never could. At boundaries they reflect and refract (Snell's law, total internal reflection — the physics of optical fibres); around obstacles they diffract; and when two coherent waves meet they interfere, adding crest-on-crest or cancelling crest-on-trough. Young's double-slit experiment turns that superposition into a measuring instrument fine enough to determine the wavelength of light with a ruler. HL sharpens the picture with single-slit diffraction — whose envelope modulates the double-slit pattern — and diffraction gratings, which power every spectrometer that has ever decoded starlight.
7 formulas · 6 practice questions
Standing waves and resonance
Trap a wave between two boundaries and it interferes with its own reflection: the result is a standing wave, with nodes that never move and antinodes that oscillate hardest. Unlike travelling waves, standing waves transfer no energy — they store it. Only certain wavelengths fit the boundary conditions, which is why a guitar string or organ pipe sounds definite notes: the harmonics. The same physics of natural frequencies leads to resonance — drive any oscillator at its natural frequency and the amplitude grows dramatically, for better (musical instruments, MRI) or worse (bridges, buildings in earthquakes). Damping tames the response.
2 formulas · 6 practice questions
Doppler effect
The Doppler effect is the pitch-bend of physics: relative motion between a wave source and an observer changes the observed frequency. A source moving towards you crowds its wavefronts together (higher frequency); moving away, it stretches them out. For light, the same physics — in the approximation $v \ll c$ — becomes the astronomer's speedometer: redshifted spectral lines reveal receding galaxies, blueshift approaching ones, and tiny periodic shifts betray planets tugging their stars. HL adds the exact formulas for moving sources and moving observers of sound, which differ subtly and testably.
3 formulas · 6 practice questions
Fields
Action at a distance: gravitational fields, electric and magnetic fields, charged-particle motion, and electromagnetic induction.
Gravitational fields
Newton's law of gravitation — every mass attracts every other with a force falling off as $1/r^2$ — unifies the falling apple with the orbiting Moon. The field concept turns this action-at-a-distance into a local picture: a mass shapes the space around it with field strength $g = GM/r^2$, and other masses respond to the field where they are. Kepler's three laws then drop out as consequences. At HL the description deepens from forces to energy: gravitational potential wells, equipotential surfaces perpendicular to field lines, escape speed, and orbital mechanics precise enough to explain why atmospheric drag paradoxically speeds satellites up as they spiral down.
8 formulas · 6 practice questions
Electric and magnetic fields
Coulomb's law is Newton's gravitation with two twists: charge replaces mass, and the force can repel as well as attract — because charge comes in two signs and is strictly conserved, as Millikan's oil drops showed in quantised units of $e$. The field picture carries over intact: field strength $E = F/q$, field lines from positive to negative, uniform fields between parallel plates ($E = V/d$). Magnetic fields join the family with their closed-loop field lines. At HL, electric potential mirrors its gravitational twin — but with both signs of charge, potentials can be positive or negative, and equipotential maps become the contour lines of electrostatics.
8 formulas · 6 practice questions
Motion in electromagnetic fields
Put a moving charge in a magnetic field and something remarkable happens: the force $F = qvB\sin\theta$ acts perpendicular to the velocity, so it changes direction but never speed — the charge spirals or circles at constant kinetic energy, with radius $r = mv/qB$. This single fact powers mass spectrometers, cyclotrons and the aurora. A current-carrying wire feels the same physics as $F = BIL\sin\theta$ (the motor effect), and two parallel currents attract or repel with a force per length that historically defined the ampere. Crossed electric and magnetic fields complete the toolkit: balance them and you have a velocity selector.
5 formulas · 6 practice questions
Induction
Induction is electromagnetism running in reverse: instead of currents making magnetic fields, changing magnetic fields make currents. The bookkeeping quantity is magnetic flux $\Phi = BA\cos\theta$ — count the field lines threading a loop — and Faraday's law says the induced emf equals the rate the flux changes, multiplied by the number of turns. Lenz's law fixes the sign: the induced current always opposes the change creating it, because anything else would be a free-energy machine. Rotate a coil in a field and the flux changes sinusoidally — that single idea is the alternating-current generator, and with it, the entire electrical grid.
3 formulas · 6 practice questions
Nuclear and Quantum Physics
The physics of the very small: atomic structure, quantum phenomena, radioactive decay, fission, fusion and the stars.
Structure of the atom
Three experiments built the modern atom. Geiger and Marsden fired alpha particles at gold foil and watched a few bounce back — Rutherford's conclusion: nearly all the mass and all positive charge sit in a tiny nucleus. Atomic spectra showed that each element emits and absorbs only specific wavelengths — evidence that electron energies are quantised into discrete levels, with photons of energy $E = hf$ carrying the differences. At HL, Bohr's model makes hydrogen quantitative ($E_n = -13.6/n^2$ eV, from quantised angular momentum), and high-energy scattering probes where Rutherford's picture bends: the nucleus has a measurable radius growing as $A^{1/3}$.
4 formulas · 6 practice questions
Quantum physics
Three experiments broke classical physics. The photoelectric effect: light below a threshold frequency ejects no electrons no matter how intense — Einstein's explanation, light arrives in quanta of energy $hf$, won him the Nobel Prize. Electron diffraction: particles fired through crystals produce interference patterns, confirming de Broglie's wild proposal that matter has wavelength $\lambda = h/p$. Compton scattering: X-ray photons bounce off electrons like billiard balls, their wavelength shift depending only on angle. Together they force the strangest conclusion in science: light and matter are both waves and particles, revealing whichever face the experiment asks for.
4 formulas · 6 practice questions
Radioactive decay
Some nuclei are unstable, and their decay is nature's purest randomness: no trigger, no memory, just a fixed probability per unit time. Alpha, beta and gamma emissions each change the nucleus in characteristic ways, with penetrating powers spanning paper to lead. Binding energy — the mass defect via $E = mc^2$ — explains both why decay releases energy and why iron sits at the curve's peak, dividing fusion territory from fission territory. The half-life turns randomness into clockwork at scale: at HL the exponential decay law $N = N_0e^{-\lambda t}$ makes it quantitative, dating everything from archaeological remains to the Earth itself.
4 formulas · 6 practice questions
Fission
Fission is the physics of nuclear power: a heavy nucleus like uranium-235 absorbs a neutron, deforms, and splits into two mid-sized fragments plus two or three fresh neutrons — each carrying energy because the fragments sit higher on the binding-energy curve. Those liberated neutrons can trigger further fissions: a chain reaction. The engineering of a reactor is the art of taming it — moderators slow neutrons so they are captured efficiently, control rods absorb them to hold the reaction steady, heat exchangers carry the energy away to turbines, and shielding protects everything outside. The waste products, intensely radioactive with half-lives from seconds to millennia, are the technology's long shadow.
1 formula · 6 practice questions
Fusion and stars
Stars are fusion reactors held together by their own gravity. A star is stable while outward radiation pressure balances inward gravitational pull — a truce that lasts as long as the fuel does. Fusion requires brutal conditions (tens of millions of kelvin, enormous densities) so nuclei can tunnel through their Coulomb repulsion; the payoff is the largest energy-per-nucleon gains on the binding-energy curve. The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram maps every star's biography — main sequence, red giants, white dwarfs — and stellar mass decides the ending: gentle white dwarf or spectacular supernova. Parallax gives the distances; Wien and Stefan–Boltzmann, applied to starlight, give temperatures and radii.
4 formulas · 6 practice questions
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