Physics problems constitute a significant aspect of reasoning, necessitating complicated reasoning ability and abundant physics knowledge. However, existing large language models (LLMs) frequently fail due to a lack of knowledge or incorrect knowledge application. To mitigate these issues, we propose Physics Reasoner, a knowledge-augmented framework to solve physics problems with LLMs. Specifically, the proposed framework constructs a comprehensive formula set to provide explicit physics knowledge and utilizes checklists containing detailed instructions to guide effective knowledge application. Namely, given a physics problem, Physics Reasoner solves it through three stages: problem analysis, formula retrieval, and guided reasoning. During the process, checklists are employed to enhance LLMs’ self-improvement in the analysis and reasoning stages. Empirically, Physics Reasoner mitigates the issues of insufficient knowledge and incorrect application, achieving state-of-the-art performance on SciBench with an average accuracy improvement of 5.8%.
We introduce SATBench, a benchmark for evaluating the logical reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) through logical puzzles derived from Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problems.Unlike prior work that focuses on inference rule-based reasoning, which often involves deducing conclusions from a set of premises, our approach leverages the search-based nature of SAT problems, where the objective is to find a solution that fulfills a specified set of logical constraints. Each instance in SATBench is generated from a SAT formula, then translated into a puzzle using LLMs. The generation process is fully automated and allows for adjustable difficulty by varying the number of clauses. All 2100 puzzles are validated through both LLM-based and solver-based consistency checks, with human validation on a subset. Experimental results show that even the strongest model, o4-mini, achieves only 65.0% accuracy on hard UNSAT problems, close to the random baseline of 50%. Our error analysis reveals systematic failures such as satisfiability bias, context inconsistency, and condition omission, highlighting limitations of current LLMs in search-based logical reasoning. Our code and data are publicly available at https://github.com/Anjiang-Wei/SATBench