QCAA Engineering formula sheet: what is and is not on it

Quick answer

The QCAA Engineering external exam every QCE Engineering student sits comes with the QCAA Engineering formula sheet, and your teacher must give you the QCAA Engineering formula sheet in the IA2 exam. The sheet is a two-page "Formula and data book" with Statics, Materials, Dynamics and Electrical circuits formulas, one constant ($g = 9.8\ \text{m s}^{-2}$), seven unit prefixes and a panel of circuit and logic gate symbols. It prints no definitions, no units and no worked examples, so you still have to know what each symbol means. Both papers run 120 minutes with 5 minutes perusal, with a non-programmable scientific calculator, a protractor and a ruler, and no notes.

This guide follows the Engineering 2025 v1.0 syllabus, which Year 11 students sit from 2025 and Year 12 students from 2026. The formulas below are from the QCAA Engineering 2025 formula and data book (cover dated June 2026, no version number printed). QCAA also publishes a v1.3 syllabus dated January 2026, and we hold only its Units 3 and 4 subject matter, so confirm the version your school is teaching. Subject reports to date describe cohorts assessed under the 2019 syllabus. The papers and marked questions are on the QCAA Engineering page.

Do you get a formula sheet in the Engineering exam?

Yes, in two assessments, and the syllabus names a different supplier for each.

Both give 120 minutes working time and 5 minutes perusal. The 2019 syllabus gave 10 minutes, so older advice about reading time describes the superseded course. Every external paper from 2020 to 2025 was sat under the 2019 rules.

The syllabus uses the same name, the QCAA Engineering formula sheet, for both papers. The sheet itself says nothing about when it is supplied or what calculator you may use, so those rules come from the syllabus alone.

IA1 and IA3 are engineered solution tasks of up to 10 A4 pages and up to 2000 words, and the conditions we hold do not mention the sheet for either. We have not read the assessment conditions for Units 1 and 2, which schools set themselves, so ask your teacher what you may bring there. The exam dates are on the QCE exam timetable.

What is on the QCAA Engineering formula sheet?

The tables below follow the sheet's own headings and the order of its entries. Symbols are printed bare on the sheet, as they are here. Modified from the Engineering 2025 formula and data book, © State of Queensland (QCAA) 2025, licensed under CC BY 4.0: the layout and typesetting are ours, and the formulas are as printed.

Statics

Materials

The sheet does not name $E$ in words. The syllabus calls it the modulus of elasticity or Young's modulus, with units of pascals, and calls $\sigma$ stress. "fos" is the factor of safety.

Dynamics

The Dynamics section holds the kinematics, work and energy formulas and also the machines, pulleys, screws, gears and friction formulas. They are in the order printed, four to a row where the sheet has four.

The next three rows are the sheet's velocity ratio, gear and efficiency rows. The sheet prints them two to a row; the pulley and gear lines are long, so they are listed one per row here, in the sheet's reading order.

Friction closes the section, four to a row.

Electrical circuits

None of the sums is labelled series or parallel. The syllabus's Unit 4 circuit dot points list the resistance and voltage sums for basic series circuits and the reciprocal resistance sum for basic parallel circuits. They print the current sum under both headings, so check with your teacher how it applies to each arrangement. The $\eta$ lines are the only efficiency formulas for circuits, and they carry the $\times 100\%$ that turns a ratio into a percentage.

Constant, prefixes and symbols

The sheet's only constant is acceleration due to gravity, $g = 9.8\ \text{m s}^{-2}$.

The sheet also draws seven electric circuit symbols with no captions: a voltmeter and ammeter (a V and an A in circles), a lamp, a resistor, a switch, a cell and a battery. The names are our reading of the drawings. It labels six logic gates, OR, AND, XOR, NOR, NAND and NOT. The NOT gate's output is labelled $\overline{A}$ and the other five gates' outputs are labelled Q.

What is not on the Engineering formula sheet?

This is the list to learn or practise, because the sheet will not help you with it. Everything here is absent from the printed sheet.

Two symbols are used for more than one quantity, which is why definitions matter. In the syllabus's symbol table $E$ is energy and also Young's modulus, and $V$ is electric potential and also volume. The sheet uses $E$ for both in different rows: $E = Pt$ is energy and $E = \dfrac{FL}{A\,\Delta L}$ is Young's modulus.

Which unit does each formula belong to?

The external assessment specification says questions may ask you to "calculate using formulas drawn from across Unit 4 subject matter", and IA2 assesses Unit 3. The sheet is one document for both, so use the syllabus to place a formula.

• Unit 3 (IA2). Stress, strain, Young's modulus, factor of safety and ultimate tensile strength are Unit 3 Topic 3 content (p. 25). These are five of the six Materials entries on the sheet. Density is Unit 1.
• Unit 4 (external assessment). Machines, mechanisms and control (pp. 27 to 29) prints most of the Dynamics section ($MA$ and $VR$, belts and gears, work, power, energy, efficiency, motion and friction) and every Electrical circuits formula: the circuit totals, Ohm's law, power and energy, and electrical efficiency.
• Units 1 and 2 (Year 11). Force components, moments, Pythagoras, trigonometry, density, average velocity, acceleration, $MA$ and $VR$, and Ohm's law first appear here.

How do you use the formula sheet in an Engineering calculation?

QCAA's reports are specific about what costs marks, and none of it is a lookup failure.

• List the knowns and unknowns first (2024). The report recommends making a note of the known and unknown information in a short response calculation question and comparing it to the formula book to choose the method.
• Do not take short cuts (2024). The report says students risk losing marks if they reach an incorrect response using a different method from the one in the subject matter. Alternative methods earn full marks only when the answer is correct.
• State the reasoning for each step (2025). The report asks for explicit statements that fully explain the working, for example $MA = VR$ when 100% efficient.
• Convert efficiency correctly (2023). To find input power from efficiency, divide by the efficiency written as a decimal. The report names the wrong move: treating 80% efficiency as 100% plus the 20% lost, then multiplying by 1.2.

Because the sheet is provided, memorising its contents is not the goal. The skill the reports describe is choosing the right relationship from the data and showing the steps.

What should you do before the exam?

1. Get the current QCAA Engineering formula sheet from your teacher or QCAA and check it against the tables above. The cover on our copy is dated June 2026 and prints no version number.
2. Learn the quantity, symbol and unit table from the syllabus, then the items in the "not on the sheet" table: the prefixes, the pulley rope rule and the logic gate outputs.
3. Practise the calculation questions on the Machines, mechanisms and control topic, which carried about two thirds of the mapped marks in the 2020 to 2024 external papers in our question bank. Work each one with only the sheet and a scientific calculator.
4. Read the cognitive verb and the mark count in the question, then write the knowns and unknowns beside it before choosing a formula.

The question bank holds the marked external papers for 2020 to 2024, so you can see how the board marks working as well as answers. The topic split is in the most tested topics guide, and other subjects are on the QCE hub.