What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9702 Physics papers and filtered to waves. 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.
Start practising practice questions →
What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on waves, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Reading a wavelength off a displacement-time graph, or a period off a displacement-distance graph.
- Saying the frequency changes when a wave enters a new medium.
- Halving the amplitude when the intensity is halved.
- Saying sound can be polarised.
- Getting the Doppler sign the wrong way round, so an approaching source lowers the pitch.
- Putting ultraviolet on the long-wavelength side of visible light.
- Forgetting the square in Malus's law.
- Saying a polarising filter transmits all of an unpolarised beam.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Waves revision notes.