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In August 1829, Évariste Galois, a student at the Collège Royal Louis-le-Grand, composed the written exams for the École Préparatoire. This was the only exam of the decade to include written physics questions. Galois had the advantage of having left behind works and archives that have been extensively studied and put into context, enabling us to situate the physics teaching he had received more precisely. The heuristic value of his copy is to shed light on the study of physics as a school subject in terms of its scholarly content, the variety of teaching methods and the institutions involved. The transition from physics as a scholarly knowledge to classical mathematical physics was largely underway by the 1820s, but this change was only just beginning to be introduced at school. Ampère, both a major player in this transition as a scientist and a general inspector, used his position in the studied exam to shape teaching. Péclet, co-founder of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures and Galois’ examiner, gave it a new dimension.