Physics — past papers by topic
Every official QCAA exam and examiner report we index, organised by topic and subtopic and labelled with the study design it was written under. Open the official paper, work the question in your own workspace, or bring a tutor into it live.
Papers and examiner reports open on the official QCAA website — they stay official and up to date. Question descriptions below are our own; we never republish exam content. Prefer to be walked through it? Book a tutor →
Official papers & examiner reports, year by year
| Year | Study design | Official paper(s) | Examiner report |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Physics 2019 syllabus (v1.2) | Subject report for the 2025 cohort (Nov 2025 EA sitting, examined under the outgoing 2019 syllabus) is published, but the individual EA question/response and multiple-choice PDFs for 2025 could not be located via search as of this research (2026-07-08) — likely exist on qcaa.qld.edu.au/downloads/senior-qce/sciences/ following the snr_physics_25_ea_... naming pattern but were not indexed/returned. Flagged as a coverage gap, not fabricated. | Report ↗ |
| 2024 | Physics 2019 syllabus (v1.2) | Paper 1 - Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 2 - Question and response book ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2023 | Physics 2019 syllabus (v1.2) | Paper 1 - Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 1 - Question and response book ↗ · Paper 2 - Question and response book ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2022 | Physics 2019 syllabus (v1.2) | Paper 1 - Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 1 - Question and response book ↗ · Paper 2 - Question and response book ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2021 | Physics 2019 syllabus (v1.2) | Paper 1 - Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 2 - Question and response book ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2020 | Physics 2019 syllabus (v1.2) - first year of new QCE external assessment | Paper 1 - Question and response book ↗ · Paper 2 - Question and response book ↗ · Sample EA (pre-implementation trial) - Paper 1 ↗ · Sample EA (pre-implementation trial) - Paper 2 ↗ | Report ↗ |
SOURCE ACCESS LIMITATION: qcaa.qld.edu.au is protected by Cloudflare bot-challenge ("Just a moment..." interstitial) that blocks both the WebFetch tool and direct curl requests (confirmed by inspecting raw response bodies — both returned Cloudflare challenge HTML, not PDF/page content, despite HTTP 200/403 status). All URLs in this index were therefore sourced via WebSearch result titles/snippets rather than direct page fetches. WebSearch snippets for several years (2022, 2023, 2024) contained specific, non-generic exam-question topic descriptions (e.g. "spaceship...special relativity", "baryons and mesons", "solenoid magnet EMF calculations", "photoelectric effect stopping voltage") that indicate the underlying search index has genuinely crawled/read these official PDFs, giving reasonable confidence the URLs are real and correctly labelled — but I could not independently open and paginate through a full paper myself. QUESTIONS ARRAY: Left empty per instructions. I was not able to actually open and read a paper PDF page-by-page end-to-end (blocked by Cloudflare) - only fragmentary search-engine snippets were available, which is insufficient for verified per-question year/paper/Q-number/marks entries. Fabricating those from indirect snippets would violate the "do NOT guess" instruction. COVERAGE GAPS: 1. 2025 EA papers (Nov 2025 sitting, examined under the outgoing 2019 syllabus) - subject report exists but individual question/response PDFs were not located via search. 2. Some individual paper URLs (e.g. 2021 Paper 1 question-response book, 2024 Paper 1 question-response book) were not independently confirmed in this pass - only the papers I could directly verify via search-result titles are listed; years/papers not listed should not be assumed absent, just not found in this research session. 3. QCAA is known to gate some resources (e.g. teacher-only "Alternative Sequence" EA papers, additional past papers beyond ~5 years, and some worked-solutions/exemplar material) behind the QCAA Portal (teacher/school login) - not publicly accessible. No such portal-only Physics documents were specifically identified in this search, but it remains a general QCAA-wide pattern worth flagging. 4. 2020 "Sample" EA documents are QCAA-published pre-implementation trial/practice papers (published ahead of the actual Nov 2020 sitting) - distinct from the real 2020 EA papers; both are listed separately and should not be conflated when building a "past papers" browsing UI (label the sample explicitly as practice/trial material, not a real past exam). 5. Era transition: the 2025 syllabus (v1.3) applies to students COMPLETING their course in 2026 or beyond - meaning the very first EA sat under it will be November 2026 (not yet occurred as of today, 2026-07-08). All years 2020-2025 sit under the outgoing 2019 syllabus (v1.2). Topics[] above reflect the CURRENT (2025 v1.3) syllabus wording as instructed, which is materially similar in scope/sequence to the 2019 syllabus (same four units/topics, largely renamed/resequenced rather than content-overhauled) but subtle differences may exist - do not assume 1:1 identical wording across eras when badging older questions. 6. Recommend Andrew independently spot-check 2-3 URLs above by opening them in a real browser (Cloudflare challenge typically passes for genuine browser sessions) before wiring them into atar-physics-app / the QCE hub, since automated verification here was necessarily indirect.
Browse by topic
Pick a topic, open the exact question in the official paper, then work it in your own workspace — or hand the question straight to a live tutor session.
Thermal, nuclear and electrical physics (Unit 1) · question map rolling out
Heating processes (kinetic particle model, specific heat capacity, conservation of energy)
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Ionising radiation and nuclear reactions (decay types, nuclear model, balancing nuclear equations)
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Electrical circuits (conservation of charge, potential difference and resistance, moving charges)
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Linear motion and waves (Unit 2) · question map rolling out
Linear motion (displacement, velocity, acceleration, vector equations, SUVAT, gradients)
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Waves (longitudinal vs transverse, wavelength, frequency, period, wave behaviour)
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Thermodynamics and further electricity (where applicable)
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Optics / wave model of light (reflection, refraction, total internal reflection, dispersion, diffraction, interference)
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Gravity and electromagnetism (Unit 3) · question map rolling out
Gravity and motion (vector components, projectile motion, uniform circular motion, Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, Kepler's laws of planetary motion)
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Electromagnetism (electrostatics, Coulomb's Law, magnetic fields, magnetic flux/flux density, electromagnetic induction, Faraday's Law, Lenz's Law, EMF)
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Revolutions in modern physics (Unit 4) · question map rolling out
Special relativity (postulates, time dilation, length contraction, relativistic momentum/energy)
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
Quantum theory (photoelectric effect, wave-particle duality, atomic energy levels, black-body radiation)
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
The Standard Model (particle classification, quarks and leptons, baryons and mesons, fundamental forces)
Question-level mapping for this subtopic is being verified — use the year table above; every official paper is one click away.
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