What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9701 Chemistry papers and filtered to analytical techniques. 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 analytical techniques, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Drawing the chromatography baseline in ink, or starting the plate with the spots below the solvent level.
- Dividing the wrong way round in an Rf calculation, giving a value above 1.
- Measuring to the edge of a spot rather than to its centre.
- Explaining a difference in Rf by solubility alone, without mentioning adsorption onto the stationary phase.
- Saying a component with a longer retention time in GLC is more soluble in the mobile phase. It is more soluble in the stationary phase.
- Using peak heights rather than peak areas for percentage composition.
- Counting equivalent carbons or protons as separate environments, so propanone is given three carbon peaks instead of two.
- Miscounting environments in a substituted benzene ring by ignoring its symmetry.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Analytical techniques revision notes.