There are seven HSC Physics past papers on the current NSW syllabus, and NESA publishes all of them free. The Physics Stage 6 Syllabus (2017) was first examined in the 2019 HSC, so the 2019 to 2025 papers are the ones that match what you’re studying now. NESA timetabled the 2026 HSC Physics exam for Thursday 5 November, the last day of the written exams.
If you also take Chemistry, our HSC Chemistry past papers guide uses the same mapping method.
This page links you straight to every paper, then goes further. At the back of each marking guidelines document, NESA prints a Mapping Grid that tags every question with its module and content area. We added up all seven grids to show how the exam spreads its 100 marks across Modules 5 to 8, and summarised the markers’ feedback for each module in our own words.
Key Takeaways
- NESA publishes each year’s HSC Physics exam paper, marking guidelines and marking feedback for free. The 2019 to 2025 papers are on the current syllabus.
- Every paper is worth 100 marks: 20 multiple-choice questions in Section I and 80 marks of short-answer and extended-response questions in Section II, with a data sheet and formulae sheet at the back.
- Every module was examined in both sections every year. Questions involving each module were worth between 23 and 37 marks in any one paper (counting shared questions), and over the seven papers each module averaged 21% to 23% of the marks from single-module questions.
- Questions shared between modules were worth 72 of the 700 marks, and 42 of those joined Module 5 (Advanced Mechanics) with Module 6 (Electromagnetism).
- Six content areas appeared in Section II in all seven papers: projectile motion, motion in gravitational fields, charged particles in fields, electromagnetic induction, the quantum model of light, and special relativity.
- The markers’ feedback keeps asking for the same things: full working with the formula and substitution, correct units and prefixes, directions for vectors, and clear cause and effect.
- The current syllabus is examined up to and including the 2027 HSC. The first HSC on the new Physics 11–12 Syllabus (2025) is in 2028.
Contents
- Where to find official HSC Physics past papers
- What is in the HSC Physics exam
- Physics HSC papers by module
- HSC Physics exam trends
- What cost marks in each module
- How to use past papers
- Are older papers still useful?
Where Can You Find Official HSC Physics Past Papers (2019–2025)?
Each year’s exam pack has the paper, the marking guidelines (with sample answers and the Mapping Grid at the end) and the markers’ feedback, which sits on the exam pack page itself. Every link below goes to NESA; we don’t host copies.
| HSC year | Exam paper | Marking guidelines | Exam pack and marking feedback |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2025 paper (PDF) | 2025 guidelines (PDF) | 2025 exam pack |
| 2024 | 2024 paper (PDF) | 2024 guidelines (PDF) | 2024 exam pack |
| 2023 | 2023 paper (PDF) | 2023 guidelines (PDF) | 2023 exam pack |
| 2022 | 2022 paper (PDF) | 2022 guidelines (PDF) | 2022 exam pack |
| 2021 | 2021 paper (PDF) | 2021 guidelines (PDF) | 2021 exam pack |
| 2020 | 2020 paper (PDF) | 2020 guidelines (PDF) | 2020 exam pack |
| 2019 | 2019 paper (PDF) | 2019 guidelines (PDF) | 2019 exam pack |
All seven papers, marking guidelines and marking feedback are © NSW Education Standards Authority. If a PDF link stops working, the Physics HSC exam papers page always lists the current exam packs.
What Is in the HSC Physics Exam?
The format didn’t change once between 2019 and 2025. Section II ran from Question 21 to somewhere between Question 33 (2024) and Question 36 (2019 and 2025), with most questions split into parts. Every paper had exactly two single-part Section II questions worth 7 marks or more (see the big-question chart). The largest single part was 9 marks in every paper from 2019 to 2023 and 8 marks in 2024 and 2025.
The data sheet, formulae sheet and periodic table matter more in Physics than students expect. From 2020 to 2025, NESA’s general feedback asked students to know the constants and formulas on those sheets, and in 2019 markers noted students confusing the two torque formulas and mixing up symbols such as V (voltage) and v (velocity). Practise with the sheets from the back of each paper, so you know where everything is before the exam.
The multiple choice is spread evenly. In every paper, each module had between 3 and 6 of the 20 Section I marks to itself, and in 2024 the split was exactly 5 marks each.
The exam tests the four Year 12 modules only, but NESA’s syllabus describes Year 12 as applying the concepts introduced in Year 11. Projectile motion leans on Year 11 kinematics, and electromagnetism on Year 11 electricity and magnetism. If the papers expose those gaps, our Year 11 Physics classes cover that groundwork.
Physics HSC Papers by Module: Marks per Module, 2019–2025
We added up the marks in each year’s Mapping Grid by module. A question NESA tagged with content from more than one module is counted as “multi-module” rather than split, because NESA doesn’t say how those marks divide.
The same numbers as bars show how evenly most papers were balanced, and how 2020 stands apart: almost a quarter of that paper sat in questions that joined two modules.
Source and credit: the question-to-topic mapping is NESA’s, taken from the Mapping Grids in the HSC Physics Marking Guidelines 2019–2025, © NSW Education Standards Authority. The module totals are our own tally of those grids.
What Do the 2019–2025 HSC Physics Papers Show?
Treat these as a description of past papers, not a forecast: NESA sets each paper fresh, and anything on the syllabus can be examined.
Every module, every year
All four modules were examined in Section I and Section II of every paper. Averaged over the seven papers, the four modules were close to even, and once shared questions are counted, each one sat between 23 and 37 marks in any single paper.
Module 7 (The Nature of Light) varied least: 25 to 30 marks counting shared questions. Modules 5 and 6 swung the most, because they were the pair most often joined in one question. In 2020 they each had only 14 and 15 marks of their own, but 36 and 37 counting the questions they shared. By 2025 the paper had no shared questions at all and exactly 25 marks per module.
The biggest questions often join two modules
Shared questions were worth between 0 marks (2025) and 24 marks (2020) a year. Of the 72 shared marks across the seven papers, 42 joined Module 5 with Module 6, and 21 joined Module 7 with Module 8.
The Module 5 with Module 6 questions came in two kinds. Some put charged particles into electric or magnetic fields and asked for projectile or circular-motion analysis (2020 Question 34 (b), 2022 Question 34, 2024 Question 28 (b)). Others put motors, generators or magnetic braking to work on moving or falling objects (2020 Questions 32 and 33, 2022 Question 32 (b)). The Module 7 with Module 8 questions tied light to the atom, such as how the Sun produces its energy (2019 Question 34) and how experiments on the interaction of light and matter built our understanding of physics (2024 Question 32).
The 2019–2025 Physics papers kept asking students to carry mechanics into electromagnetism in a single answer. Revise those two modules side by side.
Content areas that appeared in Section II every year
No Module 8 content area appeared in Section II in all seven papers, yet Module 8 never had fewer than 14 single-module Section II marks. Its marks rotate between five content areas, so a gap in one of them is harder to spot from a single paper. Across both sections, 14 of the 16 content areas turned up in all seven papers; only structure of the atom (absent in 2022) and deep inside the atom (absent in 2023) missed a year.
What Cost Marks in HSC Physics? Module by Module
NESA’s markers give feedback on Section II, question by question; there’s none on the multiple choice. Here are the recurring themes from 2019 to 2025 in our own words, with the year and question so you can read the original. The exact comments are on each year’s exam pack page.
Across the whole paper
Every year’s general feedback says much the same thing. Read the question carefully and work out what its key word asks for. Plan before you write. Use the stimulus when the question points to it. Show full working, with the formula, the substitution and the answer, in SI units with the right prefixes and a direction for every vector. Explain with clear cause and effect, and check you’ve answered every part.
Module 5: Advanced Mechanics
| Where marks went | What markers wanted |
|---|---|
| Plugging numbers into the equations of motion before resolving the velocity into components; sign slips on vertical displacement and velocity (2021 Q34 (b), 2025 Q28) | Velocity resolved first, one sign convention kept, zero vertical displacement used where the projectile lands at launch height, and vertical velocity zero at maximum height. |
| Analysing a textbook projectile instead of the one in the stimulus, such as a launch above the landing point (2022 Q29, 2022 Q33 (b)) | The scenario as given, with the uneven trajectory worked through step by step. |
| Confusing angular velocity with linear (instantaneous) velocity; leaving forces out of a circular-motion explanation (2021 Q22, 2024 Q30) | The radius linked to linear speed, and a labelled free body diagram that covers every force. |
| Mixing up forces and energy in orbit questions; forgetting that gravitational potential energy is negative and rises as the radius grows (2020 Q31, 2021 Q25 (a), 2023 Q34 (a)) | Conservation of energy applied around the orbit, with potential energy becoming less negative as the radius increases. |
| Unit slips in Kepler’s third law (kilometres cubed, days squared, hours to seconds); trouble deriving it (2021 Q25 (b), 2024 Q25) | Units converted before substituting, and the derivation practised, since NESA notes it is in the syllabus. |
Module 6: Electromagnetism
| Where marks went | What markers wanted |
|---|---|
| Blurring Faraday’s law and Lenz’s law, or skipping steps in the cause-and-effect chain of induction (2021 Q31, 2022 Q32 (a)) | Each link stated in order: changing flux, induced emf, induced current, then the opposing field or force. |
| Dropping the negative sign on a change in flux; averaging an emf the wrong way (2021 Q24, 2025 Q26 (a)) | The change in flux worked out from the start and end positions, with every sign kept. |
| Treating back emf and eddy currents as the same thing (2019 Q31 (b), 2023 Q25 (b)) | Back emf identified as what reduces the current in a running motor. |
| Saying laminations stop eddy currents; vague transformer energy losses (2022 Q22, 2025 Q22) | Laminations reduce eddy currents, and each loss is named precisely: eddy-current heating, incomplete flux linkage, hysteresis. |
| The wrong torque formula for the diagram, a half turn treated as 90°, or centimetres left unconverted (2021 Q21, 2025 Q23 (a)) | The formula that fits the diagram, a half turn as 180°, and lengths in metres. |
| Ambiguous directions such as “up”; confusing what electric and magnetic fields do to a charged particle (2019 Q28, 2019 Q33, 2023 Q24 (a)) | Directions such as “into the page”, magnetic field given as a vector with a direction, and both mass and charge used to explain the radius of a circular path. |
Module 7: The Nature of Light
| Where marks went | What markers wanted |
|---|---|
| Mixing up the proper time and the dilated time; calculated speeds faster than light (2021 Q28 (a), 2022 Q30 (b), 2023 Q22) | The proper time identified from the frame of reference, and any answer above c treated as a sign of an error. |
| Loose relativity language and invented abbreviations (2022 Q30 (a), 2024 Q26) | Standard terms such as time dilation and length contraction, each effect tied to a named frame of reference. |
| Joining the dots or misreading the axis on photoelectric-effect graphs (2019 Q23, 2021 Q26, 2025 Q25) | A ruled line of best fit, extrapolated to the axis for the threshold frequency or work function, with its gradient linked to Planck’s constant. |
| Confusing the wave and particle models of light, including Newton’s corpuscles with Einstein’s photons (2021 Q33, 2022 Q27 (a)) | Each experimental result linked to the model it supports. |
| Misreading Wien’s law; not linking a star’s spectrum to its composition (2023 Q27 (a)) | The wavelength at peak intensity, and unique emission spectra linked to chemical composition. |
| Calling Maxwell’s E and B just “waves”; explaining polarisation without a diagram (2019 Q25, 2023 Q29) | Electric and magnetic fields named, with labelled diagrams. |
Module 8: From the Universe to the Atom
| Where marks went | What markers wanted |
|---|---|
| Rounding atomic mass units too early, or treating a mass in u as an energy (2019 Q36, 2022 Q28, 2023 Q26 (a)) | The mass defect kept unrounded, then converted to energy in consistent units. |
| Calculating a half-life the graph already shows; trouble rearranging with natural logs (2022 Q24) | Values read from the stimulus, then the decay equation rearranged carefully. |
| Calling protons and neutrons fundamental, pairing bosons with the wrong forces, or calling the Higgs boson a force carrier (2019 Q32, 2020 Q25, 2025 Q33) | The Standard Model’s quarks, leptons and bosons used precisely. |
| Blurring the models of Rutherford, Bohr, de Broglie and Schrödinger (2019 Q21, 2021 Q29, 2025 Q27) | Each model linked to its scientist and compared on how it treats the electron. |
| Describing Thomson and Millikan together, or giving cathode-ray properties without what they showed (2021 Q23, 2023 Q33, 2025 Q31) | Each experiment’s method, result and conclusion stated separately. |
| Confusing luminosity with brightness (2023 Q21 (a)) | Luminosity as the star’s total power output, kept distinct from how bright it looks from Earth. |
On the shared questions, the 2024 feedback praised students who brought ideas from different parts of the syllabus together, such as forces on charged particles in electric fields with projectile motion, and who carried their answers from earlier parts into later ones (2024 Question 28).
How Should You Use HSC Physics Past Papers?
- Learn the module first. A paper is a test, not a textbook. Early in Year 12, do questions by module as you finish each one.
- Sit full papers timed, in one sitting. Three hours and five minutes, closed book, with only the data sheet, formulae sheet and periodic table from the back of the paper. Stopping halfway hides the stamina and timing problems that cost marks late in Section II.
- Mark it honestly against the marking guidelines. Check each marking criterion as well as the sample answer. If a criterion asks for a link, a direction or a unit you didn’t give, you didn’t get that mark.
- Read the marking feedback for the questions you dropped. It usually names the exact mistake.
- Log every lost mark by module and content area, then revise those areas before your next paper. Watch the Module 5 and Module 6 overlap in particular, since that’s where most shared marks sat.
Seven papers isn’t many, so don’t burn them all in September.
Are Older HSC Physics Past Papers Still Useful?
Papers from 2018 and earlier sit in NESA’s Physics HSC exam papers archive, which notes that they aren’t from the current syllabus. Some of their mechanics, electromagnetism, light and nuclear questions still apply, but they also examine content that’s no longer in the course, and their structure is different. Use them for extra topic practice after 2019 to 2025, and check each question against the syllabus first.
NESA’s new Physics 11–12 Syllabus (2025) starts with Year 11 in Term 1 2027 and Year 12 in Term 4 2027. According to the Physics 11–12 Syllabus (2025) overview, its first HSC examination is in 2028, so the analysis on this page applies to the 2026 and 2027 HSC. That’s a year earlier than the Chemistry changeover, so don’t assume the two subjects switch together. We’ll add each new paper as NESA publishes it.
HSC Physics Tutoring in Blacktown
Past papers show you where the marks go. Turning that into marks you actually earn takes explanation, practice and feedback. Our HSC Physics tutoring in Blacktown runs small classes of 1 to 5 students, taught by tutors averaging 97.1 ATAR, a few minutes from Blacktown Station. Check our pricing, or book a free trial with no obligations.
The Bottom Line
The 2019 to 2025 HSC Physics past papers are free, official and the best practice material you have. Every module was examined every year, the biggest questions often joined mechanics with electromagnetism, and lost marks were usually about working, units, directions and answering the exact question. Use the charts to see where the marks have gone, the feedback to see how they were lost, and your own mark log to fix it.
If this article was helpful, you should check out:
- HSC past papers by subject: NESA’s 2019 to 2025 exam packs for English Advanced, English Standard, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and how the exams compare
- HSC Chemistry past papers, topic by topic
- HSC English Advanced past papers, every module
- How NESA scaling works, and where Physics sits in our HSC subject scaling table
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I download HSC Physics past papers?
NESA publishes every HSC Physics exam paper, with its marking guidelines and marking feedback, free on its website. The table at the top of this page links directly to NESA's 2019 to 2025 exam packs, which are the papers on the current syllabus.
Which HSC Physics past papers match the current syllabus?
The 2019 to 2025 papers. The Physics Stage 6 Syllabus (2017) was first examined in the 2019 HSC, and NESA keeps 2018 and earlier papers in an archive marked as not from the current syllabus.
Do HSC Physics past papers come with answers?
Each year's marking guidelines give the multiple-choice answers and the marking criteria for Section II, usually with a sample answer. NESA's marking feedback then describes what better responses did. They aren't full worked solutions, so if you can't see why you lost a mark, ask a teacher or tutor to go through it with you.
How many marks is each module worth in the HSC Physics exam?
NESA doesn't publish a fixed split. In the 2019 to 2025 papers, questions involving each module were worth between 23 and 37 of the 100 marks in any one paper, counting questions shared between modules at full value, and every module appeared in both sections every year. Counting single-module questions only, each module averaged 21% to 23% of the paper.
Is there a formula sheet in the HSC Physics exam?
Yes. Every paper from 2019 to 2025 has a data sheet, a formulae sheet and a periodic table at the back. NESA's markers repeatedly ask students to know the constants and formulas on those sheets, so practise with the copies at the back of each past paper.
What is the format of the HSC Physics exam?
Five minutes of reading time and three hours of working time, for 100 marks. Section I is 20 multiple-choice questions worth one mark each (allow about 35 minutes), and Section II is 80 marks of short-answer and extended-response questions (allow about 2 hours and 25 minutes). NESA timetabled the 2026 exam for Thursday 5 November 2026, the last day of the written exams.
When does the new HSC Physics syllabus start?
Year 11 starts the Physics 11–12 Syllabus (2025) in Term 1 2027 and Year 12 in Term 4 2027, with the first HSC exam on it in 2028. Students sitting the HSC in 2026 or 2027 are examined on the current syllabus, so the 2019 to 2025 papers stay relevant for them.
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