IB Physics · Standard Level · First assessment 2025 syllabus
IB Physics SL tutor who fixes the step where your reasoning breaks
A private, one-to-one IB Physics SL tutor working online with students worldwide. Built for the current syllabus (first exams 2025): five themes, Paper 1A multiple choice, Paper 1B data-based questions, Paper 2, and the scientific investigation IA. Application-only. Two free conversations before anyone commits.
Watch your child sit Paper 1B. They recognise every formula on the sheet — and then freeze on a graph of real, messy data. The physics content is rarely the weak point. The weak point is the step where recognition stops and reasoning has to start: selecting the right relationship for a situation they have never seen before.
I work as an IB Physics SL tutor online, one-to-one, from Milan, with students across Europe and beyond. This page covers SL specifically; the wider IB Physics tutoring practice includes HL and IB Maths. The work is diagnostic, not encyclopaedic. We find the precise step where your reasoning broke — the algebra inside the physics, the misread graph, the wrong first method choice — and we practise that step until it holds under exam conditions. The result is documented, not promised, and you can read it in Leandro's words further down this page.
Formula selection: you know the equations, but not which one to reach for.
This is the single most common wall at SL. The data booklet is open on the desk, every relationship from Theme A through Theme E is technically available, and the question describes a situation that matches none of the examples you practised. So you guess — usually the formula that contains the numbers given. The fix is not more formulas. It is training the selection step itself: reading a situation, naming the physics involved, and only then reaching for an equation. We practise exactly that, from unfamiliar questions, every week.
Data-based questions: the concepts are fine, the unfamiliar graph isn't
You understand the concepts. Then Paper 1B hands you a graph with error bars, a table of real measurements, and a question about an experiment you have never seen, and the concepts stop helping. Data-based questions test a separate skill: extracting information from numbers, units, and uncertainty, then reasoning with it under time pressure. It is a trainable skill. We work through past 1B questions methodically until reading unfamiliar data feels routine rather than threatening.
Maths inside physics: it's wearing a physics costume, but it's algebra underneath
A large share of lost SL marks are not physics errors. They are algebraic rearrangement errors, trigonometry mistakes in fields and waves questions, misread logarithmic or straight-line graphs, and dropped units. If this is you, more physics revision will not fix it. I also tutor IB Maths — AA SL and AI SL — so we treat the mathematics inside the physics as first-class material: integrated practice, not a separate subject bolted on.
Uncertainty handling: quietly costing you marks everywhere
Absolute and percentage uncertainties, significant figures, error bars, gradients with uncertainty ranges — these appear in Paper 1B, in Paper 2, and across three of the four IA criteria. Most students treat them as decoration and lose two or three marks per paper without noticing. We make uncertainty handling automatic, because at SL it is one of the cheapest sources of marks available.
Method-selection pace: the wrong first choice costs you twice
Choosing the wrong approach to a Paper 2 question does not just lose the marks for that question. It burns five or ten minutes you needed elsewhere. Pace problems at SL are usually method-selection problems in disguise. We train first-move decisions: how to scan a question, commit to an approach quickly, and recognise within ninety seconds whether it is working.
Syllabus coverage
The full SL core — five themes, three assessment components
The current syllabus, first assessed in May 2025, is organised into five themes. SL students study the core content without the AHL extensions. We cover all of it, weighted towards wherever your diagnosis shows the reasoning breaks — not equally, because equal coverage is how courses waste time. If you are still deciding between SL and HL, the comparison page may help. Coverage below follows the official IB Physics subject guide.
- Theme A — Space, time and motion: kinematics including projectile motion, forces, momentum and impulse, circular motion, and work, energy and power in fluid-resistance contexts
- Theme B — The particulate nature of matter: thermal energy transfers, the greenhouse effect, the gas laws, and current and circuits
- Theme C — Wave behaviour: simple harmonic motion, wave models, wave phenomena including standing waves and the Doppler effect at SL level
- Theme D — Fields: gravitational and electric fields, motion in fields, electromagnetic induction at core level
- Theme E — Nuclear and quantum physics: radioactive decay, fission and fusion, and the quantum and nuclear core
- Paper 1A technique: multiple-choice pacing, elimination strategy, and the question types that recur
- Paper 1B technique: data-based questions — reading unfamiliar graphs, handling units and uncertainties, structuring multi-mark answers
- Paper 2 technique: structured and extended-response answers on the core, command terms, and mark-scheme discipline
- The scientific investigation (IA): research question selection, methodology, data analysis, evaluation — guidance within the IB's academic honesty rules
The method
Diagnosis first. Then a fixed weekly rhythm.
We start by finding the exact step where your reasoning broke — not the topic, the step. Sessions then run on a fixed weekly rhythm that opens with last week's wrong answers, because that is where the information is. Every session is recorded, summarised, and archived into a searchable library you keep — so revision before Paper 1 and Paper 2 means reviewing your own documented weak points, not re-reading a textbook. We work over Zoom with a shared Excalidraw whiteboard, which suits physics particularly well: free-body diagrams, field lines, and graph sketches drawn live, together.
Documented, not promised
From lost confidence to a 7 in Physics SL
Leandro Iñiguez came to me from Bulgaria for both IB Physics SL and Math HL, sitting his exams in the May 2022 session, with results that July. In his own words: "I had a lot of problems regarding self-confidence as well as comprehending some of the concepts… Renzo managed to help me navigate through these issues and achieve what I wanted, managing to get a 7 in Physics." The 7 is documented in his public Google review. Oskar Nogalski, an IB Physics SL student in Denmark, put it more bluntly: "Patient, capable, and understanding… I wouldn't know half the stuff that was on the exam if not for his help." His review is public on Google. I publish outcomes with names, dates, and sessions because claims without evidence are decoration.
Related pages
Two free conversations. Then decide.
I take a limited number of students, and admission is by application. If your Physics SL problem is recognition without reasoning — formulas memorised, method selection broken, data questions freezing you — that is exactly what the diagnosis is built to find. Apply, and I will reply within 48 hours.