How many questions are on a mechanical aptitude test?

It depends which one your employer sends, and there are two common answers. Pearson TalentLens publishes the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test as 55 items in 25 minutes. Criteria Corp publishes the Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude as 60 items in 30 minutes. Both pages on this site run those exact lengths, and the shorter run above is this site’s own.

What is actually on it?

Everyday physics rather than trade knowledge: levers, pulleys, gears and belts; balance, friction and momentum; and — the part people do not expect — pressure and flow, heat, and simple electrical circuits. Pearson names electricity, heat and hydraulics among the content areas its items are coded against.

Do I need experience with tools or machines?

No, and both publishers are clear about it. Criteria describes the Wiesen as measuring the ability to learn to use and maintain equipment rather than what you already know, and writes its items at an estimated sixth-grade reading level. Experience helps, in the sense that anybody who has changed a tyre has met a lever, but nothing here needs training.

What is a good score?

Nobody publishes one. Both tests are reported to the employer as a raw score with a percentile, and the employer decides what it wants. Any site printing "the score you need for a maintenance technician" has invented it.

Can I use a calculator?

Neither publisher publishes a rule, so an honest answer is that nobody outside your employer can tell you. What is true is that the arithmetic on a mechanical test is deliberately small — ratios, halves, thirds — so practise without one and the question stops mattering.

Are the real questions pictures?

Mostly, yes. A typical Bennett or Wiesen item shows a mechanism and asks about it. The questions here are written rather than drawn, which practises the same reasoning but not the picture-reading — the free study guide linked below has drawn mechanical items with worked answers, and it is the best free source of those anywhere.

Is guessing penalised?

Neither publisher says. What is published is that Criteria scores the Wiesen as the number right out of 60, which is the only fact bearing on it — under a count of correct answers, an unanswered item and a wrong one are worth the same. Leave nothing blank at the end.

Are these real test questions?

No. Every question here is original, written to the published content of these tests rather than copied from them. Both item banks are confidential, and anybody advertising real Bennett or Wiesen items is not telling you where they came from.

Mechanical aptitude test practice

The test employers send for maintenance, trades, apprentice and operator roles — and the one test on this site whose name belongs to nobody. 150 original questions on the physics both of the common versions ask about, timed, with an explanation after every one.

30 questions · 15 minutes Our practice length, not a publisher’s Full-length Bennett and Wiesen runs below Free, no account

Mechanical aptitude practice run

30 questions. 15 minutes.

That is 30 seconds a question. The clock starts when you press the button and submits the test when it runs out. You will not be told whether an answer was right until the end — that is the point of a timed run.

30s a question Neither publisher publishes a guessing rule; the Wiesen is scored as the number right out of 60 No account, nothing saved off your device

2 free full-length runs left on this test. Unlimited for $24.99, one payment.

There are two of them, and they are different lengths

“Mechanical aptitude test” is a category rather than a product. When an employer says you will sit one, they almost always mean one of two published tests, and the two do not have the same shape. This is worth five minutes of your time before any practice: ask the employer which one, because the pace you should rehearse at depends on the answer.

Test	Publisher	Published shape
Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test (BMCT-II)	Pearson TalentLens	55 items, 25 minutes, unsupervised — 27.3 seconds an item
Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude (WTMA)	Criteria Corp	60 items, 30 minutes — 30 seconds an item

Both figures are from the publishers’ own product pages, read on 3 September 2026 and listed at the bottom of this page. Neither publisher breaks its test down by topic, so any site telling you how many gear questions to expect has invented the number. The 30-question run above is this site’s practice length at 30 seconds a question; the two pages below run the published lengths.

Bennett mechanical comprehension test →Wiesen test of mechanical aptitude →

Practise one part at a time

Untimed sets with the explanation immediately after each answer. The timed run shows you what is going wrong; these are where it gets fixed.

Simple machines

Levers, pulleys, gears, belts, ramps and screws — which way it turns, and what it costs you.

50 questions

Forces and motion

Balance, turning force, friction, momentum and where a load actually goes.

50 questions

Fluids, heat and electricity

Pressure and flow in pipes and tanks, how heat moves, and what happens when a switch opens.

50 questions

One thing this page cannot practise

On the real test, most items are drawings. Two meshed gears with an arrow on one of them, a lever with a load and a fulcrum marked, water standing in connected vessels. You read the picture and answer. The questions here describe the same mechanisms in words, which practises exactly the same reasoning — but not the reading of a diagram, which is half the skill and the half people are slowest at.

There is a free source for the drawn kind, and it is an unlikely one: the California firefighter written test’s official study guide. Its mechanical section is 25 questions’ worth of gears, pulleys, block and tackle, levers and head pressure, taught with diagrams and worked answers, published free by the body that runs the test. It is on this site’s firefighter practice page, linked from the sources at the bottom of that page, and it is worth an hour whatever job you are applying for.

The whole test is one trade, asked forty ways

Every simple machine does the same thing: it multiplies your force and charges you for it in distance. Halve the effort, double the travel. A lever, a ramp, a block and tackle, a gearbox and a hydraulic jack are that one bargain in five costumes, and once it is in your hands, a surprising share of the paper answers itself.

The rules worth knowing before test day are few. Meshed gears turn opposite ways, and an odd number of them leaves the last turning with the first. A belt drive keeps both wheels turning the same way unless it is crossed. Pulley and gear speed goes down as size goes up, and torque goes up as speed goes down. A block and tackle multiplies your pull by the number of rope parts holding the load, and you pull that many times as much rope. A lever’s class is decided by what sits in the middle. And a fluid pushes equally in every direction, which is why a hydraulic jack works and why the pressure at the bottom of a tank depends on its depth and not its width.

Who sends this test

Criteria names the roles it recommends the Wiesen for: machine operators, electricians, construction workers, field service technicians and mechanics. Mechanical reasoning also turns up as a section inside larger hiring tests rather than as a test of its own — it is 25 of the 100 questions on the firefighter written test, and the algebra and reading battery for an electrical apprenticeship tests the same habits of mind in a different form.

Frequently asked

How many questions are on a mechanical aptitude test?: It depends which one your employer sends, and there are two common answers. Pearson TalentLens publishes the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test as 55 items in 25 minutes. Criteria Corp publishes the Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude as 60 items in 30 minutes. Both pages on this site run those exact lengths, and the shorter run above is this site’s own.
What is actually on it?: Everyday physics rather than trade knowledge: levers, pulleys, gears and belts; balance, friction and momentum; and — the part people do not expect — pressure and flow, heat, and simple electrical circuits. Pearson names electricity, heat and hydraulics among the content areas its items are coded against.
Do I need experience with tools or machines?: No, and both publishers are clear about it. Criteria describes the Wiesen as measuring the ability to learn to use and maintain equipment rather than what you already know, and writes its items at an estimated sixth-grade reading level. Experience helps, in the sense that anybody who has changed a tyre has met a lever, but nothing here needs training.
What is a good score?: Nobody publishes one. Both tests are reported to the employer as a raw score with a percentile, and the employer decides what it wants. Any site printing "the score you need for a maintenance technician" has invented it.
Can I use a calculator?: Neither publisher publishes a rule, so an honest answer is that nobody outside your employer can tell you. What is true is that the arithmetic on a mechanical test is deliberately small — ratios, halves, thirds — so practise without one and the question stops mattering.
Are the real questions pictures?: Mostly, yes. A typical Bennett or Wiesen item shows a mechanism and asks about it. The questions here are written rather than drawn, which practises the same reasoning but not the picture-reading — the free study guide linked below has drawn mechanical items with worked answers, and it is the best free source of those anywhere.
Is guessing penalised?: Neither publisher says. What is published is that Criteria scores the Wiesen as the number right out of 60, which is the only fact bearing on it — under a count of correct answers, an unanswered item and a wrong one are worth the same. Leave nothing blank at the end.
Are these real test questions?: No. Every question here is original, written to the published content of these tests rather than copied from them. Both item banks are confidential, and anybody advertising real Bennett or Wiesen items is not telling you where they came from.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, with the date it was read. Requirements change; if a source has moved on since that date, the source is right and this page is out of date.

Pearson TalentLens — Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test (BMCT-II) assessment page Read September 3, 2026
Criteria Corp — Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude (WTMA) Read September 3, 2026
Firefighter Candidate Testing Center (Cal-JAC) — FCTC Written Test Study Guide (free candidate guide, 25 pages) Read September 3, 2026

Hiring Test Practice is independent practice material and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by Criteria Corp, Wonderlic, Inc., National Testing Network, the electrical training ALLIANCE, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, NECA, Biddle Consulting Group, Inc., Pearson Education, Inc. or its TalentLens business, the California Firefighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee or the Firefighter Candidate Testing Center, Fire and Police Selection, Inc., I/O Solutions, Inc., Ergometrics & Applied Personnel Research, Inc., the International Association of Fire Fighters or the International Association of Fire Chiefs. CCAT® is a registered trademark of Criteria Corp; Wonderlic® is a registered trademark of Wonderlic, Inc.; CritiCall is a trademark of Biddle Consulting Group, Inc.; Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test is a trademark of Pearson Education, Inc.; FCTC and CPAT are used to name tests administered by others. Test names are used only to describe what this material prepares you for. Every question here is original and none is taken from any actual assessment. Cal-JAC and FCTC publish that materials supplied directly by them are the only authorized FCTC Written Test materials; this site is one of the outside sources that warning refers to, and it links their free study guide rather than reproducing it.