Basic and acid radicals group by group, the organic functional-group tests and the distinction pairs, Lassaigne's sodium fusion, and the biomolecule colour tests.
Unit 5 carries 3 of the 50 chemistry marks; with three chapters sharing them, this one averages one (MEC publishes weights by unit, not by chapter). Analytic chemistry did not exist before the third revision of 28 April 2026, so almost nobody has this chapter prepared — and it is the purest recall in the paper. A colour is either in your memory or it is not.
The MEC scope line runs: Tests of acid and basic radicals. Tests of unsaturation and functional groups; distinction tests of organic compounds. Hetero-element detection by Lassaigne's test. Biomolecule tests: fat, protein and carbohydrate. The headings below are its points in MEC's order.
Three ways it comes: recall (the colour of a nickel confirmation, the reagent for a phosphate); understanding (why sodium fusion is needed at all, why the extract is boiled with nitric acid before silver nitrate); application (a described experiment — "a salt gives a gas that turns lead acetate paper black" — and the ion must be named). Read the tables as reagent → observation → conclusion, in that direction and backwards.
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