The Physics Question Bank

Past papers run out. By February most classes have worked through everything AQA has published, and the ones that are left are being saved for mocks. So I have written a new set from scratch: 804 exam-style questions across all eight topics, with full mark schemes. They are free to download, with no sign-up and no email required.

What is in them

Sixteen PDFs: a question booklet and a separate mark scheme for each of the eight topics, from 4.1 Energy through to 4.8 Space physics. Roughly 100 questions and 230 marks per topic.

There is no writing space. That was deliberate. Students answer on paper or in an exercise book, which means a booklet survives a class set, photocopies cheaply, and can be used again next year. It also means six pages hold a hundred questions rather than thirty.

Written around the examiners’ reports

Before writing a single question I went back through the AQA reports on the examination. The same complaints come up year after year, and they are strikingly specific:

• Not squaring the speed in E_k = ½mv², or the extension in E_e = ½ke²
• Leaving time in minutes, or misreading 0.08 A as 0.8 A
• Writing ‘precision’ when the word needed is ‘resolution’
• Defining half-life as ‘the time for the radioactivity to halve’ without saying what halves
• Giving sieverts as the unit of activity instead of becquerels
• Listing factors when the command word was ‘explain’
• Drawing graphs in pen, so a mistake cannot be corrected
• Answering a six-mark evaluation with a list of advantages and no conclusion

Every one of those now appears in the booklets as an Examiner note beneath the relevant mark scheme, so a student who gets the question wrong finds out immediately why that particular mistake is so expensive.

Working scientifically is labelled, not buried

Around a third of the marks in every AQA paper go on apparatus, variables, accuracy and evaluation, and these are the questions students find hardest to revise for, because they are scattered through the specification. In these booklets every question part is labelled in the right-hand margin: Working scientifically, Maths skill, Higher Tier only or Separate Physics only. There are 237 working scientifically parts and 151 maths skills parts across the set, and each topic has its own dedicated section covering independent and dependent variables, control variables, hazards and precautions, anomalies, accuracy versus precision, systematic error, sample size, peer review, and conclusions that go beyond the evidence.

All the command words, and real data to work with

State, describe, explain, calculate, determine, estimate, suggest, compare, evaluate, plan — all of them appear, and the cover of every booklet explains what each one is asking for. There are data tables to interpret, printed grids for graph plotting with marks for scales, labels, points and the line of best fit, tangents to draw for rates, and every required practical written out with questions on method and improvements. Each topic ends with levelled six-mark questions and an indicative content mark scheme.

How teachers are using them

• End-of-topic tests — pick a page and set it as a timed assessment
• Homework, with students self-marking from the mark scheme in a different colour
• Revision lessons before mocks, using the working scientifically sections to target AO3
• Cover work — nothing to set up, and the answers are self-contained

They are also on each topic page, so if you only want Waves you can take it from the Waves page without hunting through the whole set.

If you find an error, or a question that is ambiguous, tell me and I will fix it. These will be updated rather than left to rot.

These are original questions written in the style of AQA examinations. They are not past paper questions, and are not published by or affiliated with AQA.