What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9700 Biology papers and filtered to antibiotics. 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.
Start practising practice questions →
What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on antibiotics, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Saying the antibiotic causes the mutation. Mutation is random and prior; the antibiotic selects.
- Saying bacteria "become immune". Immunity is something a host has against a pathogen, not something a bacterium has against a drug.
- Saying penicillin dissolves or destroys the cell wall. It prevents new wall being cross-linked, so it only affects growing cells.
- Saying antibiotics do not affect viruses because viruses are too small. It is because they have no cellular machinery of their own to target.
- Explaining "finish the course" as making sure you feel better. It is about not leaving the most resistant survivors behind.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Antibiotics revision notes.