What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9701 Chemistry papers and filtered to polymerisation. 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 polymerisation, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Drawing a repeat unit that still contains a C=C double bond.
- Omitting the two bonds sticking out of the repeat unit, or the brackets and the n.
- Taking a repeat unit of the wrong length when deducing a monomer from a polymer chain.
- Forgetting to add water back when breaking an ester or amide link to find the monomers.
- Saying addition polymers are biodegradable. Their carbon backbone cannot be hydrolysed.
- Forgetting that burning PVC produces HCl, which is the reason it needs special treatment.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Polymerisation revision notes.