NEET UG · Physics · Class 12

Wave Optics: NEET previous year questions

15 questions in ten years of NEET, asked in 8 of 10 years. Here is what this chapter tests and how.

Asked in 10 years: 15; 8 of 10 papers
10-year average: 1.5; a paper · 1.3 since 2024 -0.3
Typical range: 0–3; questions a paper; fewest 0, most 3
Weighted estimate: 1.2; model, recent papers count more · about 5 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 Wave Optics

Priority

Lower priority

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

Past questions: 15in 8 of 10 papers
Study plan gives it: 10 hover 12 months; 7 h over 6

Study this chapter →Practise →

Ideas asked most often

Polarisation and Malus's Law6×
Angular Fringe Width2×

152 of the 160 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

Kind of question

SHARE OF 10 YEARS

Calculation53%
Concept27%
Application13%
Two statements7%

Most common asks: numerical (5); true statement selection on brewster's angle (2); true statement on brewster incidence (1).

Profile

This chapter in numbers

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

Rank, all NEET chapters: #73; of 80 by weighted estimate
Rank in Physics: #21; of 27 chapters
Share of the paper: 0.8%; ten-year average
Busiest year: 2017; 3 questions
Year to year: Some swing; varies by about 1.0 questions
Long-run direction: -0.17; questions per paper, per year
Easy questions: 47%; 58% of ideas rated hard
With a figure: 0%; graph, diagram or structure
Study time: 10 h; 7 h on a 6-month plan
Marks per study hour: 0.51; #65 of 80 chapters
Foundation for others: 51%; of its ideas are used in other chapters

Difficulty, year by year

Each question rated easy, medium or hard against NCERT.

20173
20182
20191
20203
2021
20221
20231
20242
20252
2026

Easy
Medium
Hard

What it asks you to do

SHARE OF QUESTIONS

Calculation47%
Concept33%
Application20%

Coverage

How much of the chapter NEET has used

We split the chapter into 160 ideas. In ten years NEET built a question around 7 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: 7
Touched on in a question: 1
Never asked: 152

Topics

What repeats, topic by topic

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

Single Slit Diffraction · Every year8
21212
Young's Double Slit · Every year7
1111111

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26

Topic	2017	’18	2019	’20	2021	’22	2023	’24	2025	’26	Total
Single Slit DiffractionEvery year	2	1	·	2	·	·	·	1	2	·	8
Young's Double SlitEvery year	1	1	1	1	·	1	1	1	·	·	7

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.

topicAskedShareYears’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26

Open8 · 53%53%5/10222
3 ideas inside
- Repeated6 · 75%75%5/102
- 1 · 13%13%1/10
- 1 · 13%13%1/10
Open7 · 47%47%7/10

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, 9 different ideas were tested. These came more than once, or are new since 2024.

Polarisation and Malus's Law6×
true statement selection on brewster's angle
Angular Fringe Width2×
change in fringe angular width with slit separation
YDSE with White LightNew1×
true statement selection on ydse with white light

Idea	Times	Usually asked as
Polarisation and Malus's Lawtrue statement selection on brewster's angle	6	One-line MCQ
Angular Fringe Widthchange in fringe angular width with slit separation	2	Numerical
YDSE with White Lighttrue statement selection on ydse with white light	1	One-line MCQNew

Every question

Wave Optics questions, year by year

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

NEET 20252 questions

Q27An unpolarized light beam travelling in air is incident on a medium of refractive index 1.73 at Brewster's angle. Then-One-line MCQ
Q43The intensity of transmitted light when a polaroid sheet, placed between two crossed polaroids at 22.5° from the polarization axis of one…Numerical

NEET 20242 questions

Q2An unpolarised light beam strikes a glass surface at Brewster's angle. ThenOne-line MCQ
Q12If the monochromatic source in Young's double slit experiment is replaced by white light, thenOne-line MCQ

NEET 20231 question

Q24For Young's double slit experiment, two statements are given below: Statement I : If screen is moved away from the plane of slits, angular…Two statements

NEET 20221 question

Q15In a Young's double slit experiment, a student observes 8 fringes in a certain segment of screen when a monochromatic light of 600 nm…Numerical

NEET 20203 questions

Q138The Brewsters angle $i_b$ for an interface should be :One-line MCQ
Q165In Young's double slit experiment, if the separation between coherent sources is halved and the distance of the screen from the coherent…One-line MCQ
Q168Assume that light of wavelength 600 nm is coming from a star. The limit of resolution of telescope whose objective has a diameter of 2 m…Numerical

NEET 20191 question

Q5In a double slit experiment, when light of wavelength 400 nm was used, the angular width of the first minima formed on a screen placed 1 m…Numerical

NEET 20182 questions

Q8Unpolarised light is incident from air on a plane surface of a material of refractive index ' $\mu$ '. At a particular angle of incidence…One-line MCQ
Q9In Young's double slit experiment the separation d between the slits is 2 mm, the wavelength $\lambda$ of the light used is 5896 Å and…Numerical

NEET 20173 questions

Q14Young's double slit experiment is first performed in air and then in a medium other than air. It is found that 8th bright fringe in the…Numerical
Q33The ratio of resolving powers of an optical microscope for two wavelengths $\lambda_1$ = 4000 Å and $\lambda_2$ = 6000 Å is :Numerical
Q37Two Polaroids $P_1$ and $P_2$ are placed with their axis perpendicular to each other. Unpolarised light $I_0$ is incident on $P_1$ . A…Numerical

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