Review of the AP Question Types

Now that you ve had a chance to get a general feel for the test, let s begin to take a closer look at the test s design. There are certain types of questions that appear on the AP Chemistry Test. Becoming aware of these types of questions, as well as learning some strategies to answer them, can help you become more confident when you take the test. 

The typical design of a question with five correct choices is to have one distracter that is very close to the correct answer, two that are still similar, and one that can usually be ruled out almost immediately. The structure of the distracters will vary according to the type of question that is being asked. For example, if a calculation is involved, the test-makers will often use various incorrect forms of the formulas to obtain the distracters. For example, take a problem that is a calculation using Charles s law, which states that the ratio of volume to absolute temperature will remain constant for a gas at constant pressure  

What volume will an amount of nitrogen gas occupy at 77° if the gas occupies a volume of 400 ml at a temperature of 27°  

To solve this problem, you would first need to convert each temperature to kelvin. In doing so, you would have the following information  

At this point, let s look at the possible answers. The distracters are enclosed in parentheses. 

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