A Level Physics Past Papers May 2026

Welcome to the real lesson of the past paper. Most students approach physics like a recipe book. Chapter 4: Kinematics. Learn the suvat equations. Do twenty questions where "u" is always given and "a" is constant. Chapter 5: Forces. Resolve horizontally and vertically.

The student who memorised the phrase "resistance decreases" wrote a shallow answer. The student who actually understood the non-linear relationship—who knew that "inversely proportional" requires a constant product—wrote a critical, high-level evaluation.

You open Paper 1. "I've revised waves. Let's go." You answer the first three multiple choice with a smirk. a level physics past papers

The students who get A*s are not the ones who understand quantum mechanics best. They are the ones who, in the final 10 minutes of the paper, look at a horrific 6-mark question about the viscosity of lava, take a breath, and think: "I've seen something like this. In the 2019 paper. Question 4. They wanted me to use Stokes' Law. Let's try that."

Your mind goes blank. You know the physics. You aced the textbook questions. So why does this feel like reading a foreign language? Welcome to the real lesson of the past paper

There is a moment, about 45 minutes into an A-Level Physics paper, that separates the tourists from the travellers.

You hit Question 4. It's a graph sketching question. The axes are labelled "ln(I)" vs "t". You have no idea what "I" stands for. Your pulse quickens. You skip it. Question 5 is about a diffraction grating, but the angles don't make sense. You realise you have spent 30 minutes and scored 12 marks. You close the paper and stare at the wall. Learn the suvat equations

The question doesn't mention Gauss’s law. It doesn’t mention potential dividers. It asks you to model a dusty airflow as a fluid.