CUET Physics Syllabus: Unit Wise Topics and Paper Format

Where physics fits in CUET UG

Among the CUET UG domain papers, physics is a core choice for science students. You can take up to five tests in all, mixing languages, domain papers and the General Aptitude Test, and physics is usually chosen by students aiming at B.Sc physics, B.Sc honours in other sciences, or engineering and technology courses at central universities that ask for it.

Earlier cycles gave you a choice of questions and a shorter time. In the latest pattern, all 50 questions are compulsory and the time is 60 minutes, so you can no longer skip a weak unit by design. Read the full rules on the CUET UG syllabus page.

CUET physics syllabus unit by unit

Unit 1: Electrostatics

• Electric charge, its conservation, Coulomb's law and superposition
• Electric field, field lines, dipole and torque on a dipole in a uniform field
• Electric flux, Gauss's theorem and its use for wire, sheet and shell
• Potential, potential energy, equipotential surfaces
• Conductors and dielectrics; capacitor combinations and the energy a capacitor holds

Unit 2: Current Electricity

• Drift velocity, mobility, Ohm's law, resistivity and its temperature dependence
• Electrical energy and power
• Cells, emf, internal resistance, cells in series and parallel
• Kirchhoff's rules and the Wheatstone bridge

Unit 3: Moving Charges, Magnetism and Matter

• Fields from currents by Biot Savart and by Ampere's circuital law, applied to a long wire, a circular loop and a solenoid
• Force on a moving charge and on a current carrying conductor, force between parallel currents
• Current loop as a magnetic dipole, moving coil galvanometer and its conversion to ammeter or voltmeter
• Bar magnet, para, dia and ferro magnetic materials

Unit 4: Electromagnetic Induction and Alternating Currents

• Laws of Faraday, Lenz's law, self and mutual inductance
• rms against peak values; reactance and impedance; the series LCR circuit and the frequency where its current peaks
• Average power, power factor and the idea of wattless current
• How a transformer and an AC generator work

Unit 5: Electromagnetic Waves

• Displacement current, nature of EM waves and the EM spectrum with uses

Unit 6: Optics

• Mirrors, refraction, total internal reflection, lenses, lens maker's formula, power, prism
• Microscope and telescope
• Wave optics: wavefronts and Huygens' construction, the double slit experiment, diffraction from one slit

Unit 7: Dual Nature (radiation and matter)

• Photoelectric effect, Einstein's equation, de Broglie waves

Unit 8: Atoms and Nuclei

• Alpha scattering and Rutherford's atom; Bohr's hydrogen atom and its spectral lines
• Nuclear size and composition, mass defect, binding energy, fission and fusion

Unit 9: Electronic Devices

• Band picture of solids, pure and doped semiconductors, how a p n junction forms, using a diode to rectify AC

Where to spend your physics hours

NTA gives no official unit wise question count, so any weightage chart you see is only an estimate. A sound approach is to follow the size of each unit in the NCERT book. Electrostatics, current electricity, magnetism, EMI with AC, and optics fill the larger share of the class 12 textbook and should get most of your hours. Modern physics units (dual nature, atoms, nuclei, semiconductors) are shorter and more formula based, so they offer quick marks with less effort.

Kinds of questions you will see

• Direct concept: for example, how the capacitance changes when a dielectric slab is inserted
• One step numericals: resistance of a combination, focal length of a lens pair, de Broglie wavelength of an electron
• Graph reading: V I curves, stopping potential against frequency, diode characteristics
• Assertion and reason or match the following: pairing laws with their scientists or devices with principles

With about 72 seconds per question, there is little room for long working. Practise solving numericals with rounded values and rough estimates.

A plan from board exams to CUET

1. During the board year: finish NCERT chapters thoroughly, including the solved examples and exercise numericals. Keep a formula sheet per unit.
2. The month after boards: switch from writing answers to choosing answers. Solve 50 question sets in 60 minutes, three times a week.
3. The last two weeks: one timed paper daily, then revise only your formula sheets and mistakes.

The CBSE class 12 physics syllabus page covers the board side in detail, and the NEET physics syllabus is useful if you are attempting both tests, since NEET also includes class 11.

Books and official sources

Your main book is the two part NCERT physics text for class 12. Add the NCERT exemplar for harder conceptual questions. For the official syllabus file and past papers, visit the CUET UG website of NTA. Pair physics with the right companion papers too; most science students also look at the CUET chemistry syllabus and the CUET maths syllabus.