You have the data and formulae sheet open, you have seen the one your exam board hands out, and somewhere underneath the relief there is a worry: if half the equations are printed for me, why can I still not do the questions, and which ones am I actually supposed to have in my head? That is the real problem with the A Level physics formula sheet. It is not finding it. It is knowing what it does not give you, and what you are still expected to know cold.
I sat Cambridge A Level Physics and went into the science papers aiming for 100 percent, not just the grade, and I did it without ever sitting down to memorise a wall of formulas. This article is the honest version: where to get your board’s official sheet, exactly what is and is not on it, the equations you still have to carry from memory, and the method I used to make formulas stick without rote learning. Everything here is what I actually did, not revision theory I read afterwards.
On this page
The short answer
The formula sheet, properly called the data and formulae booklet, is given to you inside the exam. You do not bring your own and you do not download a special version for the day; you get the official one for your board. It carries the physical constants and a block of the longer equations, but it deliberately leaves off a large set of core equations you are expected to know already, things as basic as W = mg and V = IR. So the sheet is not a reason to stop learning formulas. The job is to know what it covers, memorise the few genuine gaps, and for everything else learn the equations by doing questions until they are obvious rather than by staring at a list. Get your board’s sheet below, then use the method further down.
Where to get your exam board’s official formula sheet
Use the official booklet from your own board, not a third-party copy, because the layout and the exact set of printed equations differ. Download it once, print it, and keep it beside you for every past paper you sit, so that exam day is not the first time you have used it.
| Exam board | Official data and formulae booklet | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| AQA (7408) | AQA A-level Physics data and formulae | Free |
| OCR Physics A (H556) | OCR data, formulae and relationships booklet | Free |
| Edexcel / Pearson | Edexcel A level Physics list of data, formulae and relationships | Free |
| Cambridge International (9702) | Cambridge AS & A Level Physics 9702 | Free |
| OxfordAQA International | OxfordAQA International AS & A-level Physics data and formula booklet | Free |
If you are on WJEC or Eduqas, the booklet is published the same way inside the specification materials on the board’s own site. The same booklet is used across the AS and the full A Level papers for each board, so you only need the one file. Whichever one you are on, everything below is identical.
What is on the sheet, and what is not
The booklet does two jobs. It gives you the physical constants and data you could never be expected to recall to the needed precision, the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the charge and mass of an electron, and so on. And it prints a selection of the longer, less memorable equations, the kind that are awkward to hold in your head accurately.
What it does not do is print the basics. No UK board publishes an official must-memorise list for A Level physics, the way the boards do at GCSE. They print some equations, omit the rest, and leave you to work out which is which. That single gap is why so many students with the sheet in front of them still freeze: they assumed the sheet meant memory was handled, and it does not.
The equations you still have to memorise
These are the ones most commonly left off the booklet across boards. Treat it as a starting checklist, then build your own from past papers in the next section.
- Mechanics: weight W = mg, density ρ = m/V, momentum p = mv, the suvat equations (v = u + at, s = ut + ½at², v² = u² + 2as, s = ½(u + v)t), which AQA leaves off its sheet entirely while Edexcel and Cambridge print some or all of them, plus work done W = Fs and power P = W/t and P = Fv.
- Electricity: Ohm’s law V = IR, the power trio P = IV, P = I²R and P = V²/R, charge Q = It, and the resistor combination rules for series and parallel.
- Waves: wave speed v = fλ and period T = 1/f.
- Later topics: the circular motion relations a = v²/r and a = ω²r, the simple harmonic motion relationships such as a = -ω²x, the transformer equation Vp/Vs = Np/Ns, and the kinetic theory equation pV = ⅓Nmc̄², where c̄² is the mean square speed of the molecules and not the speed of light, and you are usually expected to know the derivation rather than just the result.
Which of these are printed depends on your board. Edexcel prints a longer list than AQA, for instance. That is exactly why you check against your own booklet rather than trusting a generic list, including this one.
How I learned the formulas without memorising them
The mistake is treating every formula as a fact to be memorised. A few of them are. Most are not. An equation you have used in forty questions stops being something you recall and becomes the obvious next line, the same way you do not memorise that 7 times 8 is 56, you have just done it enough times. For A Level physics that shift happened for me somewhere in the second week of real questions on a topic, and it came from the questions, not from a flashcard.
That is why the sciences were the part of my A Levels I found most tractable. Once you have done a handful of questions and get a feel for what each equation is doing and where it applies, the content stops being a memory task and becomes a reasoning one. I wrote up the full version of this system, the one I used across every subject, in my A Level maths revision method; the short version is that most of the work is done by questions, not notes.
It helps to sort every formula into three piles.
The first pile is the equations that become automatic through practice. You never set out to memorise these. You do enough questions and they are simply there. Across a subject you will do something like a thousand practice questions, and roughly 600 of them are routine; you reach for the right equation without thinking. Revising those is wasted time. The 400 you found hard, guessed, or got wrong are the whole job, and a surprising number of those are not understanding failures at all. They are you reaching for an equation that was not on the sheet and not yet in your head.
The second pile is the equations you never memorise because you can derive them in seconds. The suvat equations fall straight out of a velocity-time graph. The transformer equation is just the ratio of turns. If you can derive it, you do not store it, you regenerate it, and a derivation holds up under exam pressure far better than a half-remembered string of letters.
The third pile is the small handful that are pure memory, usually two or three per topic, that resist both practice and derivation. For those, and only those, use active recall: write the equation out on a blank page without looking, check it, and do it again the next day. Blurting it onto paper beats rereading it every time. The two subjects that genuinely troubled me at school were the ones that were all memory and no reasoning, so I know exactly how different a formula you can think your way to is from one you simply have to bank.
Find the formulas you actually keep forgetting
A generic memorise list, including mine above, is someone else’s gaps, not yours. Here is how to build your own, and it costs no extra time because you are doing the papers anyway.
- Do past papers with the official booklet open, exactly as you will in the exam.
- Every time you reach for an equation, notice where it came from. On the sheet, fine. Pulled cleanly from memory, fine. But if you blanked, half-remembered it, or had to flick back to a note, tag that question.
- At the end of the paper you have a short list of the equations that are neither on the sheet nor yet in your head. That list, not a textbook’s, is your real memorise pile.
- Rebuild that pile the way you would any weak set: redo it from a blank page a few days later, then again a week after that, until each one comes out cold.
This is the same marking discipline I used for every subject, pointed at formula recall instead of whole questions. It is the reason I could walk into the science papers chasing full marks: by the end I was not hoping the right equation would surface, I had a short, known list of the ones that needed banking, and I had banked them. The only reliable must-memorise list is the one you build yourself, by doing past papers with the booklet open and writing down every equation you needed that was not printed.
A worked example: derive it instead of storing it
Take the four suvat equations, which half of mechanics depends on. AQA does not print them on its data sheet at all, and even the boards that do print some of them leave you hunting through a booklet under time. Either way you are better off being able to produce them yourself. You do not memorise these. You read them off a velocity-time graph.
Picture velocity on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal. A body starts at velocity u, accelerates steadily to velocity v over time t, so the line is a straight slope from u up to v.
- Acceleration is the gradient of that line: a = (v – u) / t. Rearrange it and you have the first equation, v = u + at.
- Displacement is the area under the line. That area is a rectangle of height u and width t, plus a triangle of base t and height (v – u). So s = ut + ½t(v – u). Since (v – u) = at, that becomes s = ut + ½at².
- The other two follow by substitution. Put v = u + at into the displacement and you get v² = u² + 2as; write the area as a trapezium instead and you get s = ½(u + v)t.
That is a thirty-second reconstruction you can do in the exam margin if your memory stalls. Spend your limited memorising effort on the equations that genuinely cannot be derived, and derive the rest.
FAQ
What is included on the A Level physics data sheet?
The data and formulae booklet gives you the physical constants, such as the speed of light, the gravitational constant, and the charge and mass of an electron, and a selection of the longer equations, for example parts of simple harmonic motion, capacitor energy and nuclear physics depending on your board. It deliberately leaves off the core equations you are expected to know, such as W = mg, V = IR and the power equations. Having the sheet is not the same as being ready, because the basics are the part you have to supply yourself.
Do I get the physics formula sheet in the exam, or do I bring one?
You are given the official data and formulae booklet for your board in every A Level physics paper. You do not bring your own, and you are not allowed your own notes. The thing to do now is download that exact booklet and use it for all your past-paper practice, so that on the day you already know where everything is instead of hunting through it under time.
If the formulas are on the sheet, do I still have to memorise any?
Yes, and this is the trap. The booklet prints the constants and a set of the longer equations, but it leaves off a large block of core equations you are expected to know, including W = mg, V = IR, the suvat equations and the power equations. Students see the sheet, assume memory is handled, and lose marks on exactly the equations that are not printed.
Which equations are not on the data sheet?
It varies by board, but the commonly omitted ones are the basics: weight, density, momentum, Ohm’s law, the power trio (P = IV, I²R, V²/R), wave speed v = fλ, and the suvat equations, plus derivable relationships like circular motion and parts of simple harmonic motion. The honest answer is to check against your own board’s booklet, because Edexcel, AQA and OCR each print a slightly different set.
Is the formula sheet the same for AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Cambridge?
No. Each board publishes its own data and formulae booklet with a different layout and a different set of printed equations, which is why you should download your own board’s version from the table above rather than a generic one. Cambridge International (9702) and OxfordAQA have their own international booklets again.
There are too many formulas. How do I actually remember them all?
You do not remember them by memorising a list. Most become automatic once you have done enough questions on the topic, the way arithmetic is automatic. A second group you never memorise at all, because you can derive them in seconds, like the suvat equations from a velocity-time graph. That leaves only a small handful per topic that are pure memory, and those you drill with active recall: write them from a blank page, check, repeat. Memorising the whole sheet is the slow way; sorting it into those three piles is the fast one.
Where this comes from
I sat Cambridge O Levels in 2014 (eight A*), AS Levels in 2015 (distinction across five subjects) and A Levels in 2016 (straight As across five subjects), including Physics, and I now tutor A Level Computer Science one to one. The approach above is the one I actually used in the science papers, where I was going for full marks rather than just the grade, and it worked because I treated most formulas as something to understand and derive, not memorise. I sat the Cambridge International papers, so the booklet I used was the 9702 one; if you are on a UK board the exact sheet differs, which is why I have linked each of them above, but the way you learn what is on it does not change. I do not have a teaching qualification, and I am not going to pretend physics formulas were hard for me to understand, because they were the opposite. What I can tell you is how to stop leaning on the formula sheet as a crutch and start using it as what it is: a short list of the few things worth keeping in your head. You can see more of what I work on here.