Questions
10
across 8 papers
Share of subject
2.6%
of 387 Physics Qs
Weightage rank
#20
of 30 chapters
Difficulty
4 easy · 4 medium · 2 hard
Wave Optics contributed 10 of the 387 NEET Physics questions between 2020 and 2026 (Re-NEET 2026 included). That is 2.6% of the subject and makes it the #20 chapter out of 30 by weightage — roughly 1.3 questions per paper, peaking at 2 in NEET 2020.
Of the 10 questions tagged for difficulty, 40% were easy, 40% medium and 20% hard — a fairly balanced mix of easy and moderate questions.
Its weight has stayed fairly steady: 1.3 questions per paper across NEET 2025, NEET 2026 and Re-NEET 2026, against 1 in 2020–2022.
The single most-tested topic is Polarisation (Polarisation by Reflection (Brewster's Law)) — 4 questions across 3 papers.
6 topics tagged under Wave Optics. Numbers show how many questions each topic had in each paper; E / M / H are the easy, medium and hard counts.
| Topic | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Re | Total | E | M | H |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polarisation (Polarisation by Reflection (Brewster's Law)) | 1 | – | – | – | 1 | 2 | – | – | 4 | 1 | 3 | – |
| Interference of Light Wave and Young's Double Slit Experiment (YDSE) (Positions of Fringes on Screen) | 1 | – | 1 | – | – | – | – | – | 2 | – | 1 | 1 |
| Coherent and Incoherent Sources of Light (Superposition of the Waves, Interference, And Energy Conservation) | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1 | – | 1 | 1 | – | – |
| Interference of Light Wave and Young's Double Slit Experiment (YDSE) | – | – | – | 1 | – | – | – | – | 1 | – | – | 1 |
| YDSE (Fringe Width) | – | – | – | – | 1 | – | – | – | 1 | 1 | – | – |
| YDSE (Young's Double Slit Experiment (Alternate Method)…) | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1 | – | 1 | 1 | – | – |
In the NEET papers from 2020 to 2026 (including Re-NEET 2026), 10 Physics questions came from Wave Optics — 2.6% of the subject, or about 1.3 per paper.
By past weightage it ranks #20 of 30 Physics chapters, so it is a lower-weightage Physics chapter, with 10 questions over 2020–2026.
The most-tested topics are Polarisation (Polarisation by Reflection (Brewster's Law)) (4), Interference of Light Wave and Young's Double Slit Experiment (YDSE)… (2) and Coherent and Incoherent Sources of Light (Superposition of the Waves,… (1). The topic table above lists every topic with its count in each paper.
Of the 10 difficulty-tagged questions, 40% were easy, 40% medium and 20% hard.
Coherent and Incoherent Sources of Light (Superposition of the Waves,… and YDSE (Young's Double Slit Experiment (Alternate Method)…) were asked in the 2026 papers.
Edurack has chapter-wise NEET previous-year questions for Wave Optics. Use the practice button on this page to open the set, attempt questions and check your answers.
Counts come from Edurack's tagged set of NEET papers 2020–2026 (including Re-NEET 2026), mapped to NCERT chapters and topics. Use them as a trend guide — past frequency doesn't guarantee what a future paper will ask.