IB Class 11Subject library

IB Class 11 Physics

Chapter-wise notes, previous year papers, sample papers and Q&A for IB Class 11 physics — free, syllabus-aligned, exam-ready.

14 chapters~252 min read totalFree · printable

Chapters

14 chapters — sequenced for revision and exam prep.

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IB chapters aren't published yet — showing the NCERT equivalent

IB runs the PYP/MYP/DP syllabus, which does not map onto NCERT chapters. Use this for the concepts; check chapter names and order against your own textbook.

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Units and Measurements

The seven SI base units are no longer defined by objects — since 2018 every one is pinned to a constant of nature. This chapter covers that, plus significant figures and dimensional analysis, worked through all five of the NCERT chapter's own solved examples. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 1.

CBSE⏱ 20 minRead chapter

Motion in a Straight Line

Drop a ruler through a friend's fingers, measure how far it fell before they caught it, and you have measured their reaction time. This chapter builds the tools for exactly that — velocity at a single instant, found by shrinking a time window until the number stops moving; Galileo settling whether acceleration is measured against distance or against time; and three equations derived twice over, once from the area under a graph and once by integration. It never asks what causes motion. That is the next chapter. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 2.

CBSE⏱ 12 minRead chapter

Motion in a Plane

Along a straight line, a plus and a minus sign were enough. In a plane they are not, so this chapter builds vector algebra from scratch and then spends it — showing that a projectile's horizontal and vertical motions are completely independent, and that moving in a circle at constant speed is still accelerated motion. It also carries a syllabus gap worth knowing before you revise. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 3.

CBSE⏱ 21 minRead chapter

Laws of Motion

For two thousand years the obvious answer was that a moving body needs something to keep it moving. It took Galileo to see that the obvious answer was wrong, and Newton to replace it with three laws. This chapter is where kinematics stops describing motion and starts explaining it — through momentum, impulse, friction, and the forces that hold a car on a curve. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 4.

CBSE⏱ 22 minRead chapter

Work, Energy and Power

Newton's laws describe motion force by force, direction by direction. This chapter throws that machinery away and asks a single scalar question instead — how much work was done? — and shows that the answer alone predicts a final speed, without ever needing to know the exact shape of the force involved. The same idea then explains why momentum survives every collision but kinetic energy only survives the gentle ones. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 5.

CBSE⏱ 16 minRead chapter

System of Particles and Rotational Motion

Up to now every object has been a point. This chapter gives bodies size, and everything changes — a force now depends on where you apply it, mass gets replaced by a quantity that depends on the axis you chose, and a diver can spin faster by folding her arms. Two theorems most coaching notes still drill are no longer in the syllabus. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 6.

CBSE⏱ 14 minRead chapter

Gravitation

An astronaut floating in the space station is not beyond Earth's gravity — gravity there is close to full strength, and that is exactly why she floats. Kepler's laws, the inverse square law, the shell results that let you treat a planet as a point, why g falls off both above and below the surface, and why every bound orbit has negative energy. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 7.

CBSE⏱ 22 minRead chapter

Mechanical Properties of Solids

Every solid deforms under load — a steel girder, a concrete pillar, the bones in your leg. Usually you cannot see it happen, but it happens. This chapter puts numbers on how much, through stress, strain, and the three moduli that tell you how stubbornly a material resists being stretched, twisted or squeezed. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 8.

CBSE⏱ 20 minRead chapter

Mechanical Properties of Fluids

A solid resists being deformed by a fixed amount; a fluid resists only the speed of the deformation. That one distinction opens up everything here — why a stiletto heel damages a floor a heavier person in flat shoes does not, why a spinning cricket ball refuses to travel in a parabola, and why sap climbs to the top of a tall tree against gravity. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 9.

CBSE⏱ 22 minRead chapter

Thermal Properties of Matter

Common sense calls both "hotness" and "heat" the same thing. This chapter separates them properly — temperature is a state a body is in, heat is energy on its way somewhere. From there it explains why lakes freeze from the top down, why a steel tape lies to you on a hot day, and why the coldest place in a room and the warmest place trade positions when you switch from heating to cooling. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 10.

CBSE⏱ 17 minRead chapter

Thermodynamics

The First Law is just bookkeeping — energy in equals energy stored plus energy out. The Second Law is the interesting one: it explains why a hot cup of tea never spontaneously gets hotter by cooling the room, why no engine ever reaches 100% efficiency, and why the Carnot engine's efficiency limit isn't a claim anyone has to take on faith — it can be proved. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 11.

CBSE⏱ 21 minRead chapter

Kinetic Theory

Pressure and temperature feel like solid, self-contained facts about a gas — until this chapter derives both of them from nothing but molecules bouncing elastically off a wall. What falls out along the way is stranger than the destination: why helium and uranium hexafluoride at the same temperature carry exactly the same average kinetic energy per molecule, and why a leaking gas cylinder still takes minutes to fill a room despite its molecules moving at the speed of sound. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 12.

CBSE⏱ 15 minRead chapter

Oscillations

A swinging pendulum and a planet orbiting the Sun are both periodic — but only one of them is simple harmonic. This chapter draws that line precisely, then shows something genuinely surprising: watched edge-on, a ball moving in a perfect circle looks exactly like a mass bouncing on a spring. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 13.

CBSE⏱ 16 minRead chapter

Waves

Drop a pebble in a pond and the ripples race outward — but the water itself barely moves, just bobs up and down in place. That single observation is the whole chapter: a wave carries a disturbance and its energy from one place to another without any of the medium actually travelling along with it. From there, the same handful of ideas explains why a guitar string only plays certain notes, why Newton's own formula for the speed of sound was wrong by 15%, and why two out-of-tune sitar strings produce a throbbing sound neither one makes alone. CBSE Class 11 Physics Chapter 14.

CBSE⏱ 14 minRead chapter

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IB Class 11 Physics