Chemistry — past papers by topic
Every official QCAA exam and examiner report we index, organised by topic and subtopic and labelled with the study design it was written under. Open the official paper, work the question in your own workspace, or bring a tutor into it live.
Papers and examiner reports open on the official QCAA website — they stay official and up to date. Question descriptions below are our own; we never republish exam content. Prefer to be walked through it? Book a tutor →
Official papers & examiner reports, year by year
| Year | Study design | Official paper(s) | Examiner report |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Chemistry 2019 syllabus (v1.0–v1.4) | 2025 subject report (260034, published January 2026) is public and confirms 423 schools offered Chemistry in 2025, but the actual 2025 EA question/marking-guide PDFs were not found publicly indexed at time of research — QCAA typically holds the most recent year's EA papers behind the schools-only myQCE portal (myqce.qcaa.qld.edu.au) for a period after the exam before public release. Do not fabricate a paper URL for this year. | Report ↗ |
| 2024 | Chemistry 2019 syllabus (v1.0–v1.4) | Paper 1 — Multiple choice question book ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2023 | Chemistry 2019 syllabus (v1.0–v1.4) | Paper 1 — Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 1 — Question and response book ↗ · Paper 2 — Question and response book ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2022 | Chemistry 2019 syllabus (v1.0–v1.4) | Paper 1 — Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 1 — Question and response book ↗ · Paper 1 — Question and response book (clear zone / trimmed-margin variant) ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2021 | Chemistry 2019 syllabus (v1.0–v1.4) | Paper 1 — Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 2 — Question and response book ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2020 | Chemistry 2019 syllabus (v1.0–v1.4) | Paper 1 — Multiple choice question book ↗ · Paper 2 — Question and response book ↗ | Report ↗ |
METHOD / ACCESS CONSTRAINT: qcaa.qld.edu.au is behind Cloudflare bot-protection that returns HTTP 403 "Just a moment..." JS-challenge pages to both the WebFetch tool and direct curl requests (verified with browser-spoofed user-agent) — this blocked direct fetching/reading of any QCAA page or PDF in this session, including the syllabus PDF itself. All URLs below were sourced from WebSearch result snippets/titles that Google's own crawler successfully indexed from the live qcaa.qld.edu.au domain (confirmed official host in every URL), cross-checked across multiple independent search queries for consistency. No URL was fabricated or guessed — every url string is copied verbatim from a WebSearch result title/link pointing at qcaa.qld.edu.au. However, because I could not open and read the PDF content directly (Cloudflare-blocked), I could NOT verify internal page content, exact question wording, or confirm a paper is not a dead/renamed link beyond what the search snippet shows. QUESTIONS[] IS EMPTY BY DESIGN: per the task's strict instruction, questions[] must only be populated if a paper PDF/page was actually opened and read. Since every direct-fetch attempt on qcaa.qld.edu.au returned a 403 Cloudflare challenge (not the actual PDF content), no paper content was read, so questions[] is correctly empty rather than guessed. COVERAGE: 2020–2024 is the fully public window (5 years) — this is also the ENTIRE live-EA history of the subject: QCAA's current QCE external-assessment system began with the 2019 Year 11 cohort, whose first Year 12 EA sat in 2020. There is no "10 years" of QCAA EA papers to find for Chemistry (or any subject) because the system itself is only 6 years old (2020–2025 EA cycles). 2025 EA occurred (subject report confirms it) but its question-paper PDFs were not yet publicly indexed at research time — flagged in notes rather than fabricated. Some individual Paper 1 question-response books and Paper 2 books for 2021/2022/2024 were also not located publicly (only MC books and/or marking guides surfaced) — these gaps are flagged per-year in notes; they may sit behind the schools-only myqce.qcaa.qld.edu.au portal or simply weren't indexed by Google, not necessarily non-existent. SYLLABUS ERA: Confirmed via search snippets that Chemistry has had exactly two General senior syllabus versions in the QCE era: "Chemistry 2019" (v1.0 June 2018 through v1.4, amended for Units 1&2 assessment guidance) which governed EA years 2020–2025, and "Chemistry 2025" (v1.0–v1.3, latest v1.3 dated January 2026) which is "for implementation with students who will complete their study of the course in 2026 or beyond" — meaning ALL years 2020–2025 in years[] sit under the SAME single syllabus era (Chemistry 2019), and the 2025 syllabus has not yet produced a live EA (first live sitting will be 2026, outside the reported window). This was not directly confirmed by opening the QCAA syllabus PDF (blocked) but is corroborated by two independent WebSearch results describing the 2025 syllabus's implementation timing. TOPICS[]: Because "senior Year 12 level" EA content for QCAA Chemistry examines only Unit 3 & Unit 4 subject matter (Units 1–2 are Year 11, internally assessed only, not part of the QCAA-set External Assessment), the first four topics[] entries (Unit 3 Topics 1–2, Unit 4 Topics 1–2) are the primary EA-relevant grouping and were cross-verified against two independent third-party sources (exam-insights.com and ausgrader.com) that both mirror the same topic/subtopic wording, strongly suggesting direct transcription from the QCAA syllabus PDF. Unit 1–2 topics (Year 11, not EA-examined) are included as additional entries for completeness of "current study design's topic structure" per the task instruction, but were only found via WebSearch snippets (less granular, single-source per topic) rather than a fully opened syllabus document — treat Unit 1–2 subtopic wording as lower-confidence than Unit 3–4. RECOMMENDATION: Given the Cloudflare block, a follow-up session with authenticated/browser-based access (e.g., a logged-in browser session via claude-in-chrome, or Andrew opening the QCAA syllabus PDF and syllabus resource-search page directly and sharing the content) would allow verifying exact topic wording against the syllabus PDF text itself, confirming which Paper 1/Paper 2 gaps are genuinely absent vs. simply unindexed, and opening actual exam PDFs to populate questions[] with original one-line descriptions as the task originally intended.
Browse by topic
Pick a topic, open the exact question in the official paper, then work it in your own workspace — or hand the question straight to a live tutor session.
Unit 3 Topic 1: Chemical equilibrium systems · question map rolling out
Chemical equilibrium (dynamic equilibrium, reversible reactions)
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Factors that affect equilibrium (Le Chatelier's principle)
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Equilibrium constants (Kc expressions and calculations)
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Properties of acids and bases
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pH scale and calculations
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Bronsted-Lowry acid-base model
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Acid and base dissociation constants (Ka, Kb)
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Acid-base indicators and buffers
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Volumetric analysis (titration)
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Unit 3 Topic 2: Oxidation and reduction · question map rolling out
Redox reactions and half-equations
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Electrochemical cells
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Galvanic (voltaic) cells
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Standard electrode potentials and the electrochemical series
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Electrolytic cells and electrolysis
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Unit 4 Topic 1: Properties and structure of organic materials · question map rolling out
Structure and nomenclature of organic compounds
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Physical properties and trends across homologous series
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Organic reactions and reaction pathways
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Organic materials: structure-function relationships
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Analytical techniques (e.g. IR, mass spectrometry, NMR)
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Unit 4 Topic 2: Chemical synthesis and design · question map rolling out
Chemical synthesis and reaction pathways
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Green chemistry principles
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Macromolecules: polymers, proteins and carbohydrates
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Molecular manufacturing
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Unit 1 Topic 1: Properties and structure of atoms · question map rolling out
Atomic structure and notation
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Periodic trends
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Characterising matter
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Unit 1 Topic 2: Properties and structure of materials · question map rolling out
Metallic bonding
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Ionic bonding
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Covalent bonding
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Electron dot diagrams and Lewis structures
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Unit 1 Topic 3: Chemical reactions - reactants, products and energy change · question map rolling out
The mole concept, percentage composition and empirical formulas
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Stoichiometry
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Exothermic and endothermic reactions
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Fossil fuels and biofuels
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Unit 2 Topics: Molecular interactions and reactions · question map rolling out
Intermolecular forces
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Gases and gas laws
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Aqueous solutions and solubility
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Acidity (introductory)
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Rates of reaction
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