# Interesting Science Quiz **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 12, 2012, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238 "2012-01-12T00:31:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/61 "2012-01-12T21:20:19Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > I also dislike the strong US layperson centric - billions and millions instead of the usual 10 to the power of … which is used in science for a reason. Even if the UK has now followed US usage, that still doesn’t mean billions are the same everywhere. I’m not sure if this makes sense. If the British use the same system as the Americans, how is that US-centric? Or are you complaining about the false cognate _billion_ between English and other European languages? But there are a great many false cognates. Why focus on this one? ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/62 "2012-01-12T21:24:15Z")
> [@Terminus\_Est](#): > > 46/50. The only one I am embarrassed to have gotten wrong is nanometers - off by an order of magnitude. (Seriously, real scientists don’t use centimeters much.) Some of us do. For some insane, unfathomable reason in astronomy/astrophysics the cgs system is used more often than the SI system. This means we use ergs instead of Joules, Gauss instead of Tesla, and yes, cm instead of m. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/63 "2012-01-12T21:38:49Z")
50/50. I WAGed on at least 10 of them. ---
**Author:** ![Stelios](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@Stelios](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stelios)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/64 "2012-01-12T22:12:36Z")
36/50. Fell down on quite a few of the physics questions, especially those involving Greek symbols. Considering I haven’t had any formal scientific education since I was 16 (now 28), I’m quite pleased with that. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/65 "2012-01-12T22:24:33Z")
39/50 Better than I should have got, to be frank. My physics is awful. ---
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/66 "2012-01-12T22:45:23Z")
32/50. Apparently I have forgotten everything I’ve ever learned. However, to be fair, I’m old and I never studied geology or astronomy. At least 5 that I missed were astronomy questions. (We will conveniently ignore the fact that I also missed 3 questions on elements and I was supposedly a chemistry major-I could have done much better with a periodic table in front of me). So go ahead, heap shame on me because I no longer remember the metric system or what a joule is. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/67 "2012-01-12T22:50:50Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > 32/50. Apparently I have forgotten everything I’ve ever learned. However, to be fair, I’m old and I never studied geology or astronomy. At least 5 that I missed were astronomy questions. (We will conveniently ignore the fact that I also missed 3 questions on elements and I was supposedly a chemistry major-I could have done much better with a periodic table in front of me). > > So go ahead, heap shame on me because I no longer remember the metric system or what a joule is. I gave up at number 10 because the site was so slow and cumbersome. Also I got only 6/10 right (and at least two were complete guesses) so I probably wouldn’t even have broken 30. And, I’m OK with that. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/68 "2012-01-12T23:45:28Z")
47/50 Missed nano, the name of the dwarf planet bigger than Pluto, and the meaning of -nimbus. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/69 "2012-01-12T23:53:45Z")
44/50. Pretty pathetic. ---
**Author:** ![mcgato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@mcgato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcgato)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/70 "2012-01-13T00:08:52Z")
43 out of 50. Muffed a couple, but guessed right on a few, so it evens out. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/71 "2012-01-13T00:52:40Z")
45, I only guessed on a couple but like others here, I was immensely helped by the inclusion of etymology information. I even skipped right to the answer occasionally when I saw the etymology (no, those weren’t the ones I missed :)) ---
**Author:** ![Nuveena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a587f6/32.png) [@Nuveena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nuveena)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/72 "2012-01-13T01:13:05Z")
> [@Belrix](#): > > 1. > > How am I supposed to remember my greek constants after all this time? “mu” ?? Knock Knock Who’s there? Interrupting Cow Interrrup- MOOOOOOOO! Knock Knock Who’s there? Interrupting Coefficient of Friction Interrup- Muuuuuuuu! That’s why I remember that one. (I got 44 btw). ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/73 "2012-01-13T02:51:50Z")
37/50 and I think that’s a fair score. I’m guessing we won’t get responses from the 20/50 crowd though. ---
**Author:** ![SDMBKL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sdmbkl/32/7297_2.png) [@SDMBKL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SDMBKL)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/74 "2012-01-13T04:20:40Z")
> [@jharvey963](#): > > Just found this quiz: > [Science 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) > It was much harder than I expected. I thought I was reasonably science-astute, but I only got 36 out of 50. > > J. I got 41 out of 50. I was a little annoyed at the one-problem-per-page part. I think it’s for generating revenue by hosting ads, as some of the comments on that page suggest. Yea! It looks like I beat the OP! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/75 "2012-01-13T05:07:35Z")
41/50 Damn Nimbus cloud! 🙂 It was not knowing Greek, but Greek mythology that helped me answer several questions. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/76 "2012-01-13T05:30:36Z")
1. Missed methane, mu, meitosis, Max Planck, and the nanometers one by reading it as “meters” instead of centimeters. Proving that I’m a genius with questions whose answers don’t start with “m”, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/77 "2012-01-13T09:36:34Z")
> [@Belrix](#): > > 1. > > How am I supposed to remember my greek constants after all this time? “mu” ?? Esp. because we didn’t call it “mu” - it was pronounced mü, written with the greek letter. And yes, I messed that up, too, because I know the order milli-mikro-nano as 10 to minus 3, minus 6 and minus 9 METERS not cm. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/78 "2012-01-13T09:42:42Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > I’m not sure if this makes sense. If the British use the same system as the Americans, how is that US-centric? Or are you complaining about the false cognate _billion_ between English and other European languages? But there are a great many false cognates. Why focus on this one? Because the Brits [used to have a different](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales) system, like the continent, and only later switched to the US system. > [@](#): > > The existence of the different scales means that care must be taken when comparing large numbers between languages or countries, or when interpreting old documents in countries where the dominant scale has changed over time. For example, British-English, French, and Italian historical documents can refer to either the short or long scale, depending on the date of the document, since each of the three countries has used both systems at various times in its history. Today, the United Kingdom officially uses the short scale, but France and Italy use the long scale. > > The pre-1974 former British English word billion, post-1961 current French word billion, post-1994 current Italian word bilione, German Billion; Dutch biljoen; Swedish biljon; Finnish biljoona; Danish billion; Spanish billón and the European Portuguese word bilião (with an alternate spelling to the Brazilian Portuguese variant) all refer to 1012, being long-scale terms. Therefore, each of these words translates to the American English or post-1974 modern British English word: trillion (1012 in the short scale), and not billion (109 in the short scale). And other false cognates didn’t come up in this science quiz. Like I said, real scientists use ISO units and powers of ten to avoid the whole language problems (and to make calculation easier than writing out strings of zeroes). Other problems with English, of course - we don’t use a greek name for an uneven triangle, because that’s the normal case. We use words to denote triangles that are different because they are equiliteral or right-angled or otherwise odd, but the norm is only that a triangle has three sides. Or “name the element with Nr. 12 and symbol K” it’s called Kalium in my language, but I can never remember that it’s called potassium in English (but I could eliminate the other choices). That’s precisly the reason why chemical and math symbols were invented in the first place, to eliminate problems with different languages. ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/79 "2012-01-13T12:53:02Z")
49/50. Yes… those f’in CLOUDS. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![DrumBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@DrumBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrumBum)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/80 "2012-01-13T13:49:32Z")
49 out of 50. I guessed wrong on the Mitosis / Meiosis :smack: High school Biology was _so_ long ago… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238.md?page=5)