Wed 04 Jan 2012 20:06:18 EST
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz
Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz
1. 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 (x)
Hydrogen
2. The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel's observations of what organism formed the basis for the science of genetics?
pea plants (x)
fruit flies
tulips
mice
3. What term, which means the maximum absolute value of a periodically varying quantity, does the "A" in AM radio broadcasting stand for?
Amplification
Amplitude (x)
Ampere
Amphibian
4. 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 (x)
Stegosaurus
Triceratops
5. Organic chemistry is the study of compounds that contain what element?
oxygen
nitrogen
carbon (x)
potassium
6. How many nanometers are there in a centimeter?
1,000
1,000,000
10,000,000 (x)
100,000,000
7. In physics, what letter is used to represent the speed of light in a vacuum?
a
b
c (x)
d
8. The only two known planets in our solar system that lack any moons are Venus and what other planet?
Mars
Uranus
Mercury (x)
Pluto
9. What is the heaviest noble gas?
xenon
neon
helium
radon (x)
10. Approximately how old is the Earth?
6015 years
100,000 years
4.5 million years
4.5 billion years (x)
11. Newton's First Law of Motion describes what phenomenon?
(x) 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
12. Mars is often described as the "Red Planet" because of the prevalence of what element mixed with oxygen on its surface?
copper
iron (x)
zinc
cadmium
13. What combustible compound, the principal component of natural gas, has the chemical formula CH4?
propane
ethanol
methane (x)
benzene
14. 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 (x)
15. 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 (x)
hertz
pascal
16. 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 (x)
delta
17. 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 (x)
carbon
nitrogen
18. DNA contains adenine, cytosine, guanine, and what other nucleotide base, which is not found in RNA?
uracil
adenosine
thymine (x)
deoxyribose
19. 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 (x)
1 hertz
20. The letter K stands for what element on the periodic table?
tungsten
tin
potassium (x)
silver
21. What term describes the single initial cell of a new organism that has been produced by means of sexual reproduction?
zygote (x)
blastocyst
embryo
fetus
22. 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 (x)
2 meters per second squared
0.2 meter per second squared
50 meters per second squared
23. 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 (c)
24. 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 (x)
-400 degrees
25. The genus Australopithecus, one species of which was an ancestor of modern humans, first evolved on what continent?
Australia
Africa (x)
Asia
South America
26. According to Bernoulli's Principle, an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in what?
volume
mass
energy
pressure (x)
27. 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?
William & Mary professor Elizabeth Harbron displays vials with merocyanine and rhodamine dye in her lab in Williamsburg, Va. (Steve Helber/AP)
nitrogen tetroxide
hydrogen peroxide
nitrous oxide (x)
hydrogen fluoride
28. Geologists categorize rocks into three types: Igneous, sedimentary, and what?
volcanic
metamorphic (x)
crystalline
oceanic
29. 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 (x)
Venus
30. 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 (x)
Rhea
Enceladus
31. 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 (x)
Nyx
Charon
32. In classical mechanics, what is defined as the product of an object's mass and velocity?
force
acceleration
momentum (x)
kinetic energy
33. 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 (x)
America
34. 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 (x)
proton
electron
35. 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 (x)
36. Protium, which consists of a single proton and no neutrons, is the most common isotope of what element?
helium
hydrogen (x)
nitrogen
carbon
37. The lowercase version of what Greek letter is used to symbolize the coefficient of friction in classical physics?
delta
mu (x)
epsilon
zeta
38. What type of cell division in eukaryotic cells is divided into prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase?
meiosis
mitosis (x)
fission
senescence
39. 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 (x)
Pleistocene
40. 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 (x)
iodine
41. 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 (x)
Betelgeuse
42. 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 (x)
14 trillion years old
43. 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 (x)
44. 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 (x)
molybdenum
cadmium
45. 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 (x)
Albert Einstein
Werner Heisenberg
46. Approximately how long does it take light from the sun to reach Earth?
It's pretty much instantaneous
Eight seconds
Eight minutes (x)
Eight hours
47. 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 (x)
48. 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 (x)
phosphorus
chlorine
49. The moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto all orbit what planet?
Saturn
Jupiter (x)
Neptune
Uranus
50. 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 (x)