Posted on 12/10/2011 7:19:01 PM PST by chessplayer
You may have an opinion on climate change, evolution education, stem-cell research, and science funding. But do you have the facts to back up your opinion? This quiz will test your basic scientific literacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
I think I could have gotten a couple more right if I took time to figure them, like F(net)=ma, but I was too lazy. And some I didn’t actually “know” but reasoned out, like the question on horsepower. I know scientists have egos, but they’d never name a unit of power after themselves. (”Watt” was obviously wrong by my thinking). And the question on catalytic converters threw me. I thought palladium at first, but since it is a valuable metal, and I haven’t heard much in the way of CC thefts, I reasoned it had to be something else. Wrong! (But don’t tell the thieves out there!)
Dude! Planck’s constant is h, not e. They fooled me because they said which German physicist is it named after and one of the choices was Heisenberg. Don’t you think they should call it p?
(h = 6.626176 x 10 exp 34 joule-seconds)
/johnny
I got 48 out of 50. Missed #38 on cell division ( I thought that was a lot harder than most of them, ) and then #47 on “nimbus”. That one shocked me. The answer is right in the dictionary ( as indeed is the answer to #38, for that matter, ) but I guess I just never knew the actual definition.
It took me over two hours to plug through it because of my browser, I guess. They way it was set up, it repainted the page, along with all the ads and so on, twice for each question. Evidently it was caching all this stuff, as it got slower and slower as the quiz went on. Then at the end when I clicked “How does your score compare” I couldn’t see anything except the big recap of my answers. Tried it twice.
lol
I think I did ok. Did not go to college and graduated hs in 1979. I worked for a company called Nimbus, so I would have been upset with myself if I had erred on that one! I did not like science much at all.
We have them around here. Our thieves must be smarter than yours.
I don't know if I should feel sorry for you, or for me...
/johnny
The hint was "What element, whose atomic number is 8 ..."
Assuming that you are not pulling a joke on me... I learned a new italian word. :)
I have to add the caveat, because sometimes folks teach you words that don't mean exactly what you think they do. I've been on both sides of that equation.
/johnny
Psst .... you’re off by a factor of 10^64. Might wanna check your answer.
err, 10^68.
No, I’m not pulling one over on you. Actually, I don’t know why I said to snore. It actually means to rumble.
Wow. Good guess. I got that one because when I was a kid, you used to be able to buy these little plastic dinosaurs at I think it was Ben Franklin for a dime each, or something like that.
I did guess at the heaviest noble gas question, but I had remembered that it’s the heaviest elements that are radioactive, and they blame lung cancer on this element, so I got that right.
Paleolithic and Pleistocene was another I was unsure but the phrasing of the question itself is the clue to the answer.
I felt a little better when they expressed that as 72% but there were at least three I should have just thought a little harder on. The web page was quite annoying with the constantly moving drop-downs and other distractions. I guess that substitutes for the pressure of a stern-faced proctor pacing back and forth regularly checking his watch.
I’d like to buy a minus sign for my exponent.
There was a fair bit of guessing in this quiz on my part and I suppose on the parts of several others as well. However, the fact remains that I’m happily intimidated that most of the respondents here did better than I did. I have always known that I was in good company here.
And I'll check it out later to verify. ;)
Having taught english to a Vietnamese refugee when our only common language was French.
She figured out my game pretty quickly. Did someone say incorrigible? That's my other middle name.
/johnny
I got 78% right. For a liberal arts major, I think that’s pretty darn good.
Seriously, like scaring the catz out of the room and the lights coming on over at the neighbor's.
LOL!
/johnny
I am embarassed that I got two wrong, that I should have gotten correct.
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