I took this fun science literacy quiz, and got 47 out of 50 questions correct.
The ones I missed were all in biology and life sciences, my weakest subject. Since so many of the angroids label climate skeptics as “scientifically illiterate”, and because climate change is specifically mentioned, I thought it would be fun to share and to have readers post their scores. Many of the questions are simple, like the first one:
Then there’s some tougher ones, like about Planck’s constant and some that require some simple physics math, F=ma and stuff like that. There’s a bit of irony in whose website the poll is on.
The Christian Science Monitor.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz/
Surprisingly, there wasn’t a single question about climate change, even though they mention it. If you feel like taking it, don’t succumb to the temptation to look up everything on the Internet…there’s no sport in perfect scores.
The quiz was fun, but it took too long because the web site was slow. Additionally, it took too many click-and-waits to answer a question. Maybe it was my pop-up blocker software that bogged things down, but I won’t turn that off for *anybody*.
BTW, I was 50 for 50, but there were a couple lucky guesses in there…
Done Physics & Electrical Engineering 30 Years ago . Only got 35 out of 50. 🙁
I’d say I’m a lot more scientifically literate now from what I’ve learned following this global warming thing, ‘though nothing Ilearned from that helped with this test.
As ‘pwl’ says further up, scientific literacy is perhaps more about the approach & method than recalling facts and my appreciation of questioning & the method has probably been sharpened more in these recent years, from following the likes of Watts, Nova, Monckton et al.
Of course I could have used Google etc. but found Anthony’s sporting challenge more interesting. Google & Wiki etc. would only have identified the accepted wisdoms.
Congratulations Anthony on leading the first great crusade against pseudo-science of the new millenium. I’m sure there will be many more to come.
Eh, 35/50. My memory just isn’t that good, which is why I actually look stuff up before forming opinions about things, lol. I’ve noticed an ironic fact of the world over the years: The people with the strongest convictions often have the least knowledge about the subjects at hand.
I can’t wait to make my friends do this. The are mostly aerospace engineers and lawyers, so wanna place bets on who claims to get the best scores?
For those with with loading problems click the print icon in the CSM articlefor the answers.
The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com
Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz
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.
————————————————————————
By Eoin O’Carroll , Staff
posted December 9, 2011 at 3:16 pm EST
Composing about 78 percent of the air at sea level, what is the most
common gas in the Earth’s atmosphere?
Carbon dioxide
Oxygen
Nitrogen
Hydrogen
The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel’s observations of what organism
formed the basis for the science of genetics?
pea plants
fruit flies
tulips
mice
What term, which means the maximum absolute value of a periodically
varying quantity, does the “A” in AM radio broadcasting stand for?
Amplification
Amplitude
Ampere
Amphibian
In 1989, the US postal service drew criticism from paleontologists
for releasing a stamp with what obsolete genus name, which
translates from Greek as “Thunder Lizard”?
Tyrannosaurus
Brontosaurus
Stegosaurus
Triceratops
Organic chemistry is the study of compounds that contain what element?
oxygen
nitrogen
carbon
potassium
How many nanometers are there in a centimeter?
1,000
1,000,000
10,000,000
100,000,000
In physics, what letter is used to represent the speed of light in a
vacuum?
a
b
c
d
The only two known planets in our solar system that lack any moons
are Venus and what other planet?
Mars
Uranus
Mercury
Pluto
What is the heaviest noble gas?
xenon
neon
helium
radon
Approximately how old is the Earth?
6015 years
100,000 years
4.5 million years
4.5 billion years
Newton’s First Law of Motion describes what phenomenon?
Inertia: An object not subject to any net external force moves at a
constant velocity
Gravitation: Physical bodies attract each other with a force
proportional to their mass
Acceleration: The rate of change of a body over time is proportional to
the net force acting on it
Kinetic energy: The energy of a body is equal to one half of the product
of its mass times and velocity squared
Mars is often described as the “Red Planet” because of the
prevalence of what element mixed with oxygen on its surface?
copper
iron
zinc
cadmium
What combustible compound, the principal component of natural gas,
has the chemical formula CH4?
propane
ethanol
methane
benzene
What word, which comes from a Greek term meaning “good kernel,”
describes an organism whose cells contain chromosomes inside a
nucleus bounded by a membrane, as distinguished from bacterial forms
of life?
virus
amoeba
vertebrate
eukaryote
Named for a 19th century English physicist, what unit of measurement
is defined as the energy exerted by the force of one newton acting
to move an object through a distance of one meter?
watt
joule
hertz
pascal
The lowercase of what letter of the Greek alphabet is used to denote
diverse phenomena such as the photon, the third angle in a triangle,
the heat capacity ratio in thermodynamics, a type of high frequency
electromagnetic radiation?
alpha
beta
gamma
delta
What element, whose atomic number is 8, is the most abundant element
in the earth’s crust, making up almost half the crust’s total weight?
aluminum
oxygen
carbon
nitrogen
DNA contains adenine, cytosine, guanine, and what other nucleotide
base, which is not found in RNA?
uracil
adenosine
thymine
deoxyribose
What is the electrical resistance offered by a current-carrying
element that produces a drop of one volt when a current of one
ampere is flowing through it?
1 joule
1 watt
1 ohm
1 hertz
The letter K stands for what element on the periodic table?
tungsten
tin
potassium
silver
What term describes the single initial cell of a new organism that
has been produced by means of sexual reproduction?
zygote
blastocyst
embryo
fetus
If you were to apply a net force of one Newton on a 200 gram object,
what would be the acceleration of the object?
5 meters per second squared
2 meters per second squared
0.2 meter per second squared
50 meters per second squared
Noting how light from objects that are moving away from the observer
tend to shift to the red end of the spectrum, what scientist first
established that the universe is expanding?
Albert Einstein
Carl Sagan
Johannes Kepler
Edwin Hubble
A temperature interval of one degree Fahrenheit is equal to an
interval of 5/9ths of a degree Celsius. At about what temperature do
the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales converge?
400 degrees
4000 degrees
-40 degrees
-400 degrees
The genus Australopithecus, one species of which was an ancestor of
modern humans, first evolved on what continent?
Australia
Africa
Asia
South America
According to Bernoulli’s Principle, an increase in the speed of a
fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in what?
volume
mass
energy
pressure
What is the name for the chemical compound that dentists use as
“laughing gas” and that engineers and mechanics use as an oxidizer
in rocketry and in motor racing?
nitrogen tetroxide
hydrogen peroxide
nitrous oxide
hydrogen fluoride
Geologists categorize rocks into three types: Igneous, sedimentary,
and what?
volcanic
metamorphic
crystalline
oceanic
Two planets in our solar system are tied for having the lowest
surface gravity – on each one you would weigh only about 38 percent
of what you weigh on Earth. One of these planets is Mercury. What is
the other one?
Neptune
Saturn
Mars
Venus
What moon, the largest moon orbiting Saturn, is the only known
object in the solar system other than Earth that is known to have
liquid on its surface?
Tethys
Titan
Rhea
Enceladus
The 2006 demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet was
precipitated by the discovery of what object orbiting beyond Pluto,
believed to be 27 percent more massive than Pluto and named for the
Greek goddess of strife and discord?
Ceres
Eris
Nyx
Charon
In classical mechanics, what is defined as the product of an
object’s mass and velocity?
force
acceleration
momentum
kinetic energy
What word, which comes from Ancient Greek words meaning “entire” and
“Earth,” describes a supercontinent thought to have existed during
the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, about 250 million years ago?
Gaia
Eurasia
Pangaea
America
What term for an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent
of matter gets its name from a line in James Joyce’s 1939 novel
“Finnegans Wake”?
atom
quark
proton
electron
The mathematical constant e is defined as the base of the natural
system of logarithms, having a numerical value of approximately what?
3.142
0.567
1.618
2.718
Protium, which consists of a single proton and no neutrons, is the
most common isotope of what element?
helium
hydrogen
nitrogen
carbon
The lowercase version of what Greek letter is used to symbolize the
coefficient of friction in classical physics?
delta
mu
epsilon
zeta
What type of cell division in eukaryotic cells is divided into
prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase?
meiosis
mitosis
fission
senescence
What word, which comes from a Greek term meaning “old stone”
describes the era of human history, from about 2.5 million years ago
to 12,000 years ago, which was distinguished by the development of
the first stone tools?
Holocene
Jurassic
Paleolithic
Pleistocene
With an atomic number of 9, what chemical element is the lightest
element of the halogen series? It gets its name from a Latin word
meaning “stream” or “move freely.”
bromine
astatine
fluorine
iodine
After the Moon, what is the brightest natural object in the night
sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast
shadows?
Polaris
Mercury
Venus
Betelgeuse
According to the standard model of Big Bang cosmology, approximately
how old is the Universe?
6015 years old
14 million years old
14 billion years old
14 trillion years old
What word, which derives from a Greek term meaning “unequal” or
“bent,” describes a triangle whose three sides are of unequal length?
equilateral
isosceles
oblong
scalene
Over half of the world’s supply of what element, which gets its name
from the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, is used in catalytic
converters?
americium
palladium
molybdenum
cadmium
In quantum mechanics, the physical constant used to describe the
sizes of quanta – denoted as h – is named after what German physicist?
Erwin Schrödinger
Max Planck
Albert Einstein
Werner Heisenberg
Approximately how long does it take light from the sun to reach Earth?
It’s pretty much instantaneous
Eight seconds
Eight minutes
Eight hours
In meteorology, what does the suffix -nimbus added to the name of a
cloud indicate?
It is at a low altitude
It is at a high altitude
It is vertically developed
It is precipitating
What element, which has the atomic number 16 and is a bright yellow
crystalline solid at room temperature, is referred to in the Bible
as “brimstone”?
magnesium
sulfur
phosphorus
chlorine
The moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto all orbit what planet?
Saturn
Jupiter
Neptune
Uranus
What unit of measurement, which is equal to 33,000 foot-pounds per
minute, did 18th-century steam engine entrepreneur James Watt come
up with?
British Thermal Unit
watt
erg
horsepower
Took it, made some ‘ignorant skeptic’ guesses. Only scored 48.
46 — But I missed some I should have gotten right and got some I should have gotten wrong…
Which in the end means nothing. Not knowing Eris affects my understanding of physics exactly how? If I don’t know Mendel was connected to the pea? Am I a dunce?
Being able to understand a Punnet square though has much more bearing on my ability to understand science in general. Knowing that it is called Punnet, not so much. The only reason I knew that is my son was watching a Kahn video recently discussing them.
_Jim says:
April 9, 2012 at 7:54 am
“Closed web” for me. (49.) I remember a lot of stuff from school, at least I remember a lot after the test on that material. I’ve always been bothered by students griping that subjects covered before the last test are on the most recent test. I never figured out that grades and class rank were important because I had this misplaced idea that schools were places you learned stuff.
Also, I subscribed to Science News after being blown away by a 1969 Nova-like program titled “Our Restless Universe” with all sorts of stuff I didn’t know about. A year later I watched “Our Restless Earth and was quite pleased that there was only one thing I wasn’t familiar with. This was during the plate tectonic revolution, and things were changing at a furious rate.
I had to puzzle over zygote for a little bit, mainly because it had been mentioned as being in the test, but decided blastocyst had lots of cells. And I chose meiosis for the wrong reasons, though it turns out meiosis loses on a technicality.
These days I don’t read Science News much. I take in some of it on the web, and bring paper copies to doctor appointments. (Otzi, the Alpine Ice Man had Lyme disease! Who’da thunk it?) Just spend too much time here. 🙂
Anthony– —
49 out of 50, no cheating; does that make me smarter than a 5th grader?
Only missed the one about palladium being used in catalytic converters (used to be platinum; it must have gotten to expensive … … )
Regards,
Mark H.
33 / 50. I was hoping for better. I got the first 13 correct and was feeling pretty proud of myself. But then they put in a eukaryote, of which I’ve never ever heard of. It all went down hill from there.
Still not bad for an Engineering Draftsman who didn’t do physics, chemestry or biology in school.
ugh 37. I suck at astronomy and history.. There was too much of that. Got all the physics stuff though which made me happy seeing as I’m anatomy and physiology studies all the way down. Great link Anthony, thanks for that.
I have an extremely poor mobile broadband connection that is constantly dropping-out. I lost connection at Q 34 and on reconnecting found myself staring at Q 9 again. I scored 25 out of 34 (73.5%). Disappointed. I don’t know my solar system very well, it seems.
86% and very pleased with it! I am a retired dentist but took two geology and one meteorology courses out of interest and have been an amateur astronomist for 20 years, so I lucked out!
All my misses were physics.
I got 47 out of 50, bio was my 2/3 downfall. The other was the cloud question,, I had a different interpretation of what “nimbus” meant. And in the small world category, I have actually met Dr. Harbron in my travels.
I answered one question, then clicked NEXT, only to receive a “This page cannot be displayed because the site is too busy.”
So now I expect tomorrow’s Current TV headline to be: “Climate skeptics mount denial of service attack on Christian Scientist web site.”
45/5, but that would also include knowingly giving the ‘wrong’ answer for the age of the earth. (Yes, I am one of those fools ‘science hating’ fools.) Was ashamed for missing the horsepower and zygote questions as I should have nailed those as well!
42 – Oil field work is done in English units, at least over here in the US so after college many moons ago the metric system has faded from memory.
49/1 showing I know nothing about the weather.
“”””” Cladis Advisory says:
April 9, 2012 at 4:33 pm
46 — But I missed some I should have gotten right and got some I should have gotten wrong…
Which in the end means nothing. Not knowing Eris affects my understanding of physics exactly how? If I don’t know Mendel was connected to the pea? Am I a dunce? “””””
Well you got screwed; I believe it was actually SWEET PEAS.
44 out of 50 and quite disappointed in myself. I was rushing through at the end due to the number of clicks needed. There were at least 3 I should have gotten with a little more thought.
I was really hoping to equal (or even best) Anthony due to my love of biology. I’m a scientist– like many who read this blog. I just drive a bus to pay the bills.
As for the ‘open book’ theory–ABSOLUTELY NOT. Don’t you think it would have been mentioned at the start of the test?
I’d be quite surprised if even 1% of the readers here used anything but their memory.
If you used Google there is no excuse for anything less than 100%. Its really not a hard test with many clues for the more difficult questions.
@ur momisugly Rick Werme
“I never figured out that grades and class rank were important because I had this misplaced idea that schools were places you learned stuff.”
Me too, because mine were. But it was a long time ago. I know better now.
The trouble with multiple choice tests, is that they never follow the rules. All offered “answers” to a multiple choice question must be equally plausible, to someone who knows nothing at all about the subject. So just how many elements would the average dunce think might have just one proton, and no neutrons.
And with a one out of four choice, even a monkey can get 12 1/2 out of 50 correct. So 12.5 correct should be scored as zero. But then how do you correct higher scores. Do you take (4/3)x(s-12.5), or some other formula.
As near as I can recall, the ONLY multiple choice test I ever took, prior to this non science test, was the usual IQ test; and those tests were always silly too. Quite often, one could find multiple possible correct answers, that the examiner never realized were there when they set the test. Most common violator in that way, is the type of problem, where a certain geometrical figure undergoes some transform, to yield a different figure. One then has to guess which out of 4 or 5 figures is the result of applying the same transform to a new figure. Well what if the original change can be accomplished by several different transforms. For example, a square with a dot in the NW corner, can transform to a square with a dot in the SE corner, in at least two different ways. A 180 flip about the SW-NE diagonal will do the trick. So will a 180 degree turn in the plane
49/50. I had no idea -nimbus meant precipitating. It’s well worth missing one to learn that.
IQ tests? The ‘correct’ answer is merely the one that most intelligent people pick; i.e. it is not ‘right’ in the sense that a math test answer is right.
1 nanometre = 1.0 × 10-9 metres
Mervyn says:
April 8, 2012 at 12:30 am
“I only scored 27 out of 50. Probably would have scored more if I knew Greek. I know I could have got 50 out of 50 if I cheated. Gee, some of you must be pretty smart!”
My ^favorite comment!^☺