Ray Optics and Optical Instruments: The Exact Questions RBSE Keeps Asking (Chapter 9)

If you have gone through the last decade of RBSE Class 12 Physics papers, you will notice Chapter 9 (Ray Optics and Optical Instruments) is tested every year without fail. It belongs to Unit VI — Optics and is drawn from a pool of 45 previous-year questions spanning 2013–2026, spread across MCQs, very short, short and long-answer sections. The topics rotate, but the question patterns stay remarkably steady.

Expect 1-mark openers on radius of curvature, total internal reflection or power of a lens. The 1.5 to 2-mark questions lean on mirror and lens numericals. The heavy marks sit in the 3 to 4-mark long answers, which rotate between the u-v-f relation for a concave mirror (RBSE's single most-repeated question in this chapter), the lens maker's formula, and the compound microscope or telescope derivation — with 45 questions in the full pool, this is the largest chapter in the book, so the free sample focuses only on its highest-yield picks.

So the smart way to revise this chapter is not to read it end to end, but to practise the questions RBSE actually repeats. The five questions above — and the ten in the free sample PDF — are taken straight from real board papers and tagged with the exact years they appeared, so you can see for yourself what the full RBSE Physics chapterwise PYQ book offers before you decide to buy it.