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NEET (UG) · revision cheat sheet · neetlogic.in
Physics
28 chapters · 86 topics · ~180 marks · 51 solved previous-year questions
Class 11
1. Units and Measurements
- SI units, dimensions and dimensional analysis —
- Dimensional analysis can check an equation's consistency or derive how variables combine, but it can never fix a pure numerical constant like the ½ in KE = ½mv², and it can't distinguish between quantities that share dimensions, such as work and torque.
- Significant figures and errors in measurement —
- For a quantity like Z = A^p B^q / C^r, the relative errors always add — even where the formula has division — because error propagation bounds the worst case rather than doing signed arithmetic.
- Measuring instruments: vernier, screw gauge —
- A screw gauge's zero-error sign is the trap: a positive zero error is subtracted from the observed reading, but a negative zero error is subtracted as a negative number — which means it's effectively added back.
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2. Motion in a Straight Line
- Displacement, velocity, acceleration; graphs —
- Area under a v-t graph gives displacement, not distance — where the graph dips below the axis that area subtracts, so total distance needs the positive and negative areas summed separately, not net.
- Equations of uniformly accelerated motion —
- The distance covered in the nth second, Sn = u + a(2n−1)/2, is a distinct formula from s = ut + ½at² — NEET often wants one specific second's distance, not the total displacement.
- Relative velocity in one dimension —
- Relative velocity is a subtraction, v_AB = v_A − v_B, so assigned sign matters as much as speed — two objects add their speeds only when opposite directions are already opposite in sign.
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3. Motion in a Plane
- Vectors: addition, resolution, products —
- The resultant of two vectors is maximum (A+B) when they're parallel and minimum (|A−B|) when antiparallel — it's never zero unless the two magnitudes are equal, a quick check for ruling out impossible resultants.
- Projectile motion —
- Complementary projection angles (θ and 90°−θ) give the same range but different times of flight and maximum heights — same range never means everything else about the trajectory matches too.
- Uniform circular motion and relative velocity —
- Uniform circular motion has constant speed but never constant velocity — the centripetal acceleration v²/r is always nonzero and points toward the centre, which is exactly why the motion counts as accelerated.
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4. Laws of Motion
- Newton's laws, inertia, impulse and momentum —
- Action–reaction pairs act on two different bodies, so they can never be added together to argue that nothing accelerates — a body stays at rest only when the net force on that one body is zero.
- Friction: static, kinetic, rolling —
- Static friction isn't a fixed value — it self-adjusts to match the applied force up to its maximum, μsN — so the friction on a stationary block usually equals the applied force, not μsN itself.
- Circular motion dynamics, banking of roads —
- tanθ = v²/rg is only the speed needing zero friction on a banked curve — with friction present, safe speed becomes a range between a v_min and v_max, both formulas picking up μ.
- Connected bodies, pulleys and pseudo forces —
- A pseudo force exists only in a non-inertial, accelerating frame — solving the same problem from the ground frame must never include one, and mixing both approaches in one diagram is the most common error here.
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5. Work, Energy and Power
- Work by constant and variable forces —
- Work is zero whenever force stays perpendicular to displacement at every instant — centripetal force on a circling body and the upward force on someone carrying a bag horizontally both do zero work.
- Kinetic and potential energy, conservation —
- The work-energy theorem, W_net = ΔKE, holds even with friction present — it's total mechanical energy that's conserved only when every non-conservative force does zero work, and NEET tests which claim survives friction.
- Collisions: elastic and inelastic —
- Momentum is conserved in every collision, elastic or not — only kinetic energy needs the collision to be elastic — and for two equal masses in a 1D elastic collision, the velocities simply swap.
- Power and vertical circular motion —
- At the top of a vertical circle the minimum safe speed is √(gr), not zero — gravity alone supplies the whole centripetal force there, so tension or normal force drops to exactly zero, never negative.
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6. System of Particles and Rotational Motion
- Centre of mass and its motion —
- Internal forces — an explosion, an internal collision — never change the centre of mass's velocity or path, only external forces do; a shell that explodes mid-air has its COM land exactly where the intact shell would have.
- Torque, angular momentum and their conservation —
- Angular momentum L = Iω is conserved whenever net external torque is zero, even as I itself changes — a skater pulling their arms in spins faster purely because I falls, with no external torque involved.
- Moment of inertia, theorems of axes —
- The perpendicular axis theorem (Iz = Ix+Iy) applies only to flat, planar bodies — using it on a solid sphere or cylinder is a common invalid move — while the parallel axis theorem works for any rigid body.
- Rolling motion and rotational kinetic energy —
- Racing shapes down an incline without slipping, acceleration depends only on the k²/R² ratio, never on mass or radius — so a solid sphere always beats a solid cylinder, which always beats a ring, at any size.
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7. Gravitation
- Newton's law of gravitation, g and its variation —
- g falls off in both directions from the surface but not symmetrically: it drops as g(1−2h/R) with altitude, roughly twice as fast per unit distance as g(1−d/R) with depth, and reaches zero only at the centre.
- Gravitational potential and potential energy —
- Gravitational potential energy is negative everywhere at finite distance, by the convention that it's zero at infinity — rising toward zero as a satellite escapes doesn't mean the value turns positive.
- Kepler's laws, satellites, escape velocity —
- Escape velocity depends only on the planet's mass and radius, never on the projection angle or the escaping body's own mass. Kepler's third law, T² ∝ r³, likewise links period to orbital radius alone, independent of the orbiting body's mass.
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8. Mechanical Properties of Solids
- Stress, strain and Hooke's law —
- Hooke's law (stress ∝ strain) holds only up to the proportional limit — the elastic limit lies slightly beyond it, so a material can still spring back to shape over a small range where stress and strain aren't proportional.
- Young's, bulk and shear moduli; Poisson's ratio —
- Young's modulus and shear modulus are defined only for solids — a liquid or gas can't sustain a shape-restoring shear or tensile stress, so only the bulk modulus applies to fluids.
- Elastic potential energy —
- Elastic energy stored per unit volume of a stretched wire is ½ × stress × strain, which simplifies to ½Y(strain)² — the same ½ × force × extension logic as a spring, expressed through Young's modulus.
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9. Mechanical Properties of Fluids
- Pressure, Pascal's law, buoyancy —
- Buoyant force depends only on the volume of fluid displaced and the fluid's density — once an object is fully submerged, pushing it deeper doesn't change the buoyant force, since the displaced volume stays the same.
- Viscosity, Stokes' law, terminal velocity —
- Terminal velocity under Stokes' law scales as the square of the radius, not linearly — doubling a drop's radius quadruples its terminal speed, and NEET tests this exponent directly more often than the formula's derivation.
- Bernoulli's principle and its applications —
- Bernoulli's equation assumes non-viscous, incompressible, streamline flow — the familiar 'pressure drops where speed increases' rule also silently assumes the same height, so applying it to turbulent or viscous flow is already outside its own assumptions.
- Surface tension, capillarity, excess pressure —
- Excess pressure is 4T/r inside a soap bubble but only 2T/r inside a plain liquid drop or a submerged air bubble — the extra factor comes from the soap film having two free surfaces instead of one.
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10. Thermal Properties of Matter
- Thermal expansion and calorimetry —
- For an isotropic solid the linear, areal and volume expansion coefficients are in the ratio 1:2:3, so 'the' expansion coefficient without saying which one invites a factor-of-2-or-3 error; water alone contracts while warming from 0°C to 4°C.
- Change of state and latent heat —
- Temperature stays flat on a heating curve during a phase change even while heat keeps flowing in — that heat is going entirely into latent heat, not into raising temperature, until the change is complete.
- Heat transfer: conduction, convection, radiation —
- Radiation is the only one of the three heat-transfer modes that needs no medium at all — it's how the Sun's heat crosses vacuum — while conduction needs direct contact and convection needs actual bulk fluid movement.
- Newton's law of cooling, Stefan's and Wien's laws —
- Newton's law of cooling is only an approximation valid for a small temperature excess over the surroundings; the always-true relation beneath it is Stefan's law, E ∝ T⁴, and Wien's law says a hotter body's peak wavelength shifts shorter.
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11. Thermodynamics
- First law, work and internal energy —
- Internal energy is a state function — for an ideal gas it depends on temperature alone — while heat and work are path-dependent, so two different processes between the same states can have very different Q and W despite identical ΔU.
- Thermodynamic processes: isothermal, adiabatic, isobaric, isochoric —
- On a P-V diagram, an adiabatic curve through a point is always steeper than the isothermal curve through that same point, because γ > 1 — a fast way to identify which curve is which without reading labels.
- Second law, heat engines, Carnot cycle —
- Carnot efficiency, η = 1 − T2/T1 with temperatures in kelvin, depends only on the two reservoir temperatures, never on the working substance — no gas swap raises a reversible engine's efficiency between fixed temperatures.
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12. Kinetic Theory
- Ideal gas equation and kinetic interpretation of pressure —
- At a fixed temperature, rms speed depends only on molar mass — lighter molecules move faster, not slower, which is why hydrogen effuses faster than oxygen at the same temperature.
- Degrees of freedom, law of equipartition, specific heats —
- Each degree of freedom contributes ½kT, so Cv = (f/2)R: monatomic gas has f=3 (Cv=3/2R), diatomic has f=5 at ordinary temperatures (Cv=5/2R), and only gains its two vibrational modes — becoming f=7 — at high temperature.
- Mean free path —
- Mean free path depends on the number density of molecules, hence inversely on pressure at fixed temperature, not on molecular speed — doubling pressure at constant T halves it, but raising T at constant volume leaves it unchanged.
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13. Oscillations
- Simple harmonic motion: equations, energy —
- Total energy in SHM is constant and proportional to amplitude squared, but keeps trading between KE (maximum at the mean position) and PE (maximum at the extremes) — and acceleration itself is never constant, since a = −ω²x.
- Spring–mass system and simple pendulum —
- A spring-mass system's period, T = 2π√(m/k), doesn't involve g and works the same on the Moon, while a pendulum's period, T = 2π√(L/g), depends on effective g and simply stops swinging in a freely falling lift.
- Damped, forced oscillations and resonance —
- Resonance occurs when the driving frequency matches the system's own natural frequency, producing a sharp buildup in amplitude — the textbook reason soldiers break step crossing a bridge rather than march across it in rhythm.
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14. Waves
- Transverse and longitudinal waves, speed of a wave —
- Wave speed is fixed by the medium's own properties, not by the source's frequency or the wave's amplitude — crossing into a new medium leaves frequency exactly as the source set it, while wavelength and speed both change.
- Superposition, standing waves, beats —
- Beat frequency is simply the difference of the two frequencies, never their sum or average — and a standing wave's nodes and antinodes stay fixed in space, unlike a travelling wave where every point oscillates with equal amplitude.
- Doppler effect —
- The Doppler formula's sign convention is the real trap: source and observer velocities are each positive when moving toward the other and negative when moving away, and an inconsistent choice is the most common source of an inverted answer.
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Class 12
15. Electric Charges and Fields
- Coulomb's law and superposition —
- Force from multiple charges adds as vectors, not scalars — the net force on a charge comes from superposing each pairwise Coulomb force with its own direction, so just adding magnitudes fails whenever the charges aren't collinear.
- Electric field, field lines, dipole —
- On a dipole's axial line the field is 2kp/r³, but on its equatorial line it's only kp/r³ and points opposite to the dipole moment — both fall off as 1/r³, but the factor of 2 and the direction are what NEET swaps.
- Electric flux and Gauss's law with applications —
- Gauss's law counts only the charge enclosed by the surface — charges outside contribute zero net flux, though they still affect the field at points on it — and the field just outside a charged conductor is σ/ε0, twice an isolated sheet's σ/2ε0.
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16. Electrostatic Potential and Capacitance
- Potential and potential energy of charges and dipoles —
- Potential from multiple charges adds as plain signed numbers, not vectors, much simpler than combining fields — and a dipole's potential is exactly zero at every point on its equatorial line, not just far away.
- Conductors and dielectrics —
- A conductor in equilibrium is an equipotential throughout, but that doesn't mean its surface charge density is uniform — charge concentrates where curvature is sharpest, which is the entire physical basis for how a lightning rod works.
- Capacitors: series, parallel, energy stored —
- In series, capacitors share the same charge, not voltage; in parallel they share the same voltage, not charge — the opposite pairing from resistor networks. Adding a dielectric to an isolated, constant-charge capacitor actually lowers its stored energy as C rises.
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17. Current Electricity
- Ohm's law, resistivity, temperature dependence —
- Resistivity is a property of the material only — stretching a wire to twice its length doubles R (since R = ρl/A) but leaves ρ itself unchanged, and resistivity rises with temperature for metals but falls for semiconductors.
- Cells, EMF, internal resistance, combinations —
- Terminal voltage equals EMF only on open circuit — the moment current is drawn, V = E − Ir is strictly less than E. Cells in series suit a large external resistance; cells in parallel suit a small one, where less internal resistance matters most.
- Kirchhoff's rules, Wheatstone bridge, potentiometer —
- A potentiometer's advantage over a voltmeter is that, at balance, it draws zero current from the cell being measured, while a voltmeter always draws some and reads slightly low. In a balanced Wheatstone bridge, only the galvanometer branch carries zero current.
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18. Moving Charges and Magnetism
- Force on a moving charge and on a current —
- The magnetic force on a moving charge is always perpendicular to its velocity, so it can never change the charge's speed or kinetic energy, only its direction — and it's exactly zero when velocity is parallel or antiparallel to B.
- Biot–Savart and Ampère's laws —
- Ampère's law is exact for any current distribution but only practically solvable when the geometry is symmetric enough to pull B outside the integral — for anything less symmetric, Biot–Savart's element-by-element integration is what actually gets used.
- Torque on a current loop, moving-coil galvanometer —
- Torque on a current loop is maximum when the loop's plane lies along B and zero when the plane is perpendicular to B — a galvanometer uses a radial field specifically to hold this torque near maximum through the whole swing, giving a linear scale.
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19. Magnetism and Matter
- Bar magnet and magnetic field lines —
- Magnetic field lines always form closed loops with no start or end point, since isolated magnetic poles don't exist — unlike electric field lines, which begin and end on charges. A bar magnet's field falls off as 1/r³, its axial value twice the equatorial one.
- Earth's magnetism —
- Dip angle is 0° at the magnetic equator, where the field is purely horizontal, and 90° at the magnetic poles, where it's purely vertical — and Earth's actual magnetic south pole sits near the geographic north.
- Dia-, para- and ferromagnetism —
- Diamagnetism is present in every material, including paramagnetic and ferromagnetic ones — it's just too weak to notice once a stronger attractive effect is present. Above its Curie temperature, a ferromagnetic material loses its domains and simply becomes paramagnetic.
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| List I (Material) | List II (Susceptibility ) |
|---|---|
| A. Diamagnetic | I. |
| B. Ferromagnetic | II. |
| C. Paramagnetic | III. |
| D. Non-magnetic | IV. (a small positive number) |
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20. Electromagnetic Induction
- Faraday's and Lenz's laws —
- Lenz's law says the induced effect opposes the change in flux, not the flux itself — if flux through a loop is decreasing, the induced current flows to try to maintain it, not to fight its existing direction.
- Motional EMF and eddy currents —
- Eddy currents are the same phenomenon whether nuisance or feature: laminated transformer cores exist purely to suppress them, while electromagnetic braking and induction furnaces deliberately rely on them — NEET likes sorting a list into wanted versus unwanted.
- Self and mutual inductance —
- Self-inductance is fixed by a coil's geometry and turns alone, never by the current through it — what an inductor actually opposes is a change in current, not current itself, so a steady current flows through it perfectly freely.
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21. Alternating Current
- AC through R, L, C and LCR circuits —
- In a pure inductor, current lags voltage by 90°; in a pure capacitor, it leads by 90° — remembered as 'ELI the ICE man' (in L, voltage E leads current I; in C, current I leads voltage E).
- Resonance, power and power factor —
- At series-LCR resonance, impedance is at its minimum (just R) and current is maximum, with the circuit behaving as purely resistive — don't confuse this with parallel resonance, where impedance peaks instead. A pure L or C dissipates zero average power over a cycle.
- Transformers —
- An ideal transformer conserves power, not voltage or current individually — a step-up transformer that raises voltage by some factor drops current by that exact same factor, and transformers work only on AC, since they need a changing flux.
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22. Electromagnetic Waves
- Displacement current and Maxwell's equations (qualitative) —
- Displacement current isn't an actual flow of charge — it's the term Maxwell added so Ampère's law gives a consistent answer for any surface, and the textbook example is a charging capacitor's gap, where conduction current is zero but displacement current isn't.
- Electromagnetic spectrum —
- Every part of the electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to radio waves, travels at exactly the same speed c in vacuum — only wavelength and frequency change across it, contrary to a common trap implying higher-energy radiation 'travels faster.'
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23. Ray Optics and Optical Instruments
- Reflection and refraction, mirror and lens formulae —
- The biggest source of errors here is sign convention: a concave mirror has negative f, a convex mirror positive f — a convex mirror's image is always virtual and upright regardless of object distance, and getting the sign backwards flips every later answer.
- Total internal reflection and prisms —
- Total internal reflection needs two conditions together: light going from a denser to a rarer medium, and the angle of incidence exceeding the critical angle (sin C = 1/n) — higher refractive index gives a smaller critical angle, which is why diamond traps light so well.
- Optical instruments: microscope and telescope —
- A microscope's magnifying power rises as its lenses' focal lengths get shorter, but a telescope's, fo/fe, rises as the OBJECTIVE's focal length gets longer — opposite dependence, which is why microscope objectives are tiny and telescope objectives are built as large as possible.
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24. Wave Optics
- Huygens' principle —
- Huygens' wave theory correctly predicted that light slows down in a denser medium, v = c/n — the opposite of Newton's corpuscular prediction — a difference that later measurement of light's speed in water settled in the wave theory's favour.
- Interference and Young's double slit —
- Bright and dark fringes in Young's double slit are evenly and identically spaced, β = λD/d, not narrower at the dark fringes — and the whole pattern needs coherent sources, which is why two ordinary, independent lamps never show a stable pattern.
- Diffraction and polarisation —
- Polarisation only happens for transverse waves, and the fact that light can be polarised is itself the proof light is transverse. In single-slit diffraction, a sinθ = nλ locates the minima, not the maxima — the reverse of double-slit's condition for maxima.
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25. Dual Nature of Radiation and Matter
- Photoelectric effect and Einstein's equation —
- Increasing light intensity increases the number of photoelectrons, not their maximum kinetic energy — that depends only on frequency, KEmax = hν − φ — and below the threshold frequency, no electrons come out no matter how bright the light is.
- Matter waves and de Broglie wavelength —
- Every moving object has a de Broglie wavelength, λ = h/mv, not just electrons — it's simply too small to matter macroscopically. For an electron accelerated through potential V, this gives λ = h/√(2meV), a frequently tested formula in its own right.
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26. Atoms
- Rutherford and Bohr models —
- Rutherford's model correctly located the nucleus but couldn't explain atomic stability — classically an accelerating orbiting electron should radiate energy and spiral inward. Bohr fixed exactly this by allowing only orbits with quantised angular momentum, L = nh/2π.
- Hydrogen spectrum and energy levels —
- Only the Balmer series lands substantially in the visible range, since it ends at n=2 — Lyman (ending at n=1) is entirely ultraviolet and the rest are infrared. Energy levels En = −13.6/n² eV are always negative, approaching zero only at ionisation.
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| List I (Spectral lines of hydrogen for transitions from) | List II (Wavelength, nm) |
|---|---|
| A. to | I. 410.2 |
| B. to | II. 434.1 |
| C. to | III. 656.3 |
| D. to | IV. 486.1 |
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27. Nuclei
- Nuclear size, mass defect, binding energy —
- Binding energy per nucleon peaks near mass number 56 (iron) and falls on both sides — exactly why fusion of light nuclei and fission of heavy nuclei both release energy, moving toward that peak. Nuclear density comes out roughly the same for every nucleus.
- Radioactivity and decay law —
- A radioactive decay constant is fixed and completely unaffected by temperature, pressure or chemical combination, unlike an ordinary reaction rate — so half-life stays exactly the same regardless of how much substance remains or what conditions it's kept in.
- Fission and fusion —
- Commercial nuclear power runs on fission, splitting heavy nuclei like uranium — controlled fusion, despite powering the Sun, isn't commercially viable because forcing light nuclei close enough to fuse means overcoming their Coulomb repulsion at extreme temperature and pressure.
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28. Semiconductor Electronics
- Energy bands, intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductors —
- Doping never leaves a semiconductor charged — an n-type material has extra free electrons as majority carriers, but the donor ion left behind balances the charge exactly, so the material as a whole stays electrically neutral.
- p-n junction diode, rectifiers, Zener diode —
- A Zener diode is the one diode deliberately operated in reverse breakdown, using its near-constant voltage there for regulation — every ordinary diode is designed to avoid that same region. A full-wave rectifier conducts on both halves of the input cycle; a half-wave rectifier, only one.
- Logic gates —
- NAND and NOR are each called a universal gate because either one alone, used repeatedly, can build every other basic gate — AND, OR and NOT included — which is why real circuits are so often built almost entirely from just one of them.
| A | B | Y |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 1 | 1 | 0 |
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