Modern Physics for JEE Advanced Exam Preparation

By Aman Goel

Modern Physics is an important constituent of JEE Advanced Physics. It is one of the scoring topics and should be given importance to avoid silly mistakes in the questions asked from it. Questions that are asked in JEE Main easy and anyone who has prepared well for the board exams can easily solve them. But for JEE Advanced, you must understand this topic well as the problems are tricky.

Modern physics mainly consists of concepts like Photoelectric Effect, Bohr’s Theory, X-Rays, de Broglie wavelength of matter waves, Moseley’s Law, Radioactivity and Nuclear physics. Among all these topics, Nuclear physics and Radioactivity are most important. Some of these topics like the photoelectric effect are taught in class 11 chemistry. It helps students to understand concepts well. Also, you must study all of these topics thoroughly to cover the same for Chemistry as well.

Download JEE Advanced Sample Papers here

Topics of Modern Physics 

So let's go one by one through each topic:

• First of all, every student must go through the NCERT books to have basic knowledge of photons and their properties. The photoelectric effect is the topic that most of you have studied in class 11. The numerical related to this topic are quite easy, but you should understand its basic theory and conclusions. For example, the effect of frequency of incident light on incident photoelectric current and stopping potential. Also, there are various properties of the photoelectric effect. For example, the maximum kinetic energy of photoelectrons is independent of the intensity of light. In JEE Advanced, they don't ask questions directly rather use these properties in some different form or they generally give it as an option in more than one option correct type questions. You should also practice some numerical problems as it will help in understanding the theoretical part more clearly.
• Next topic is Dual Nature of Matter and Radiation. This is a relatively small topic and you should go through it at least once as it has applications in other topics of modern physics. It contains some plots on Davison and Germer experiment. So you should know how those graphs are plotted. Sometimes in JEE Advanced, a paragraph type question in which an experiment is performed is given and students are asked to identify the graph or some relation between them. your ability to analyze graphs helps us a lot in solving these types of questions.
• Now, coming to the major portion of Modern Physics - Atoms and Nuclei. This topic starts with the Rutherford alpha scattering model. Based on observations, it contains some of the formulas and concepts like Impact parameters, Distance of closest approach, etc. After that, there is one more similar topic - Bohr’s model of an atom. For this also, just go through all the theories and practice some problems. In modern physics, there are many small topics on which generally people don't give that much attention. But this is not right. In JEE Advanced you can't predict from which topic questions will be asked. The idea behind going through all these topics is that you could figure out the solution to problems immediately. Nuclei, or Nuclear physics, is the most important topic in complete modern physics, especially for JEE Advanced. Actually, in this topic, all the things are interlinked to each other, so just proceed step by step. The concept of Binding Energy should be understood properly. Also, there are various small theories, like Meson theory, that you should study for a better understanding.
• Next topic is radioactivity, followed by nuclear fission and fusion. All these topics should be learnt systematically. Radioactivity is the most important topic among them. All the basic theory of alpha and beta decay should be understood properly. You should also practice some numerical as they will help you understand the topic better. In JEE Advanced, mostly they give a paragraph or matching type questions that summarize almost all the nuclear physics. Sometimes, what happens is that, despite being the question being easy, you start thinking in the wrong direction due to lack of practice. 

Tips to score high marks

Modern physics is a scoring part of physics. You do not require lots of time to prepare it. Devote some of your time solving and going through every topic. Students usually don't give much attention to this part of course. Some of them are overconfident and some of them have a misconception that it has very little weightage. That's why you should also go through the JEE Advanced syllabus properly. Your overall preparation is mostly based on how much time you have spent for preparing various topics. Writing JEE Main paper won't be troublesome even if less time is allotted for its preparation but for JEE Advanced, you should have a systematic study plan otherwise it will be tough to get the expected result.

Also, one of the most important things is that you should not have any type of doubts about any of the topics. Not only for this topic, but in general you should not have any confusion in any of the topics because if any question comes from that topic, you’ll have regret at that moment, and that might also affect your performance in rest of the paper, so make sure you don't have any doubt. If in case if you have any, just clear it before appearing for the exam.

Some reference books for preparation

HC Verma is a good book for understanding the basics and practicing numerical. If you want to practice more problems for JEE Advanced, refer to IE Irodov. It has some really good questions. You can also refer to Cengage and Resnick & Halliday. They have a detailed explanation of almost every topic. Also, just practice all the previous years’ JEE problems. They will give you an insight into the difficulty level of questions that come in JEE.

At last, I would say that there are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. So just stay focused to achieve your goals, there is nothing that can stop you from achieving them.

About the Author:

Aman Goel is a co-founder at a Tech Start-up. He holds a BTech in Computer Science Engineering from IIT Bombay with a JEE Advanced AIR 33 (Year 2013).

During his free time, he enjoys writing articles/blogs. He is an Entrepreneur, Coder, Speed-cuber, gamer, and fan of Air crash investigation!

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