HSC Physics Formula Sheet: Data and Formulae Sheets Explained (NESA)

Yes, you get one. The HSC Physics paper that NESA sets has a data sheet, a formulae sheet and a Periodic Table printed at the back. In 2025 the data sheet held 19 values and the formulae sheet held 62 relationships in four boxes, and neither tells you which relationship a question needs, how to convert the units or how to rearrange the algebra.

This guide describes the sheets printed with the 2025 HSC Physics exam, which is the HSC (Year 12) paper. We read the 2025 sheets page by page. The 2023 paper prints the same four headed boxes, but we have not compared 2023 or 2024 line by line, so check the sheet at the back of any paper you practise on. This page annotates the sheets and links to the originals instead of reprinting them.

For the papers themselves, see the HSC Physics past papers (NESA). To see which topics the marks sit in, read HSC Physics most tested topics and HSC Physics hardest topics.

Where do you find the HSC Physics formula sheet?

Each year's sheets are the last pages of that year's question booklet. In the 2025 paper they are on pages 37 to 39 of the PDF (printed pages 1 to 3 of the sheet set), with the Periodic Table on the page after. NESA publishes the paper in its HSC exam pack for each year, and the 2025 Physics exam pack has the PDF, the marking guidelines and the marking feedback.

The cover of the 2025 paper also says calculators approved by NESA may be used, so the sheets and your calculator are the two things you can rely on being there. Our guide to HSC past papers links the Physics packs for 2023 to 2025, and the exam preparation guide covers the 2026 exam rules.

What is on the data sheet?

The data sheet is one table of 19 quantities, each with a symbol and a value. Reading it by group:

• Particles: the charge on the electron and the masses of the electron, neutron and proton.
• Waves and gravity: the speed of sound in air, the speed of light, $g$, the universal gravitational constant, and the mass and radius of Earth.
• Fields: the electric permittivity constant and the magnetic permeability constant.
• Atoms and energy: Planck's constant, the Rydberg constant for hydrogen, the atomic mass unit (in kilograms and in MeV/$c^2$) and the electron volt in joules.
• Materials and radiation: the density of water, the specific heat capacity of water and Wien's displacement constant.

Two habits follow from that list. Take constants from the sheet, not from memory, so your answer uses the values the markers do. And when a question gives its own value for a quantity, record it from the stimulus and use that one. NESA's 2025 feedback on Question 26(a) lists recording data from the stimulus and the question to guide formula choice as an area to improve, and its feedback on the speed calculation in Question 34(a) asks for kilometres in metres and time in seconds before substituting.

What is on the formulae sheet?

The formulae sheet is split into four headed boxes. Counting each printed line once, the 2025 sheet carries 62 relationships:

The boxes follow the kind of physics, not the syllabus modules. Heating and conduction sit with waves, and special relativity sits with quantum and nuclear. So a Module 8 question can send you to two different boxes, and the quickest way to learn the sheet is to learn the four box names and what each holds.

What is not on the HSC Physics formula sheet?

Read from the 2025 sheet, these are relationships students often assume are printed and are not:

• Weight as mass times $g$. The only line with $g$ in it is the change in gravitational potential energy near Earth's surface.
• Speed from angular speed. Angular speed is printed, and so is speed as circumference over period, but there is no line for speed as radius times angular speed.
• Field strength around a point mass or a point charge. You get the force between two masses, the force between two charges, and the force on a charge in a field. The field-strength forms are yours to derive.
• Resistors in series and parallel. Ohm's law and electrical power are printed, and combining resistances is not.
• A single line for momentum. Momentum shows up in conservation of momentum and in impulse, and as relativistic momentum.
• Photon energy from wavelength. Photon energy and the wave equation are both printed, so the combination is two steps (worked below).
• Anything about uncertainty, graphs or data handling. The sheet carries no graphing or data-handling content, and NESA's general feedback asks for those skills separately.

If a relationship is not on this list and not on the sheet, treat it as yours to know. We have not read every past sheet against this list, so confirm against the paper you are practising.

Where do the symbols trip people up?

The sheet reuses letters across boxes. Several of these are visible in a single glance at the 2025 sheet:

• Lambda is two things. It is wavelength in the wave and quantum lines, and the decay constant in the radioactive decay lines. The half-life line is the one that links the decay constant to half-life, so check which lambda a question wants.
• $K$ and $\Delta U$. The sheet writes kinetic energy as $K$ and gravitational potential energy change as $\Delta U$, not $E_k$ and $E_p$. Define your own symbols in a working line if you write them differently.
• Vector lines. Net force, impulse ($\Delta\vec{p}$), momentum conservation and force in an electric field are printed as vector relationships. The 2024 and 2025 feedback asks for the direction of a calculated vector quantity, so a magnitude alone leaves marks behind.
• Two forms for the same law. Work appears as $W = Fs\cos\theta$ with a parallel-component version, $W = F_{\parallel}s$, and power appears as $P = \Delta E/\Delta t$ and as force times velocity, $P = Fv\cos\theta$. Pick the one that matches the quantities the question hands you.

How do markers expect you to use the sheet?

Everything in this section is NESA's Marking Feedback, paraphrased, since that feedback is cohort commentary we cannot quote.

The general feedback for 2024 and 2025 gives three instructions that bear on the sheet: show full working including the formula and the substitution, be familiar with the constants and formulas on the Data and Formula Sheets, and include correct units, with directions for vector quantities. The per-question feedback for 2025 is more specific:

• Question 26(a): better responses picked the right equation from the sheet and wrote it into their working. NESA listed recording the data from the stimulus and the question before choosing a formula as an area to improve.
• Question 28: better responses started from the general algebraic formulas, rearranged, and substituted numbers last. NESA's reason was fewer rounding errors and clearer reasoning.
• Question 30(a) and (c): in (a), NESA wanted the working to show the calculation, beyond selecting the formula or showing the value the question gave. In (c), an area to improve was applying every part of a formula, such as squaring the velocity and multiplying by a half when calculating kinetic energy.
• Question 34(a): better responses converted kilometres to metres and doubled the radius to get the distance the light travelled before applying the speed formula. NESA also listed expressing time in seconds as an area to improve.

A weak and a strong version of the same working look like this:

Worked uses of the sheet

These two are our own illustrations of combining sheet lines, not NESA questions. Each shows what the sheet does and does not do for you.

Common mistakes with the sheet

How do I practise with the sheet?

Do your calculation questions with the sheet open next to the paper from the same year, and write each answer the way the strong column above does. The HSC Physics past papers page has questions from the 2023 to 2025 papers that you can answer and have marked, grouped by topic, so you can pick the box you want to drill. Start with the box whose lines you could not name at the top of this page.