What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9701 Chemistry papers and filtered to carbonyl 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 carbonyl compounds, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Saying a ketone is oxidised by Fehling's or Tollens'. It is not, because there is no hydrogen on the carbonyl carbon.
- Calling Tollens' reagent a reducing agent. It is the oxidising agent; the aldehyde reduces it.
- Using 2,4-DNPH to distinguish an aldehyde from a ketone. It detects both.
- Forgetting that HCN addition adds a carbon, which is usually why it appears in a synthesis question.
- Drawing the nucleophile's arrow to the oxygen rather than to the δ+ carbon.
- Saying propanone gives a positive tri-iodomethane test because it is a ketone. It is positive because it is a methyl ketone.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Carbonyl compounds revision notes.