What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 0620 Chemistry papers and filtered to the characteristic properties of acids and bases. 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 the characteristic properties of acids and bases, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Calling every base an alkali, when only the soluble ones are.
- Writing acid plus carbonate as giving hydrogen instead of carbon dioxide.
- Giving thymolphthalein as pink in alkali, which is phenolphthalein, not on this syllabus.
- Saying pH 3 is three times as acidic as pH 4, rather than ten times.
- Using "strong" to mean "concentrated".
- Saying a weak acid needs less alkali to neutralise it.
- Forgetting that the ionic equation for every neutralisation is H<sup>+</sup> + OH<sup>−</sup> → H<sub>2</sub>O.
- Testing for ammonia with dry litmus paper rather than damp.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: The characteristic properties of acids and bases revision notes.