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Monday, 5 October

NEET UG · Physics · Class 12

Nuclei: NEET previous year questions

13 questions in ten years of NEET, asked in 9 of 10 years. Here is what this chapter tests and how.

Practise this chapter
Asked in 10 years
13
9 of 10 papers
10-year average
1.2
a paper · 0.6 since 2024 -0.8
Typical range
1–2
questions a paper; fewest 0, most 3
Weighted estimate
1.1
model, recent papers count more · about 4 marks
  • Typical range (fact)
  • 10-year average (fact)
  • Weighted estimate (model)

Typical range: questions per paper in the middle eight of the ten papers, leaving out the single highest and lowest year (about the 10th to 90th percentile), each paper scaled to 180 questions. The ten-year average and the range are historical fact. The weighted estimate is a model: each paper's share, with recent papers counting more (half-life three years), and dropped syllabus removed. It is a guide to effort, not a forecast.

What to do

How to spend time on Nuclei

Priority

Lower priority

Among the chapters that shared the last fifth of the questions. How bands are set

Past questions
13in 9 of 10 papers
Study plan gives it
8 hover 12 months; 6 h over 6
Study this chapter →Practise →

Ideas asked most often

No idea has been asked more than once yet.

149 of the 163 ideas in Lumi’s map of this chapter have not been asked or touched in ten years. New questions often come from ideas like these, so learn the whole chapter, not just the list above.

Questions per year

0241’171’181’192’203’212’221’231’240’251’26

Kind of question

SHARE OF 10 YEARS
  • Calculation85%
  • Recall8%
  • Application8%

Most common asks: numerical (9); complete a nuclear reaction equation (2); identify decay particles from z changes (1).

Profile

This chapter in numbers

Where it ranks, how steady it is, and what it costs to study.

Rank, all NEET chapters
#74
of 80 by weighted estimate
Rank in Physics
#22
of 27 chapters
Share of the paper
0.7%
ten-year average
Busiest year
2021
3 questions
Year to year
Steady
varies by about 0.7 questions
Long-run direction
-0.07
questions per paper, per year
Easy questions
85%
5% of ideas rated hard
With a figure
0%
graph, diagram or structure
Study time
8 h
6 h on a 6-month plan
Marks per study hour
0.50
#69 of 80 chapters
Foundation for others
74%
of its ideas are used in other chapters

Difficulty, year by year

Each question rated easy, medium or hard against NCERT.

  • 20171
  • 20181
  • 20191
  • 20202
  • 20213
  • 20222
  • 20231
  • 20241
  • 2025
  • 20261
  • Easy
  • Medium
  • Hard

What it asks you to do

SHARE OF QUESTIONS
  • Calculation62%
  • Application15%
  • Multi-step15%
  • Recall8%

Coverage

How much of the chapter NEET has used

We split the chapter into 163 ideas. In ten years NEET built a question around 10 of them. Most of the chapter has never been asked, which is why learning it whole beats memorising past questions.

Asked as the main idea
10
Touched on in a question
4
Never asked
149

Topics

What repeats, topic by topic

Questions per topic in each year's paper. Topics that come every year are worth learning first.

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
02+questions in that year’s paper

Drill down

Topic, idea, question

Open a topic to see every idea NEET tested inside it, then open an idea to read the questions. Each row shows its ten papers.

  • Open9 · 69%2

    9 ideas inside

    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
    • 1 · 11%
  • Open4 · 31%2

Squares are the ten papers, 2017 to 2026; darker means more questions. Share is of the level above.

Ideas

The exact ideas NEET has asked

Inside the topics, 13 different ideas were tested. These came more than once, or are new since 2024.

  • Decay Q-Value CalculationNew1×

    numerical

  • Balancing Nuclear Decay EquationsNew1×

    numerical

Every question

Nuclei questions, year by year

The opening words of each question as it appeared in the official paper.

NEET 20261 question

  • Q7Consider the following nuclear reaction : 238U→234Th+4He^{238}\mathrm{U}\to{}^{234}\mathrm{Th}+{}^4\mathrm{He} Take masses of 238^{238}U, 234^{234}Th…Numerical

NEET 20241 question

  • Q2982290X→αY→e+Z→β−P→e−Q^{290}_{82}X \xrightarrow{\alpha} Y \xrightarrow{e^+} Z \xrightarrow{\beta^-} P \xrightarrow{e^-} Q In the nuclear emission stated…Numerical

NEET 20231 question

  • Q28The half life of a radioactive substance is 20 minutes. In how much time, the activity of substance drops to…Numerical

NEET 20222 questions

  • Q5In the given nuclear reaction, the element X is : 1122Na→X+e++ν\mathrm{^{22}_{11}Na \to X + e^{+} + \nu}One-line MCQ
  • Q43A nucleus of mass number 189 splits into two nuclei having mass number 125 and 64. The ratio of radius of two daughter nuclei respectively…Numerical

NEET 20213 questions

  • Q1A radioactive nucleus ZAX\mathrm{^{A}_{Z}X} undergoes spontaneous decay in the sequence…One-line MCQ
  • Q28A nucleus with mass number 240 breaks into two fragments each of mass number 120, the binding energy per nucleon of unfragmented nuclei is…Numerical
  • Q33The half-life of a radioactive nuclide is 100 hours. The fraction of original activity that will remain after 150 hours would be :Numerical

NEET 20202 questions

  • Q142The energy equivalent of 0.5 g of a substance is :Numerical
  • Q158When a uranium isotope 92235U^{235}_{92}\mathrm{U} is bombarded with a neutron, it generates 3689Kr^{89}_{36}\mathrm{Kr}, three neutrons and :Numerical

NEET 20191 question

  • Q31α-particle consists of :One-line MCQ

NEET 20181 question

  • Q13For a radioactive material, half-life is 10 minutes. If initially there are 600 number of nuclei, the time taken (in minutes) for the…Numerical

NEET 20171 question

  • Q3Radioactive material 'A' has decay constant '8 λ\lambda' and material 'B' has decay constant 'λ\lambda'. Initially they have same number…Numerical

Questions from the official NEET UG papers published by NTA (CBSE before 2019). Topic and idea tags, counts and notes are Lumi’s.

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