Cambridge Natural Sciences Interview Questions

The very best way to prepare for a Cambridge Natural Sciences interview is through mock interviews. As well as providing general interview experience, they also get you accustomed the unique types of questions asked at an Cambridge Natural Sciences interview, training yourself to think in the way required for the real thing.

Below, you will find a list of questions of the sort you can expect in your Cambridge Natural Sciences interview. You can use these just to gain an awareness of what's expected, plan out answers on your own, or give them to a teacher, friend, or family member, and ask them to conduct a mock interview with you. As the interview is different depending on which Natural Science you are more interested in, these interview questions are categorised by subject as well.

Note: If you are doing mock interviews with us, we recommend waiting until afterwards to look through these questions, so that you aren't asked questions you have already prepared for (as you won't have that opportunity for the real thing!). If you haven't booked any mock interviews yet, you can do so here.

Physics Interview Questions

1. On a hot day, what should you do with a fridge?

2. What makes some chemicals explosive?

3. When an ice cube melts in a glass of water, does the water level increase, decrease or stay the same?

4. Why don't animals have wheels?

5. How does an electric guitar work?

6. Which way is the earth spinning?

7. A tennis ball is placed on top of a basketball. The balls are dropped. To what height does the tennis ball bounce?

8. How high can you go up a mountain on just a Mars bar?

9. If you dig a hole right through the Earth and jump into it, what is your motion?

10. If you leave a fridge turned on in a thermally isolated room, what happens to the room?

11. If you could fold a piece of paper as many times as possible, how many times must you fold it to reach the moon?

12. Can you sketch the displacement time and velocity time graph for a skydiver jumping out of a plane?

13. Why can’t you light a candle in a spaceship?

14. Why is the sky blue?

15. Two identical beakers with the same volume of water are placed on each pan of a double-pan balance. A steel ball is suspended from a string and submerged in the water of one of the containers. A hollow plastic ball of the same volume is submerged in the water of the other container and fastened to the bottom of the beaker by a string. Will the balance move, and if so in which direction?

16. Why are explosions a risk in flour mills? What stops bags of flour exploding in the kitchen?

17. Why do we blow on soup to cool it down?

18. How many molecules are there in a glass of water?

19. How does a glow-stick work?

20. Why don’t fish freeze?

21. What issues might there be if you wanted to create a metallic oxide that has good conductive properties but is also transparent?

22. What is the concentration of water?

23. Why does iron rust and how can rusting be stopped?

24. How does blood maintain its pH?

25. A ball bearing is flying through space (vacuum and no overall gravitational field). It heads towards a doughnut, through it's centre and out the other side. Can you draw graphs of 1) speed versus time and 2) acceleration versus time?

26. Can you draw the graphs of y=1/x +x and y=7+3cos(2x+pi/2)?

27. Can you describe a heat engine?

28. A telephone company has run a very long telephone cable all the way round the middle of the earth. Assuming the Earth to be a sphere, and without recourse to pen and paper, estimate how much additional cable would be required to raise the telephone cable to the top of the 10m tall telephone poles?

29. A thin hoop of diameter d is thrown on to an infinitely large chessboard with squares of side L. What is the chance of the hoop enclosing two colours?

30. What is the area of an n-sided regular polygon inscribed within a circle of radius r? 

31. For a circle inscribed a regular n-sided polygon, what is the minimum n so that the ratio of the area of the part outside the circle to the area of the circle is less than or equal to 1:1000?

32. Can yuoraw a graph of weight versus time for the following: 1) man stands on scale very gently and then gets off again very gently; 2) man jumps onto scales and then jumps off again; 3) man stands on scale and lets his knees unlock so that he drops, then stops?

33. The wall of death fairground ride: it's spinning in a horizontal circle. Then the floor that people are standing on falls away. Can you calculate how fast it has to spin before the floor can fall away without the people dropping out given that: coefficient of friction=m and radius of the ride=r?

34. Can you calculate (in algebraic terms) the change that will take place to the fringe pattern when a piece of glass is placed in front of one of the slits? Can you draw the new fringe pattern?

35. Why do particle accelerators have to be so large? 

36. How do particle accelerators work?

37. If you leave the fridge turned on in a thermally isolated room, what happens to the room?

38. Why can’t you light a candle in a spaceship?

39. How many grains of sand are there in the world?

40. What happens if I drop an ant?

41. Why does fire go upwards?

42. Does a cup of hot coffee cool quicker if milk is added before or after stirring?

43. What angle should you aim when trying to shoot a monkey that will fall out the tree the moment you shoot?

44. What forces would act on you if you were at the centre of the earth?

Chemistry Interview Questions

1. Why does iron rust and how can rusting be stopped?

2. How does blood maintain its pH?

3. Can you describe the bonding in benzene?

4. What is the concentration of water?

5. What issues might there be if you wanted to create a metallic oxide that has good conductive properties but is also transparent?

6. Why don’t fish freeze?

7. How does a glow-stick work?

8. How many molecules are there in a glass of water?

9. Why do we blow on soup to cool it down?

10. Why are explosions a risk in flour mills? What stops bags of flour exploding in the kitchen?

11. How are organic mechanisms classified? Can you give an example of a radical mechanism?

12. Why does the peroxide O-O bond break to give radicals?

13. Does it take longer or shorter for an egg to boil on Mt. Everest compared to at sea level?

14. Nitrogen monoxide is a radical. Where does the unpaired electron sit?

15. Can you draw the structure of the following molecules: carbon dioxide, hydrazine and nitrogen monoxide? What is hydrazine used for?

16. How many different molecules are made from six carbon atoms and twelve hydrogen atoms?

17. How many atoms are present in a Brussels sprout?

18. How many grains of sand are there on Earth?

19. Why does the boiling point of water rise as salt is dissolved in it?

20. What makes drugs physiologically active?

21. What makes some chemicals explosive?

22. How would you measure pH if I told you how many hydrogen ions there were?

23. A container with liquid nitrogen is left in a laboratory, and its temperature is being recorded over a long period. The recorded temperature shows variations. Why?

24. What volume of wine can be drunk to reach the legal concentration of alcohol in the blood for driving?

Biology Interview Questions

1. Why is water so important to life?

2. If you could save either the rainforests or the coral reefs, which would you choose?

3. Why do some habitats support higher biodiversity than others?

4. Why don't most herbivores have green fur?

5. What can you tell me about a cactus?

6. What percentage of the world's water is in a cow?

7. Why are there so few large predators?

8. Why do many animals have stripes?

9. Is it easier for organisms to live in the sea or on land?

10. Why do lions have manes?

11. Ladybirds are red. So are strawberries. Why?

12. Why is there salt in the sea?

13. How do amino acids behave in both acidic and basic conditions?

14. What is the significance of the human genome project?

15. How does DNA fingerprinting work? What is its use?

16. Why are there so many steps in the cascade of reactions?

17. How do you tell if a protein codes for a transmembrane protein?

18. Why are there only twenty amino acids

19. What shape are bacteria and why?

20. What is the concentration of water?

21. What problems do fish face underwater?

22. Why does an egg rot?

23. Why can’t humans live forever?

24. If a brain was placed in front of you, how would you describe it?

25. If you were a virus, how would you communicate your opinions to me?

26. Why do leaves have their stomata on the lower surface?

27. Why don’t animals have wheels?

28. How can you tell how genetically identical the individuals of a species are?

29. What evidence is there to suggest that humans are still evolving?

30. Can you design an experiment to test the effect of bird faeces on lichen growth?

31. Why it is easier for oxygen to associate after one oxygen molecule has already done so?

32. How would you test to see if a rat could tell red from blue?

33. How has the human diet changed in the last three decades and why?

34. What would you define as a species?

35. Why is there a higher probability of being killed by an asteroid collision than by a heart attack?

36. What kind of changes would occur to the environment if a large asteroid impacted earth?

37. What are the arguments for preserving biodiversity?

38. What makes drugs physiologically active?

39. What would you do if I were a Magpie?

40. How many animals did Moses take on the arc?

41. If a carrot can grow from one carrot cell, why not a human?

42. Why are big, fierce animals so rare?

43. How does the immune system recognise invading pathogens as foreign cells?

And that's all of them! You should now have a sense of the types of questions you might be asked. To be even better prepared, work through these and other questions with our tutors - you can book your mock interviews here.