The FRCR Physics mock exam, before the real one.

What the real paper looks like

The First FRCR Physics exam is 40 questions, each a stem with five true/false statements: 200 statements marked in total, in 120 minutes. That works out at roughly 36 seconds per statement, held for two hours.

There is no negative marking. A wrong answer costs nothing beyond that mark, which means a blank statement can only lose you the same mark a guess might have won. The RCR's exam pages do not publish a fixed pass mark in advance, so the one lever you fully control is coverage: answer all 200.

Why sitting it timed changes your score

Untimed practice measures knowledge. The paper also measures three things that only appear under the clock:

• Pacing. Thirty-six seconds per statement means no stem is allowed to own five minutes of your exam. Candidates who have never rehearsed the clock give their hardest stems the time their easiest ones needed.
• The guessing discipline. With no negative marking, hesitation is the only way to lose marks silently. Committing on every statement, including the ones you are unsure of, is a habit, and habits need rehearsal.
• The second hour. Accuracy drifts as attention tires. A timed run shows you where in the paper your error rate climbs, before the day it counts.

There is a fourth thing untimed practice cannot give you: a number. Sat under exam rules, a mock is the closest available answer to "am I ready", weeks before the RCR sends theirs.

What the mock here reproduces

The mock inside our FRCR Physics question bank is built to the paper's own specification:

• 40 stems, 200 statements, 120 minutes, against a visible clock, with the same answer grid of 40 to navigate.
• Set to the RCR's published topic distribution, so the weight of each chapter in your mock matches the weight it carries in the paper.
• Scored per statement, then per topic, so the report does not stop at a total: it names the chapter that is costing you marks.
• A written explanation behind every statement, and every run is kept, so a later attempt shows whether the weak chapter moved.

The stems are drawn from the same bank as the practice chapters: 561 stems and 2,805 explained true/false items across ten chapters, verified against IRR 2017, IR(ME)R 2017 and ICRP 103/118. The mock comes with the subscription; the whole Radiation hazards and protection chapter is free first, in full, no card.

How to place mock runs in your last month

1. Sit a baseline run four to six weeks out, cold and timed. The number will be lower than you hoped. That is the point of taking it early: it turns a vague worry into a list of chapters.
2. Read every explanation you missed, the same day. Misses cluster by chapter, not randomly; the topic report names the clusters for you.
3. Drill the weakest two chapters in the bank, statement by statement, until the explanations stop surprising you.
4. Sit a second timed run in the final fortnight. You are checking two things: the weak chapters moved, and the pacing held for the full 120 minutes.

Planning around a sitting date? Every published Physics date, booking window and results day is on our FRCR exam dates page, verified against the RCR's own calendar.