What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9702 Physics papers and filtered to temperature. 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 temperature, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Saying temperature measures the total energy or the internal energy of an object, rather than the mean kinetic energy of its molecules.
- Leaving out the word "mean", or the word "random", in a definition of temperature.
- Converting a temperature change from Celsius to kelvin by adding 273. A change is the same number on both scales.
- Failing to convert an absolute temperature to kelvin in a gas law.
- Using 273 instead of 273.15 when the question asks for the relationship precisely, though 273 is fine for most calculations.
- Saying absolute zero is where molecules have no energy at all, rather than the minimum possible energy.
- Using E = mcΔθ across a change of state, where the temperature does not change and c does not apply.
- Saying the energy supplied during boiling increases the kinetic energy of the molecules. It increases their potential energy.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Temperature revision notes.