• When the examination paper hits your desk, read it through and make a mental note of anything that seems unusual, odd or difficult.
• Allow your subconscious to work on the difficulties, curiosities, oddities you have noted while you proceed with the task in hand.
• Go for your easiest/favourite question first and put that to rest.
• March on through that paper question by question in your own perceived order of difficulty, leaving your most difficult question until last.
• Should any difficulty arise, as say for example in interpretation of data or stoichiometric calculations, do not dwell; move on and return if you have time.
• Having answered all that is required of you and, if you have time on your hands after that, use that time to check and re-check your answers. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the examination hall early.

Section A

Section A, which is dedicated solely to the mandatory experiments, requires at least two of the three questions to be answered. You may attempt all three if you so wish, and it may be a wise decision to do so. One of the questions is likely to be based on volumetric analysis, given the importance of such methods of analysis in industry, the key concept of the mole and calculations involving moles and the fact that it has been the basis of question one on the paper since the course began. For any question on volumetric analysis, make sure you know the procedure involved in filling a burette and rinsing glassware. The key points of potassium permanganate titrations and sodium thiosulphate titration should also be known thoroughly.

Another of the questions in this section is likely to be inorganic/physical based. Here it is worth remembering that a nice question could be designed around the flame tests in conjunction with tests for anions.

The third question is likely to be based on one of the organic experiments of which there are only eight and chromatography may be a good candidate for a question here.

Section B

Question 4 on the paper is a general short answer question. There are 11 parts to the question, but you only have to answer eight of these. This is a nice question, most parts of which require only a word or formula or short sentence in answering. It is therefore a relatively quick question and easily dispensed with, provided you have a good general knowledge of all of the course.

Question 5 on the paper is usually reserved for bonding and structure. You should be astutely aware of the three main types of bonding – ionic, covalent and hydrogen bonding – on your course and be able to give examples of each. Trends in ionisation energies and electronegativities are a must to be known and you should be able to rationalise physical data such as melting and boiling points on the basis of bond polarities (using electronegativity differences) and intermolecular interactions including van der Waal's forces. You should also be able to explain the existence or non-existence of dipole moments and be mindful of the importance of symmetry in doing so. When answering questions on the valence shell electron pair repulsion theory, you should ensure you do this properly by showing the valence electron count, calculating the number of electron pairs, deciding the basic arrangement of these pairs, identifying the number of bond pairs and lone pairs and then assigning the structure with consideration of the electron pair repulsions.

Other items that can be examined in this question include the history of atomic structure and the construction of the periodic table of the elements. Albeit a somewhat tedious part of the course, it is worth knowing in order to safeguard the question.

Question 6 & 7 of the past few years have been organic chemistry questions, although the question numbers can vary (last year Q6 and Q8). Question 6, particularly of late, has cantered on fuels and thermochemistry. You should know of the different fractions from crude oil, octane number, knocking, cracking and the making of petrol. Hess's Law is very important to this section and it must be said in passing that this law has appeared on most examination papers of the new syllabus thus far. Watch out also for the calculation of kilogram calorific values given molar heats of combustion! Other items to be known here are the types of hydrocarbons, the alkanes, alkenes, alkynes and aromatics, together with their nomenclature and isomerism where applicable.