JEE Main Physics Chapters: 11 Best, 5 to Avoid for Now
You have 79 days before the first Session 1 paper on 20 January 2027, and physics is the subject where those days pay back fastest. This guide ranks the JEE Main physics chapters by what the paper actually asks, not by the order they appear in your textbook. Eleven have to be finished before January. Five can wait, and one of them you can honestly leave alone.
- Physics is the most scoring of the three subjects. Ninety out of a hundred is a realistic target. The same ninety in maths usually costs close to twice the hours.
- The Class 12 myth is wrong. The split across the JEE Main physics chapters is roughly 11 questions from Class 11 and 14 from Class 12, about 45 to 55.
- About half the paper sits in two areas. Electrodynamics and mechanics together account for 12 or 13 of the 25 questions.
- One section is genuinely skippable. Combined translational and rotational motion needs about 25 hours to master and almost never earns them back in Main.
- The 79 days, and the dates that moved
- Why physics first
- Where the 25 questions sit
- The Class 11 versus Class 12 myth
- Tier 1: the 11 must do chapters
- Tier 2: the next eleven
- Tier 3: what to avoid for now
- Deleted topics, the current list
- 5 chapters with the best return per hour
- The 12 experiments that keep coming back
- 25 questions in 55 minutes
- Frequently asked questions
79 days, and the dates that moved
Before the JEE Main physics chapters, check this against whatever you had written down, because the information bulletin changed the calendar from what was circulating earlier.
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Session 1 exam | 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 28 January 2027 |
| Application window | 24 October to 22 November 2026 |
| Correction window | 27 to 29 November 2026 |
| Admit card | 13 January 2027 |
| Session 2 exam | 2 to 7 April 2027 |
From the JEE Main 2027 information bulletin. Confirm anything you plan around on jeemain.nta.nic.in or in the notices at nta.ac.in.
The exam now begins on 20 January, not later in the month, so anyone planning off an older calendar has quietly lost a couple of days. Fill the form before 22 November and then come back to the chapters.
Why physics is the subject to attack first
Three subjects, three hundred marks, one ranking. But they are not equally generous with your time. If you work through the JEE Main physics chapters properly, attend the lectures, do the past questions and write enough tests to learn which questions to pick, ninety out of a hundred is a reasonable target. You might lose two questions to something genuinely Advanced in flavour, or to one obscure fact. Ninety is still there.
Chemistry rewards memory and NCERT discipline, and it got easier in relative terms when the syllabus was cut, because chemistry lost the most. Maths rewards volume, and a student chasing ninety in maths often has to put in close to double the hours a physics ninety costs. In JEE Advanced that ordering flips. In Main it does not.
There is a second reason. Physics has a small set of ideas that repeat. Once you can draw a free body diagram and apply conservation of energy, you can do problems in five different chapters. The JEE Main physics chapters lean on each other, which is why the order you study them in matters as much as the hours you spend.
There is also a legitimate split plan. If your syllabus is behind, finish the compulsory chapters before January, sit Session 1 on those, and complete the remaining two to four chapters before April. That is a real strategy rather than a compromise, and it is why the tiers are worth having.
JEE Main physics chapters: where the 25 questions actually sit
Read that chart once and a lot of panic about the JEE Main physics chapters goes away. Twelve or thirteen of the 25 questions come from two areas you already know are important. Modern physics and semiconductors bring another four. Optics brings three. Everything else is fighting over the last five or six.
That does not make the small chapters worthless. It makes them cheap. A chapter that reliably gives one question and takes five hours to finish is a better use of a Tuesday evening than a chapter that gives two questions and takes thirty hours. We come back to that arithmetic in the return per hour section.
The JEE Main physics chapters that can give two questions, not one
NTA generally tries to take one question from every one of the JEE Main physics chapters. A few chapters quietly punch above that. In past shifts these have each appeared twice in a single paper often enough to matter:
| Chapter | Why it repeats | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Ray optics | Mirrors, lenses and prisms are three separate question types in one chapter | 1 |
| Current electricity | Circuits, meter bridge and the instrument questions all come from here | 1 |
| Electrostatics | Field, potential and capacitance give very different questions | 1 |
| Wave optics | Interference and diffraction are asked separately | 1 |
| Rotational motion | Moment of inertia questions are short and easy to set | 1 |
| Units, dimensions and errors | Dimensional analysis and error propagation are two different skills | 2 |
| Fluids and surface tension | Most students skip it, so it stays an easy mark for those who do not | 2 |
| Laws of motion | Friction and constraint problems are asked as separate items | 1 |
Eight JEE Main physics chapters that have produced two questions in a single shift. Everything outside this list has mostly been a one question chapter.
One historical note worth knowing about these JEE Main physics chapters. Semiconductors used to belong on that list. While transistors were still in the syllabus, two semiconductor questions in one paper happened regularly. Since transistors were removed it has settled at one, usually on logic gates or a diode.
Why JEE Main physics chapters split roughly 45 to 55 between the classes
Ask any group of droppers which class matters more and most will say Class 12 by a mile. Some will say seventy five percent of the paper. That belief sends students into January having half forgotten kinematics, and it costs them.
Count the questions across the JEE Main physics chapters instead. Across recent papers, about 11 of the 25 physics questions come from the Class 11 syllabus and about 14 from Class 12, with a few that genuinely mix the two. That is roughly 45 and 55. It is a lean, not a landslide.
There is a comforting side to this. Class 11 physics is the part you have already seen once, so rebuilding it is faster than learning Class 12 for the first time. The Class 11 JEE Main physics chapters usually cost fewer hours per mark than the Class 12 ones.
Tier 1: the 11 JEE Main physics chapters to finish before January
These eleven JEE Main physics chapters are not negotiable. Together they cover roughly 18 of the 25 questions, and leaving any of them half done is how a student ends up scoring sixty in a subject where ninety was available.
| Chapter | Class | Why it is Tier 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Ray optics | 12 | Can give two questions. Short formulas, fast marks. |
| Current electricity | 12 | Circuits plus the instrument questions that come from the experiment list. |
| Electrostatics | 12 | Field, potential and capacitance are three question types in one chapter. |
| Magnetic effect of current | 12 | Biot Savart and Ampere's law repeat every year in some form. |
| Wave optics | 12 | Interference and diffraction are asked as separate items. |
| Dual nature and photoelectric effect | 12 | Small chapter, almost guaranteed question, graph based. |
| Atoms, nuclei and semiconductor devices | 12 | Three short topics that behave like one chapter in the paper. |
| Kinematics | 11 | Everything in mechanics sits on it. Weak here means weak everywhere. |
| Laws of motion | 11 | Friction and constraints can each give their own question. |
| Rotational motion | 11 | Moment of inertia questions are short, standard and frequent. |
| Thermodynamics and kinetic theory | 11 | Process based questions repeat with small changes. |
Seven of these JEE Main physics chapters are from Class 12 and four from Class 11, which is the 55 to 45 lean in practice rather than in theory.
One caveat on rotational motion, the trickiest of the JEE Main physics chapters
Rotational motion is in Tier 1, but combined translational and rotational motion is not. That is the rolling cylinder, the ladder slipping down a wall, the spool pulled by a thread. It is the hardest section in the mechanics half of the JEE Main physics chapters and it takes roughly 25 hours to get genuinely comfortable with.
Can it be asked? Of course. It is in the syllabus, so it can appear. The question is what those 25 hours buy. Spent on modern physics instead they will earn you more in January. Learn moment of inertia, angular momentum and the standard torque problems. Leave the rolling body combinations for after Session 1, or for Advanced if you are going that way.
Tier 2: the next JEE Main physics chapters, once Tier 1 is safe
Tier 2 is where the cheap marks among the JEE Main physics chapters live. Most are short, most are formula driven, and most students reach them tired in the last two weeks. Start them in November instead.
| Chapter | Rough hours | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Capacitors | 8 to 10 | Sits directly on electrostatics, so do it right after. |
| Electromagnetic induction | 8 to 10 | Rod moving in a field is the single most repeated setup. |
| Alternating current | 6 to 8 | Phasor questions are mechanical once you have the pattern. |
| Electromagnetic waves | 5 to 6 | The best hours to marks ratio in the whole syllabus. |
| Semiconductors | 8 to 9 | Now usually one question, on logic gates or a diode. |
| Units, dimensions and errors | 5 to 6 | Can give two. Nobody studies it properly. |
| Experimental skills | 6 to 8 | A fixed list of experiments. See the section below. |
| Simple harmonic motion | 8 to 10 | Spring and pendulum systems, asked plainly. |
| Fluids and elasticity | 8 to 10 | Widely skipped, which is exactly why it is worth doing. |
| Work, power and energy | 8 to 10 | Supports Tier 1 mechanics more than it scores on its own. |
| Centre of mass and collisions | 8 to 10 | Standard collision problems, limited variety. |
Hour estimates for these JEE Main physics chapters are ours, based on a student who has seen the chapter once in school and is now doing it properly with practice. A planning tool, not a promise.
Properties of matter, the most skipped of the Tier 2 JEE Main physics chapters, deserves one extra line. Elasticity, viscosity and surface tension together have given one or two questions in most papers and three in at least one recent one. It is easy to read, it is widely skipped, and that combination is unusual enough to be worth exploiting.
Tier 3: the JEE Main physics chapters to avoid for now
Avoid for now does not mean never, and none of these JEE Main physics chapters is worthless. Four of these five should be done, just last, after the first two tiers are solid. The fifth is the one you can genuinely let go.
| Chapter | Verdict | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Waves and sound | Do last | Doppler effect in sound is removed, which took away a reliable question type. |
| Gravitation | Do last, and fast | Once electrostatics is done, gravitation is mostly the same mathematics with a sign change. |
| Calorimetry and heat transfer | Do last | Newton's law of cooling is removed, so what remains is thin. |
| Magnetism and matter | Do last | Hysteresis and Earth's magnetism are removed. Very little is left to ask. |
| Combined rotation and translation | Skip for Session 1 | About 25 hours for one uncertain question. The worst trade in the subject. |
The first four of these JEE Main physics chapters are quick once the earlier tiers are done. The fifth is the only one on this page we suggest leaving alone before January.
JEE Main physics chapters and topics that were deleted
This is where students using older material lose time on JEE Main physics chapters that cannot be asked any more. The syllabus was rationalised and several topics went out, but a recorded lecture series or a book printed for an older cycle will still teach them at full length, and nothing in it warns you.
| Removed | From which chapter |
|---|---|
| Communication systems, the entire chapter | Communication systems |
| Junction transistor, transistor action, transistor as amplifier, oscillator and switch | Electronic devices |
| Potentiometer principle and applications, resistor colour code, resistivity of materials | Current electricity |
| Carnot engine and its efficiency | Thermodynamics |
| Newton's law of cooling, Reynolds number | Properties of solids and liquids |
| Free, forced and damped oscillations, resonance, Doppler effect in sound | Oscillations and waves |
| Cyclotron, hysteresis, Earth's magnetic field, susceptibility and permeability | Magnetic effects of current and magnetism |
| Resolving power of microscopes and telescopes | Optics |
| Radioactivity, the decay law, isotopes, isobars and isotones | Atoms and nuclei |
| Davisson and Germer experiment | Dual nature of matter and radiation |
| Quality factor | Electromagnetic induction and alternating currents |
| Geostationary satellites | Gravitation |
Deleted topics across the JEE Main physics chapters, compiled from the published rationalised syllabus and cross checked against two independent lists. Confirm against the information bulletin on the official site.
Three notes on this table, because the honest version is more useful than the confident one.
Removed does not always mean never asked. Potentiometer is the clearest case. The principle is out, and questions that look very much like potentiometer questions have still appeared, on the reasoning that it is really just current distribution in a parallel circuit rather than a separate concept. Our reading of these JEE Main physics chapters is simple: do not study the topic in depth, but do not be shocked if a familiar circuit appears on screen.
One or two sightings do not make a topic examinable. Resolving power is out of the syllabus, and we have seen it asked roughly once in many years of papers. Radioactivity is the same. The right response to one question in several hundred is not to put the topic back on your list. It is to accept that you will drop that mark if it ever comes, and spend the hours where they pay.
X rays are a different story. You will see lists claiming X rays were deleted. They do not appear as an entry in any published removal list, because they were not in the recent syllabus to begin with, and they are not in the NCERT text. Treat them as outside the scope rather than as a deletion, and do not spend a week on them either way.
One more detail worth having. Damping and resonance are gone from the JEE Main physics chapters, but they remain in the JEE Advanced syllabus. If you are preparing for both, do not delete that topic from your notes, just move it out of your January plan.
The chapter by chapter numbers behind all of this, across all three subjects, are in our JEE Main chapter wise weightage guide.
5 JEE Main physics chapters with the best return per hour
Rank the JEE Main physics chapters by marks divided by hours and the order changes completely. These five are the best trades available, and four of them sit in Tier 2, which is why Tier 2 should not wait until January.
The 12 experiments that keep coming back
Experimental skills is a syllabus unit of its own, and the cheapest of the JEE Main physics chapters to finish. It is not a vague instruction to remember your school lab. The list is finite. These twelve have produced the overwhelming majority of experiment questions:
| Experiment | What gets asked |
|---|---|
| Vernier calipers | Least count, zero error, reading a given scale |
| Screw gauge | Pitch, least count, negative zero error |
| Simple pendulum | Value of g, and percentage error questions linking length to time period |
| Young's modulus by Searle's method | A hanging mass on a wire, then stress over strain |
| Meter bridge | Balancing length, unknown resistance, error in it |
| Ohm's law circuit | Graph reading and resistance from slope |
| Galvanometer to ammeter or voltmeter | Shunt and series resistance values |
| Focal length of a lens or mirror | Object and image positions, u against v data |
| Prism, angle of minimum deviation | Refractive index from the deviation |
| Surface tension by capillary rise | Height, radius and the resulting surface tension |
| Viscosity by terminal velocity | Stokes law applied to a falling sphere |
| Diode and Zener characteristics | Forward and reverse bias current against voltage graphs |
Our compilation from past papers, and most of it doubles as revision of the JEE Main physics chapters above. The underlying theory and the graphs are in the NCERT lab sections, free to download from ncert.nic.in.
Three things make this unit worth more than its hours suggest. The questions are short, and most can be finished inside a minute and a half. They overlap heavily with Tier 1 and Tier 2 JEE Main physics chapters, so meter bridge is current electricity, capillary rise is fluids and the prism is ray optics. And the simple pendulum in particular pairs with error analysis to produce a whole family of questions, of the form "if the length changes by this percentage, what happens to the time period".
One honest limit. An experiment question is still a physics question. You cannot answer the meter bridge item without understanding the circuit behind it, so do not treat this unit as a shortcut around the chapter it belongs to.
25 questions in 55 minutes, in two rounds
You have three hours for 75 questions. Physics should take 55 to 60 minutes of that, however well you know the JEE Main physics chapters, and the only way to hold that line is to stop fighting questions that are not ready to be solved.
Question selection matters nearly as much as knowing the JEE Main physics chapters, and it is built in mock tests, not discovered on exam day. Our guides to how many mock tests you need and choosing a test series cover that side of it, and how many questions to solve daily covers the practice volume underneath.
Past questions are the other half. Work them chapter by chapter and in order of how often each type has repeated rather than paper by paper, and see how many years of PYQs to do for the window worth covering. If you want a structured programme for the next 79 days rather than a self made plan, we have compared the options in our guide to the best crash course for JEE Main 2027.
JEE Main physics chapters: frequently asked questions
Which JEE Main physics chapters have the highest weightage?
Electrodynamics is the largest block, with roughly seven questions spread across electrostatics, current electricity, magnetic effects, electromagnetic induction, alternating current and electromagnetic waves. Mechanics is next with about five. Modern physics and semiconductor devices bring around four, and optics about three. Those four areas together account for roughly nineteen of the twenty five questions.
Can I skip any chapter completely for JEE Main 2027?
Only one with a clear conscience, and that is combined translational and rotational motion, the rolling body problems. It takes about twenty five hours to master and may give you a single question. Plain rotational motion, meaning moment of inertia, torque and angular momentum, stays in the must do list. If you have the time, the honest answer is to do every chapter, because all of them will fetch you more marks than a filtered list will.
Is physics easier to score in than chemistry or maths?
For most students it converts hours into marks faster in JEE Main. Ninety out of a hundred is a realistic physics target with disciplined work, while the same ninety in maths usually needs close to double the hours because maths rewards volume of practice. Chemistry became relatively easier when the syllabus was cut, because chemistry lost the most content. In JEE Advanced this ordering tends to flip.
How many questions come from Class 11 physics?
About eleven of the twenty five, with roughly fourteen from Class 12 and a few that mix the two. That is a split of about forty five to fifty five, not the eighty twenty that many students assume. Kinematics, laws of motion, rotational motion and thermodynamics are all Class 11 JEE Main physics chapters and all four are in the must do tier.
Which physics topics are removed from the JEE Main syllabus?
Communication systems went out as a whole chapter. Transistor content was removed from electronic devices. Potentiometer, resistor colour codes, Carnot engine, Newton's law of cooling, Reynolds number, damped oscillations and resonance, Doppler effect in sound, cyclotron, hysteresis, resolving power, radioactivity and the decay law, the Davisson and Germer experiment, quality factor and geostationary satellites are all removed. Confirm against the information bulletin on the official site.
Is semiconductor still worth studying after the transistor was removed?
Yes, but with a smaller budget. It used to be good for two questions in a single paper and it now usually gives one, on logic gates, the Zener diode or the PN junction. Eight or nine hours is enough and the level is NCERT. Do not work through transistor amplifier and oscillator problems from older material, because that part is out of the syllabus.
How many hours do I need for physics before January?
If you are starting from a reasonable base, the eleven must do JEE Main physics chapters take roughly ninety to a hundred and ten hours of real work, and the second tier adds about eighty more. Across seventy nine days that is a little over two hours a day for physics alone, which is realistic alongside the other two subjects if you stop treating revision as reading.
Can I leave some chapters for the April attempt?
Yes, and for a student whose syllabus is genuinely behind this is a sensible plan rather than a compromise. Finish the Tier 1 chapters before January, sit Session 1 on those, and complete the remaining two to four chapters before the April session. What does not work is leaving a Tier 1 chapter for April, because those are the ones carrying most of the paper.
When is JEE Main 2027 Session 1?
20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 28 January 2027, as published in the information bulletin. The application window ran from 24 October to 22 November 2026, with a correction window from 27 to 29 November. Admit cards are due on 13 January 2027 and Session 2 runs from 2 to 7 April 2027.
What to do with this tomorrow morning
Open the Tier 1 table and mark each of the eleven JEE Main physics chapters as done, half done or not started. Be strict about half done, because that is the category that quietly ruins Januarys. Then put the not started ones into your next three weeks before anything from the other tiers.
After that, give Tier 2 a fixed slot rather than leaving it as a reward for finishing Tier 1. Electromagnetic waves, units and errors and the experiment list are the cheapest marks among the JEE Main physics chapters, and they are small enough to fit into the evenings when you are too tired for mechanics.
Seventy nine days is enough. Across the JEE Main physics chapters there is nothing here that needs a miracle, only an order of work that matches what the paper asks instead of what the index says.
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