AI Reasoning Models for Problem Solving in Physics

Amir Bralin; N. Sanjay Rebello

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arXiv · 2508.20941

AI Reasoning Models for Problem Solving in Physics

Amir Bralin·N. Sanjay Rebello

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Abstract

Reasoning models are the new generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) capable of complex problem solving. Their reliability in solving introductory physics problems was tested by evaluating a sample of n = 5 solutions generated by one such model -- OpenAI's o3-mini -- per each problem from 20 chapters of a standard undergraduate textbook. In total, N = 408 problems were given to the model and N x n = 2,040 generated solutions examined. The model successfully solved 94% of the problems posed, excelling at the beginning topics in mechanics but struggling with the later ones such as waves and thermodynamics.

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Amir Bralin, N. Sanjay Rebello. 2025-08-28. AI Reasoning Models for Problem Solving in Physics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20941

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