How to Use the Official June 2013 Physics Regents Answer Key Without Wasting Your Time
The June 2013 Physics Regents exam came out over a decade ago, but students and teachers still pull it up constantly because it's one of the harder recent exams and it covers a lot of the standard curriculum. Getting your hands on the answers is straightforward, but using them properly is where most people mess up. I've gone through this exact document dozens of times, usually around March when I'm trying to decide which practice exams to assign. The New York State Education Department posts every Regents exam and its corresponding Scoring Key and Rating Guide on their official website. You want the document called "June 2013 Physics Regents Answers and Scoring Key." It's publicly available and free. Do not pay for it from any third-party site. The state's education department hosts it, and it's always there. I've seen too many students end up on sketchy sites that charge five dollars for something the government gives away. The document you download contains everything: the original exam questions, every student answer sheet, and then the Scoring Key which lists the correct answers for Part A (multiple choice), Part B-1 (short answer), and the rating criteria for Part B-2 and Part C (constructed response). The Part D questions include specific rating guidelines that tell you exactly what wording earns points.
What's Actually in This Document
Part A has thirty multiple choice questions. The Scoring Key just lists the correct letter for each one. Questions cover forces and motion, energy, electricity, magnetism, waves, and modern physics. The difficulty here is moderate but the questions are designed to catch students who rush. I remember working through this exam with a student back in 2015 who was confident about question 14 on electrostatic force. He picked C because he recognized the formula. The correct answer was B, and he lost the point because he misread which variable was being held constant in the problem setup. The Scoring Key doesn't explain why any answer is right or wrong. It just tells you which letter to circle. Part B-1 has eight short answer questions. These require you to calculate or select a value. The answers here are numerical and the Scoring Key shows the expected values. Part B-2 asks you to solve problems with full credit given for correct methodology even if your final number is slightly off due to rounding. That matters more than people realize. If you set up the right equation and substitute correctly but carry a rounding error through, you still get most of the points. Part C is the same deal but with longer explanations and diagrams required.
How to Actually Score Your Own Practice Attempt
Here's the workflow I use. Print the exam. Take it under timed conditions, no notes, no phone. When you finish, grade it using the Scoring Key immediately while your memory of each problem is fresh. For Part A and B-1, you can grade with a red pen against the answer key. For Parts B-2 and C, you need the rating guidelines that come with the document. Each problem lists what a full-credit answer looks like and what partial credit looks like. This exam is notable because it includes a question about a ball thrown upward that students routinely miss on the explanation part. The question asks about the ball's acceleration at the top of its path. Most students think acceleration is zero at the peak. It is not. The Scoring Key gives credit for stating that acceleration is approximately 9.81 meters per second squared downward. I have seen literally hundreds of students lose points here on this exact question across every year I have taught. When grading Part B-2 problem 35, which involves calculating the spring constant from a force-extension graph, pay close attention to the rating guideline. The guideline accepts answers between 196 N/m and 204 N/m depending on how you read the slope from the graph. If your graph reading was reasonable and your calculation followed from it, you get full credit. The graders are told to follow your logic, not just match your number. That is an important distinction that the Scoring Key makes clear if you actually read the rating criteria carefully instead of skimming it.
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Common Mistakes When Using This Key
The biggest problem I see is that students look at the Part A answers, mark how many they got wrong, and stop. They never look back at the questions they missed. This wastes the entire exercise. You need to go back to every incorrect answer, figure out why the right answer is right, and write down the rule or concept you forgot. If you got question 27 wrong about the index of refraction and Snell's law, look at that problem again, work through the calculation, and note which step you skipped. Another mistake is ignoring Part C entirely. The constructed response questions are where the exam really separates people. Students who can do the math but cannot write a two-sentence explanation in proper physics language lose easy points. The rating guidelines spell out exactly what the explanation needs to include. For the question about conservation of momentum in a collision, the guideline requires you to state that total momentum before equals total momentum after, and you need to reference that the system is isolated. Missing either clause costs you a point even if your numbers are perfect.
Limitations of This Practice Exam
June 2013 is old enough that some of the reference tables have shifted slightly in how they are presented on newer exams. The core physics has not changed. The formulas are the same. But the layout of the Reference Tables for Physical Setting/Physics might look different now. Also, the exam format itself has evolved. Newer exams tend to weight the lab-based Part D questions more heavily and include more questions on rotational motion than this one does. If you only practice with this exam, you will be underprepared for the newer question types. Treat it as supplementary material, not your only resource. The Scoring Key also does not explain why answers are correct. It is a key, not a textbook. If you do not understand the concept behind a question, you need to look elsewhere for the explanation. Use a textbook or reliable online resource for the underlying physics. The key only tells you what the right answer is.
Specific Problem I Ran Into and How I Worked Around It
A few years ago I was trying to print a clean copy of the exam and scoring key from the state website and the PDF I downloaded was scanned poorly. Several of the Part B-2 diagrams were blurry enough that the graph axes were unreadable. This made it impossible to grade student work on that section fairly. I solved it by downloading the exam directly from the archives where the image quality was higher. When that was not available, I cross-referenced the same questions on other practice exams from adjacent years that used similar problems. The question about the projectile motion in this exam appears in modified form in January 2014 and June 2015, so you can find clearer versions of the same problem setup elsewhere. If you are a teacher preparing to use this exam, I recommend downloading the document during school hours on a wired connection rather than late at night on cellular data. The PDF is large and the state server can be slow. Also, save a local copy immediately. These documents sometimes get moved or restructured on the education department site without warning.
Final Notes on the June 2013 Physics Regents Answers
The June 2013 Physics Regents Answers document is useful when you use it correctly. Take the exam under realistic conditions first. Grade it honestly with the full Scoring Key including the rating guidelines for constructed responses. Review every mistake instead of just noting the score. Cross-reference difficult questions with newer exams since the curriculum has shifted slightly. And do not rely on it as your only practice material. The exam itself is solid and the scoring standards from that period align closely with current expectations, but the landscape has changed enough that you need more recent material alongside it.
