What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 0654 Co-ordinated Sciences papers and filtered to nuclear physics. 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 nuclear physics, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Adding the two numbers in a nuclide symbol instead of subtracting them.
- Putting the nucleon number below and the proton number above.
- Saying isotopes have different chemical properties.
- Saying gamma is the least penetrating, or that alpha is the least ionising.
- Saying alpha is the most penetrating because it is the most ionising.
- Saying the nucleon number is unchanged in alpha decay.
- Saying the proton number falls in beta decay.
- Describing a beta particle as an electron knocked from the outer shell rather than produced in the nucleus.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Nuclear physics revision notes.