What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9702 Physics papers and filtered to motion in a circle. You answer, you find out immediately whether you were right, and you get the reasoning for the correct option and for each distractor. Wrong answers go to a mistakes locker so you can come back to exactly those.
Practice is free. You need an account only so your progress and your mistakes are still there next time.
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What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on motion in a circle, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Leaving the calculator in degree mode. Every equation in this topic assumes radians.
- Saying an object moving at constant speed in a circle is not accelerating. Its velocity changes because its direction changes.
- Treating centripetal force as an extra force acting alongside the real ones, and adding it into a free-body diagram.
- Writing "centrifugal force" as an outward force on the object.
- Saying the centripetal force does work on the object. It is perpendicular to the motion, so it does none, and the speed is unchanged.
- Using a = v²/r and a = rω² without noticing which of v and ω the question holds constant, then concluding that acceleration both rises and falls with radius.
- Assuming two points on the same rotating body have the same linear speed. They share ω, not v.
- Adding the weight to the tension at the bottom of a vertical circle instead of subtracting it.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Motion in a circle revision notes.