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SL and HL · 2025 syllabus
Paper 1B practice
Paper 1B is the data-based part of Paper 1. You are given results from an experiment and asked to process them: uncertainties, graphs, gradients and conclusions. The context can come from any topic, so the marks come from your data skills, not from remembering one chapter.
Start here: the skills guide and the drill
Built from every Paper 1B set for the new syllabus so far: where the marks are, a method and a trap for each of the seven skills, and practice that checks itself. Then use the skill drill: new numbers every time, as much as you like.
What Paper 1B tests
Absolute, fractional and percentage uncertainties, from instruments and from repeats, and how they combine in a calculation.
Plotting with error bars, best-fit lines, steepest and least steep lines, and the gradient and intercept with their uncertainties.
Choosing what to plot to get a straight line (for example h against t², or ln N against x) and saying what the gradient means.
Fundamental SI units, systematic and random errors, whether data support a model, and realistic improvements.
Revise the skills first: the uncertainties section and the worked data analysis in the IA guide use exactly the same skills.
Practice sets
Each set has two original questions, 20 marks, to do in 40 minutes. Do it online with a timer and mark it yourself with the IB-style markscheme, or print the paper.
Falling objects
- Measuring g with a falling ball: h against t², gradient and its uncertainty
- Terminal speed of paper cones: testing a drag model, fundamental SI units
Fast particles
- Muons reaching the ground: counting uncertainty, ln N graph, time dilation
- Lifetime of fast pions: τ against γ, proper lifetime, data checks
Gases and waves
- Finding absolute zero: extrapolating to the θ-axis, uncertainty in an intercept, systematic errors
- Standing waves on a string: f² against T, uncertainty in a square, mass per unit length, SI units
More sets
New sets are added as each topic is finished, with contexts from forces, energy, fields and nuclear physics.