What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9701 Chemistry papers and filtered to chemistry of transition elements. 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 chemistry of transition elements, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Defining a transition element as any d-block element, so scandium and zinc are wrongly included.
- Writing the electron configuration of Fe²⁺ as 3d⁴4s². The 4s electrons are removed first.
- Forgetting the irregular configurations of chromium and copper.
- Confusing coordination number with the number of ligands. A bidentate ligand forms two bonds.
- Saying ammonia forms a precipitate with copper(II) in excess. A little gives the precipitate; excess dissolves it.
- Giving the ammonia complex of copper as [Cu(NH₃)₆]²⁺. Only four water molecules are replaced, giving [Cu(NH₃)₄(H₂O)₂]²⁺.
- Saying a complex is coloured because it contains a transition metal, without naming the d-d transition between non-degenerate orbitals.
- Saying the colour observed is the colour absorbed. It is the complementary colour.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Chemistry of transition elements revision notes.