Game plan 0 · Unit 4 · Start here
The first question
How to work out what any exam question wants, and which game plan to open.
You have just opened the paper, or you are starting a new question. Ask the first question every time.
Part 1
The question to ask first
Ask this the moment you open the paper, and again at the start of every new question.
Ask this first
“Am I being asked to calculate, or to write?”
Calculate
Numbers, formulas, units and free-body diagrams. Usually Section 3. Work down the question map and stop at the first yes.
Write
Explanations, sketches, truth tables and judgements from the material supplied. Usually Section 2. Go to Game plan 7 first, then come back for the content.
The paper is one exam with two very different halves. Section 2 mostly wants an engineer who can communicate. Section 3 mostly wants an engineer who can calculate. You lose marks by answering a written question with a calculation, or by calculating correctly and never answering the question that was asked.
The halves are not sealed off from each other. Section 2 has twice needed a calculation inside an explanation (2020 Q16 and 2021 Q16), and Section 3 has held written parts (2020 Q18c, and the logic question in 2025). Decide question by question, not section by section.
| Section | What it is, and what it wants |
|---|---|
| Section 1 | Multiple choice. One decision per question, and most are straightforward. Do not assume every one is easy: 2022 Question 4 needed a full velocity-ratio calculation. |
| Section 2 | Short response, mostly written. Writing, sketches, truth tables and judgements based on the material supplied. Go to Game plan 7 first. |
| Section 3 | Short response, mostly calculation. Numbers, formulas, units and free-body diagrams. Use the question map. |
Say the answer to the first question in your head before you pick up your pen. It takes two seconds and it decides which game plan you open.
Part 2
If you are calculating, which game plan?
The question map
Stop at the first yes
Ask these in order. The first yes is the game plan you start with.
- 1Is there a slope, a coefficient of friction, or a time, distance or acceleration to find? → Game plan 1
- 2Is something turning an effort into a load: a lever, pulley, gear, belt, screw or wheel and axle? → Game plan 2
- 3Does the question name work, power, energy or efficiency, or give you volts, amps and ohms? → Game plan 3
- 4Is a phase diagram or an iron–carbon diagram printed on the page? → Game plan 4
- 5Is there a logic circuit or a truth table? → Game plan 6
Friction and motion share Game plan 1 because the exams so often combine them (2021 Q19 and Q23, 2022 Q19, 2024 Q22 and 2025 Q22). Motion also leads questions without friction, as in 2020 Q23, 2021 Q21 and 2022 Q18.
Logic sat in Section 2 every year from 2020 to 2024, then moved to Section 3 in 2025. So logic does not always mean writing.
Game plan 5, polymers and materials selection, is not on the map because its questions are written ones. You read a stress–strain diagram or a property table and justify a choice. You reach it through Game plan 7.
When two game plans both apply
They usually do. Exam questions deliberately combine topics: a box slides down a ramp and then a motor lifts it, a gear train drives a load up an incline, or a piledriver falls and then decelerates.
Start with the first thing you have to find, not the topic of the question. Work out what stage one asks for, use that game plan, then ask the first question again for stage two.
Only one quantity crosses between the stages: the velocity, force or energy at the join. Write it down, with its unit, before you start the next stage.
Part 3
If you are writing, the verb decides the shape
Go to Game plan 7 before you go to the topic. The content comes from Game plans 1 to 6. The shape of the answer comes from the cognitive verb, and the marks are attached to the shape.
- •Explain appeared in all six papers, on 4- to 6-mark written questions (and a 2-mark part in 2020), though only once in 2025.
- •Justify first appeared in 2024 and was in three of the six 2025 written questions. It usually asks you to use a supplied table or diagram (2024 Q12, 2025 Q14 and Q16), but 2025 Q12 asked you to justify from your own knowledge of microstructures.
- •State and list have not appeared since 2023.
Game plan 7 gives you the response shape for each verb and the mark budget that goes with it.
Part 4
Three habits that earn marks in every topic
Count the marks in the question
Count the numbers the question names, and add one for a decision if a decision is asked for. Where the question names no number, allow one mark for each separate thing that can be named or drawn. Check how the sketch marks split. Most guides give 1 mark for the whole annotated sketch, 2022 Q11 gave 1 per labelled feature, and only 2020 Q13 split a drawing mark from an annotation mark.
If your count matches the mark value, you have your plan.
Formula, then substitution, then answer
From 2020 to 2023 the mark guides repeatedly gave “provides correct formula and substituted values” as a dot point of its own, separate from the answer. The 2024 guide still gives a mark for “correctly substitutes values”. On a five-mark calculation it is common for only one or two marks to depend on the arithmetic.
Write three lines instead of one. One of them earns a mark whatever happens next.
Never stop, and never rub out
Every mark guide allows follow-through. An error carried forward still earns the later marks if the method is right. On a ten-mark chain, a mistake at step one costs one mark, not ten, as long as you carry out the rest correctly on the wrong number.
Giving up because the first number looks wrong costs you more marks than anything else.
Part 5
Rounding and units
| Where | What the QCAA accepts |
|---|---|
| Intermediate steps | Rounding is correct anywhere from two to nine decimal places. You will not lose marks for carrying 4.55 instead of 4.5476. You risk losing them if you carry 4.5. |
| Final answers | To the nearest whole unit, unless the question says otherwise. Give the final answer in the form the question asks for, and keep the unrounded value in your working. |
| Units | Most mark guides fold the unit into the final-answer mark (“…with correct unit provided”). A few give the unit its own mark (2021 Q21 and 2023 Q17). Either way, a missing unit can cost a mark, so write it on every final answer. |
| Gravity | Use $g = 9.8\ \text{m s}^{-2}$. Every past paper and both formula books use it. |
Part 6
What is not in the formula book
This is the most useful list in the game plans. You need every item on it, none of them is printed in the formula book, and all except heat treatment and the parallel current formula (both new for 2026) have been examined.
| Missing from the book | Game plan |
|---|---|
| Weight, $W = mg$ | Every one |
| $F_N = mg\cos\theta$ and $F_\parallel = mg\sin\theta$. The book prints only horizontal and vertical components, $F_H = F\cos\theta$ and $F_V = F\sin\theta$. | 1 |
| That $F$ in $F = ma$ means the net force | 1 |
| Pulley MA and VR by counting the supporting ropes | 2 |
| The lever orders and the four types of motion | 2 |
| Worm VR as wheel teeth divided by worm starts | 2 |
| Gear train ratios multiply, and so do the efficiencies of stages in series | 2 |
| Mechanical energy, $ME = KE + PE$ | 3 |
| The lever rule and the inverse lever rule | 4 |
| Carbon ranges, microstructures and application lists | 4, 5 |
| Every heat treatment process | 4 |
| The parallel current formula, $I_\text{total} = \frac{V}{R_1} + \frac{V}{R_2} + \dots$. It follows from $V = IR$, but it is not printed. | 3 |
| Gate behaviour. The symbols are printed, the behaviour is not. | 6 |
Part 7
Your timing budget
Budget in minutes per mark, not minutes per question. Working time is 120 minutes. Perusal for 2026 is five minutes instead of ten, and every past paper you practise on was sat with ten, so you have to read and plan faster than those papers suggest.
Setting your rate in perusal
- 1Section 1: 12 minutes. Ten decisions at about 70 seconds each.
- 2Hold 8 minutes back for the questions you flagged and left.
- 3That leaves 100 minutes for Sections 2 and 3. Divide it by the short-response marks on the paper in front of you.
$$\text{minutes per mark} = \frac{100}{\text{total marks} - 10}$$
Across the past papers that gives 1.33 minutes per mark on an 85-mark paper and 1.49 on a 77-mark one. So a 6-mark written question is worth about eight to nine minutes, and a 9-mark calculation about twelve to thirteen.
Do not budget by question count, because the shape of the paper is not fixed. Totals ran 85, 85, 85, 85, 79 and 77 from 2020 to 2025. The short-response questions ran Q11–Q23 in 2020 and 2021, Q11–Q22 in 2022, 2024 and 2025, and Q11–Q21 in 2023, which is thirteen, twelve and eleven questions. The 2024 split was 33 written marks and 36 calculation marks, and 2025 was 34 and 33. The syllabus sets percentages, not mark totals. Count the marks on your own paper in perusal and set your rate then.
Part 8
What is not examined
Some syllabus content is assessed only through your internal assessment, and some things that look like engineering never appear in this exam. Do not spend revision time on them.
Supplied but never used in six years
The formula book prints $M = Fd$ and $M_T = M_1 + M_2 + \dots$ for moments, and $\sigma = F/A$, $\varepsilon = \Delta L/L$, $E = \sigma/\varepsilon$, factor of safety and UTS for materials. No past question uses any of them. There is also no truss analysis by joints or sections, and no rigid-body turning equilibrium.
Stress–strain is reduced for 2026, not removed
A stress–strain diagram appeared in the multiple choice of every paper from 2020 to 2025, and twice more in Section 2 in 2025. Expect to read one. What has not been examined is the arithmetic: no question in six years has used $\sigma = F/A$, $\varepsilon = \Delta L/L$ or $E = \sigma/\varepsilon$.
Read the graph and know what the symbols mean, but do not drill the calculations. Game plan 5 has the routine.
Internal assessment only
Performing the problem-solving process (prototyping, testing and refining a real solution) is internal assessment. Explaining how an engineer would use that process is examinable and has been worth 3 marks once, in 2023. Learn the phase names, and leave the folio work for the folio.
In the Topic Guides
Wording quoted from past QCAA Engineering external assessments is © State of Queensland (QCAA), licensed under CC BY 4.0. Tangent Tuition is not affiliated with the QCAA.
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