Irodov Solutions Guide for JEE — What to Solve, What to Skip
A section-by-section map of I.E. Irodov’s Problems in General Physics, checked against the JEE Main and JEE Advanced syllabuses.
I.E. Irodov’s Problems in General Physics has a reputation among JEE aspirants that the book itself never asked for. It was written for Russian university students, it contains 1,878 problems, and it prints answers and hints rather than solutions. Some of it is the best problem practice available to an Advanced candidate. Some of it cannot be asked in the exam at all.
This guide exists because nobody says which is which. Every site that publishes Irodov solutions publishes all of them, in book order, with no comment on whether a given section is worth your evening.
Key insight. The most valuable decision you make about Irodov is not how to solve a problem in it — it is which problems to open in the first place. Checked against the current syllabus, 14 of its 40 sections are fully in scope, 19 are partly usable and 7 are not on the syllabus at all.
Start here
- Should you solve Irodov for JEE Advanced? An honest answer — who the book is for, what it costs in hours, and what to do instead if it is not for you
The section maps
Each map takes one part of the book and goes through it section by section: what the section drills, which problems are worth attempting, which to skip, and the syllabus entry behind every call.
- Part 1 — Mechanics · sections 1.1 to 1.8 · 388 problems
- Part 2 — Thermodynamics · sections 2.1 to 2.7 · 257 problems
- Part 3 — Electrodynamics · sections 3.1 to 3.7 · 407 problems
- Part 4 — Oscillations and Waves · sections 4.1 to 4.4 · 224 problems
- Part 5 — Optics · sections 5.1 to 5.7 · 292 problems
- Part 6 — Atomic and Nuclear Physics · sections 6.1 to 6.7 · 310 problems
Before Irodov
Irodov is not a first book, and treating it as one is the commonest way students waste a term on it. If the standard syllabus is not yet solid, work through the textbook first — full chapter-by-chapter solutions are here for Class 11 Physics and Class 12 Physics, with the answer key’s errors explained wherever they occur.