What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9702 Physics papers and filtered to nuclear physics. 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 nuclear physics, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Forgetting to square c in E = mc², which is out by a factor of 3 × 10⁸.
- Calculating the mass defect as the nuclear mass minus the sum of the nucleons, giving a negative answer.
- Using the mass of a hydrogen atom for a proton, or forgetting that atomic masses include electrons.
- Confusing binding energy with binding energy per nucleon, and saying uranium is the most stable nucleus because its total binding energy is largest.
- Drawing the binding energy curve peaking at uranium rather than at iron-56.
- Saying fusion joins heavy nuclei or that fission splits light ones.
- Saying binding energy is the energy holding the nucleus together in the sense of an energy the nucleus contains. It is the energy needed to take it apart.
- Asserting that decay is random without giving the fluctuating count rate as evidence.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Nuclear physics revision notes.