What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9700 Biology papers and filtered to the microscope in cell studies. 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 microscope in cell studies, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Giving magnification a unit. It is a ratio and has none.
- Doing the calculation without converting both measurements to the same unit first.
- Saying an electron microscope "magnifies more", when the point is that it resolves more. Higher magnification without higher resolution shows nothing new.
- Claiming an electron microscope shows living specimens.
- Forgetting to recalibrate the graticule after changing the objective lens.
- Confusing a TEM image with an SEM image: internal detail means transmission.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: The microscope in cell studies revision notes.