What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9701 Chemistry papers and filtered to hydroxy compounds. 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 hydroxy compounds, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Calling phenylmethanol a phenol. The OH must be attached directly to the ring.
- Saying phenol reacts with sodium carbonate to give carbon dioxide. It is not acidic enough, and that is the test that distinguishes it from a carboxylic acid.
- Using the reaction with sodium metal to distinguish phenol from an alcohol. Both give hydrogen.
- Explaining phenol's acidity only by the weakening of the O-H bond, and leaving out the stabilisation of the phenoxide ion.
- Putting ethanol as more acidic than water. The electron-donating alkyl group makes it less acidic.
- Giving benzene's nitration conditions for phenol, or expecting a catalyst for the bromination of phenol.
- Writing monobromophenol as the product with bromine water. Three bromines substitute, giving 2,4,6-tribromophenol.
- Letting the diazotisation warm above 10 °C, or forgetting the ice bath entirely.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Hydroxy compounds revision notes.