What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 0620 Chemistry papers and filtered to atomic structure and the periodic table. 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 atomic structure and the periodic table, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Giving an electron a relative mass of 1 rather than treating it as negligible.
- Using the nucleon number as the number of neutrons instead of subtracting the proton number.
- Changing the number of protons when writing the configuration of an ion. Only the electrons change.
- Putting more than 8 electrons in the third shell for an element up to calcium.
- Writing a configuration whose digits do not add up to the proton number.
- Reading the period number from the outer shell electrons, or the group number from the number of shells. It is the other way round.
- Saying the noble gases have no outer shell electrons. They have a full one.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Atomic structure and the Periodic Table revision notes.