Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz/Composing-about-78-percent-of-the-air-at-sea-level-what-is-the-most-common-gas-in-the-Earth-s-atmosphere?google_editors_picks=true ^

[Little Ray]

Got 44 out of 50. Cheated a bit - opened a tab to the Periodic table, dictionary, and search engine.

[ml/nj]

I have science degrees. I gave up after getting two of the first four wrong. Really, does it matter if one knows that Mendel made his observations on pea pods and not fruit flies; or that that Federales issued a stamp in 1989 with a brontosaurus on it and not some other dinosaur?

ML/NJ

[central_va]

The quiz is BS. If you kept going according to the CSM to be scientific you have to memorize the Periodic table. Did you know Radon was heavier than Xenon? LOL.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Unless you have read the novel Finnegan's Wake, you will have no idea what the correct answer is.

Yeah...that one is aimed directly at the geeks in the room.

BTW...I got 44 out of 50.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

#3 Requires obscure philatelist knowledge, not scientific.

You mean number 4 and you only need to know about dinosaurs and how they were named years ago.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

The test was heavy on astronomy, physics, and chemistry, with a dash of biology, meteorology, and geology.

LOL! Doesn't that just about cover them all?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

The ads took so long to load I gave up.

Use Firefox and an extension/add-on called Ghostery. You can easily block all of that crud. Works like a charm.

[Mom MD]

I actually got it right without reading Finnegan’s wake. The other particles listed were well known and defined by the 1930’s so it had to be the quark.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

How long did it take you to figure out that the "previous" button actually worked?

About as long as it took me to decide if I wanted to cheat or not.

[ml/nj]

Did you know Radon was heavier than Xenon?

Actually, yes. And I don't think that is quite as ridiculous as the ones I cited. But really, what matters is that you can give the answer to that question with a Periodic Table in front of you. I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to answer with certainty for the majority of element pairs. (And I just looked at a table and I see that I was lucky in my answer about Xenon. I thought it was lower in the table.)

ML/NJ

[TypicalWhiteAdolescent]

ugghh 38... there were a few i realized right after I picked em. Not too great with the physics, but I got all the chemistry questions correct.

[gitmo]

Because they were VERY distracting in 7th/8th grade... up through age 40.

I'll be a SEXagenarian in a few months. They're still distracting. God's given me a lot of grace lately, but the females of the specie can be quite distracting.

[goat granny]

I only know 1 word in italian and it’s a nasty one....

[MarkL]

Of course, you're both right... I misquoted the question in my post. Regarding the element with an atomic number of 8, and my thought was carbon, as I clicked on the submit button I remembered the isotope of carbon, C14, with the atomic weight of carbon being 12.

The last time I dealt with chemistry was 1980, so I guess making those mistakes after more than 30 years isn't too bad.

Mark

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

I couldn’t have named palladium off the top of my head, but since that question mentioned the goddess Athena, and since I’ve been an avid fan of Greek mythology all my life, it was easy to pick it out as a derivative of her honorific name, Pallas Athene.

[reg45]

It’s called a “gotcha”.

[reg45]

The committee for names almost named it after Heisenberg, but too many committee members were uncertain about the choice.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

“The test was heavy on astronomy, physics, and chemistry, with a dash of biology, meteorology, and geology.

LOL! Doesn’t that just about cover them all?”

Pretty much! I guess they were weak on anthropology, botany, ornithology, and oceanography!

Seriously, I’m proud to be part of the Freeper community. To have an average grade here is to be a cut above the hoi polloi.

I was embarrassed to have missed the one with joule (I put watt), but I got a couple of guesses right. The test doesn’t really prove anything, but general knowledge and memory of various science facts. It does help to have a working knowledge of Greek letters and prefixes and the scientific theories that use them.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Folks here are definitely a cut above.

It's sad that about 80-90% of high school students today couldn't get 50% of these questions right.
But then, I couldn't have done it when I was 17 either. A lot of these things you learn just by reading, living and paying attention over the space of 30 years on this planet.

[palmer]

35/50 Probably 4 or 5 I should have gotten but rushed.