Chemistry
Cutline has exam-style CHEM191 practice questions with worked solutions. Course topics include bonding, equilibrium, acids and bases, kinetics, organic mechanisms, carbohydrates and amino acids. Check the published practice below for the worksheets currently available. You can start free without a card.
Published MCQs: 1831. Worksheets and mock exams: 41.
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Chemical Equilibrium
correct answer: A
worked solution
Mock 1
correct answer: A
worked solution
Mock 1
correct answer: A
worked solution
Mock 1
correct answer: A
worked solution
Teaching practice and mock exams currently listed for this paper.
Active products only. Published worksheets in visible groups, with unrestricted multiple-choice questions. Retired questions, module tests and written questions are excluded. This does not measure whole-course coverage or concept articles.
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These are paper topics, not a list of published worksheets.
the honest thing about chem191 is that the course itself does not give you much practice, and both exams are multi-choice. so the students who do well are usually the ones who have drilled enough questions to be fast and sure under time. use the published practice alongside your lecture notes to find what needs more work.
these are established findings, not fringe claims, and recent reviews keep confirming them (Carpenter et al., 2022; Weinstein et al., 2018). the emphasis here is on the higher-order skill of applying and transferring ideas to unseen questions, which is what separates the top HSFY grades and the study habits medicine selects for.
chem191 is examined almost entirely by multiple-choice, and the course gives you very little practice built in, so the students who do well are the ones who train the exam skill deliberately rather than just rereading lecture slides. the methods below are drawn from cognitive science, and each one is matched to how chem191 actually tests you, from mechanisms to buffer calculations.
the strongest finding in the study-technique literature is the testing effect: pulling information out of memory strengthens it far more than putting it back in by rereading. in a classic experiment, students who tested themselves on material remembered dramatically more a week later than students who restudied it for the same time (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006), and the large review by Dunlosky et al. (2013) rated practice testing as one of only two techniques with high utility across subjects and ages. the reason it matters for chem191 is that rereading a worked mechanism feels productive, but it only builds recognition, you can follow the arrows on the page while being unable to generate them yourself in the exam.
organic mechanisms are the clearest place to use this. a nucleophilic substitution or an acid-base mechanism is a sequence you can reconstruct from a blank page, which forces true retrieval rather than passive review. do it closed-book, then compare against the notes and correct only the steps you actually missed, because those missed steps are the precise gaps the exam will probe. the same applies to reaction outcomes and functional-group behaviour: predict first, check second. (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006; Dunlosky et al., 2013)
try it: after a mechanism lecture, redraw the full curly-arrow pathway from memory on blank paper, then check it against the notes and fix only the steps you got wrong.
most students study by blocking, doing a page of equilibrium problems, then a page of pH problems, then a page of thermodynamics. it feels smoother, but it hides the hardest skill: recognising which type of problem you are looking at. interleaving, deliberately mixing problem types in one session, forces you to choose the right method each time, and it reliably produces better performance on later tests even though it feels harder while you do it (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007).
chem191’s quantitative topics are perfect for this because equilibrium, acid-base and buffer, solubility, and Gibbs-energy questions all look superficially similar on the page. if you only ever practise them in labelled blocks, you learn to execute a method you have already been told to use, which is not what the exam asks. a mixed set trains the actual exam moment: read an unlabelled question, identify that it is a Ka calculation and not an equilibrium-position one, then solve it. (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007; Brunmair & Richter, 2019)
try it: build a mixed set that jumps between a Ka calculation, a Gibbs-energy question and an equilibrium-position problem, so you practise identifying the type, not just grinding one kind.
self-explanation, asking yourself why each step happens and saying the answer in your own words, is one of the higher-utility strategies in the evidence review because it forces you to connect a fact to the principle underneath it rather than storing it in isolation (Dunlosky et al., 2013). the effort of generating the explanation is what builds understanding that transfers to unfamiliar questions.
chem191 is explicitly built around understanding why reactions proceed, not memorising outcomes, so this maps directly onto the exam. for a redox question, explain why the electrons move in that direction using reduction potentials; for an acid-base question, explain why one species is the stronger acid using structure and stability. once you can articulate the why, novel exam questions that dress up the same principle in new molecules stop being surprises. (Dunlosky et al., 2013)
try it: for a redox or acid-base question, say out loud why the electrons or protons move the way they do before you look at the answer.
the highest grades in chem191 do not go to the students who can recite the most, they go to the students who can apply a principle to a molecule or scenario they have never seen. this is called transfer, and the research is encouraging: retrieval practice, especially when you vary the problems, improves not just memory but the ability to apply knowledge to new situations (Pan & Rickard, 2018; Carpenter et al., 2022). it is directly relevant if you are aiming for medicine, where self-testing during study predicts later performance on medical licensing exams (Deng et al., 2015).
make your practice look like the exam, not the textbook. rather than reread a solved buffer problem, work fresh problems where the numbers and context change, and deliberately tackle questions that combine two ideas, an equilibrium that is also an acid-base system, for instance. the discomfort of applying a principle to an unfamiliar case is exactly the skill the multiple-choice distractors are built to test. (Pan & Rickard, 2018; Carpenter et al., 2022; Deng et al., 2015)
try it: take a concept you have just learned and find or write a question that applies it in a context you have not seen, then solve it cold.
the spacing effect is why flashcards work: revisiting a fact just as you are about to forget it locks it in far better than cramming (Cepeda et al., 2006). anki is the tool most health-science students reach for, and it is genuinely good. turn each reaction mechanism and pKa fact into a card, and let spaced repetition resurface the ones you keep missing. cutline pairs anki-style flashcards for the raw facts with a qbank of exam-style chem191 questions, so you can drill what needs memorising and then practise applying it.
yes, questions are written to match the otago chem191 lecture structure and exam style, lecture by lecture.
no, you can start free with no card, then upgrade only if you want the full bank.
the study methods above come from established research in cognitive and educational psychology.
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