What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9701 Chemistry papers and filtered to an introduction to a level organic chemistry. 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 an introduction to a level organic chemistry, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Drawing a skeletal formula when a displayed formula is asked for, so the C-H bonds are missing.
- Numbering a chain from the wrong end, so the functional group gets a higher number than necessary.
- Choosing a carbon chain that is not the longest one containing the functional group.
- Drawing benzene with alternating single and double bonds when asked to show the delocalised structure, or drawing the circle inside a ring that also shows double bonds.
- Saying benzene is stable because it has double bonds. It is stable because the pi electrons are delocalised over all six carbons.
- Describing a pi bond as formed by head-on overlap, or a sigma bond as sideways.
- Forgetting that sp² hybridisation leaves one unhybridised p orbital per carbon, and it is those six that delocalise.
- Saying enantiomers have different melting points or different chemical reactions with ordinary reagents. Only plane polarised light and chiral environments distinguish them.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: An introduction to A Level organic chemistry revision notes.