The course and the exams

🔄What changed, in three sentences

The old structure of a numbered core plus one chosen option is gone. In its place are five themes, A to E, studied by every candidate, with higher level students covering additional material inside each theme rather than in separate units. And there are now two examination papers instead of three, because the third paper existed to examine the options.

📚The five themes

• A — Space, time and motion. Kinematics, forces and momentum, work and energy; at HL also rigid body mechanics and special relativity.
• B — The particulate nature of matter. Thermal energy, the greenhouse effect, gas laws, current and circuits; at HL also thermodynamics.
• C — Wave behaviour. Simple harmonic motion, the wave model, wave phenomena, standing waves and resonance, the Doppler effect.
• D — Fields. Gravitational fields, electric and magnetic fields, motion in electromagnetic fields; at HL also induction.
• E — Nuclear and quantum physics. Atomic structure, radioactive decay, fission, fusion and stars; at HL also quantum physics.

Notice how the themes cut across the old unit boundaries. Circuits now sit with matter rather than with electricity and magnetism; circular motion is treated as a force problem in Theme A while orbits live in Theme D. If you are looking for a topic and cannot find it, that is usually why.

🔧Tools and inquiry run through everything

Measurement and uncertainty is no longer a topic of its own. It has become part of the Tools strand — experimental techniques, technology, and mathematics — together with the Inquiry process of designing, collecting and processing, and concluding and evaluating. These are not examined as a separate block; they appear inside questions across all five themes, and they underpin the internal assessment.

🎓SL or HL

SL is 150 teaching hours and HL is 240. The difference is not simply more topics: HL students study additional material within the same five themes, and are examined on it in the same papers. Three areas are HL only and came from the retired options, so they are worth flagging — A.4 rigid body mechanics, A.5 relativity and B.4 thermodynamics. Older resources will describe all three as optional. They are not.

📝How you are assessed

• Paper 1 — 36%. Two sections. 1A is multiple choice. 1B is data-based and experimental questions, drawing directly on the Tools and Inquiry skills above.
• Paper 2 — 44%. Short-answer and extended-response questions across the whole syllabus.
• Internal assessment — 20%. The scientific investigation, marked out of 24 across four criteria. There is a full page on it.

There is no Paper 3. If a past paper you have found has one, it is from the old syllabus and its option questions are no longer examinable.

🔢The data booklet

You are given the data booklet in every examination. It contains the equations, constants and conversions — so do not spend revision time memorising formulas that are printed for you. Spend it instead on knowing which equation applies and why. Work with the booklet open from the start of the course so that finding a relationship in it under time pressure is automatic.