What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 0620 Chemistry papers and filtered to alkanes. You answer, you find out immediately whether you were right, and you get the reasoning for the correct option and for each distractor. Wrong answers go to a mistakes locker so you can come back to exactly those.
Practice is free. You need an account only so your progress and your mistakes are still there next time.
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What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on alkanes, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Saying alkanes decolourise bromine water. They do not; alkenes do.
- Writing an addition reaction with chlorine, giving CH₄Cl₂ or similar. Alkanes substitute; they do not add.
- Omitting HCl from a substitution equation.
- Forgetting to state that ultraviolet light is required, or calling it heat.
- Giving carbon dioxide as a product of incomplete combustion.
- Leaving a fractional coefficient such as 6.5O₂ in a final answer instead of doubling through.
- Calling an alkane unsaturated. The general formula CₙH₂ₙ₊₂ has the maximum possible hydrogens.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Alkanes revision notes.