What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9702 Physics papers and filtered to d.c. circuits. 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 d.c. circuits, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Attributing Kirchhoff's first law to conservation of energy and the second to charge.
- Forgetting to invert 1/R at the end of a parallel calculation.
- Giving a parallel combination larger than one of its resistors.
- Saying the terminal p.d. equals the e.m.f. while current flows.
- Reading the internal resistance as a positive gradient from a V against I graph.
- Putting the wrong resistance on top in the potential divider equation.
- Saying an ammeter should have a high resistance.
- Ignoring the current a real voltmeter draws when explaining a low reading.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: D.C. circuits revision notes.