Oxbridge Chemistry Interview Questions

The best way to prepare for your Oxbridge Chemistry interview is through mock interviews. As well as giving you general interview experience, they focus your mind on the types of questions asked at an Oxford or Cambridge Chemistry interview, teaching you to think in the style required for the real thing.

Below, we have collected a list of questions of the type you will be asked in your Oxford or Cambridge Chemistry interview. Use them to learn what's expected of you, 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.

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.

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?

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