# 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:** 17\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/101 "2012-01-19T12:07:11Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > I meant “we” = non-English speaking people. In that case, German. You can add the Scandinavians to that “we”. ETA: And I agree that quite a few of the questions were more language or culturally related than science related. US stamps and the Greek name for Athena? Really? ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/102 "2012-01-19T15:03:09Z")
I got 44 out of 50, or 88%. I concede, I was helped by some of the trivial clues. That is, I knew Pallas was another name for Athena, even though I didn’t know what the element palladium was used for. In he same way, I didn’t know there was water on Titan… but since Saturn was a Titan, it was easy to guess that one was Saturn’s moon. So… was I really science literate or simply well versed in classical literature and mythology. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/103 "2012-01-19T17:52:45Z")
48/50 ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/104 "2012-01-19T18:30:28Z")
I’ll fess up to 28. I’m not ashamed - more than half! I would have 31 but I second guessed myself on 3 questions and got them wrong. ---
**Author:** ![vertizontal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ad7895/32.png) [@vertizontal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vertizontal)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2012, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/105 "2012-01-19T20:45:47Z")
\*\*44/50 \*\* I majored in Music Education, back in the day. > [@Small\_Clanger](#): > > Who the heck knows what ‘nimbus’ means? You would’ve learned that in the meteorology portion of Private Pilot ground school. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2012, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/106 "2012-01-20T20:25:03Z")
I got 37 out of 50, should have gotten more. But it took, literally, over a half hour to get through the slooooow web pages cluttered with ads, ads, and more ads. I think I lost focus after a while. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2012, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/107 "2012-01-20T22:02:42Z")
46/50 A number of 2-choice lucky guesses, and 4 2-choice unlucky guesses (cloud, surface gravity, ch4 and redshift discoverer). I should have missed nano also except the answer I thought it was wasn’t given (forgot about micro). ---
**Author:** ![Philliam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/philliam/32/3011_2.png) [@Philliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philliam)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/108 "2012-01-21T20:15:14Z")
45/50 - Darn that mitosis and Radon, anyhoo! Not too bad though, for a dumb ol’ hippie musician.🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cab0a1/32.png) [@Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Man_With_a_Cat)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/109 "2012-01-21T20:45:15Z")
46 Better than I thought I’d do, to be honest. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/110 "2012-01-21T21:02:12Z")
38/50, which, if everyone else is honest, is about the lowest score of this bunch. To be fair, I haven’t had to use most of that for 50 years. And I never took astronomy, but didn’t miss any of the astronomy questions, so go figure. Maybe I do better on the subjects that I learned _outside_ the classroom. And the site was lightning-fast for me, although the double-display was a little annoying. Still, it was good to have confirmation immediately. ---
**Author:** ![aerodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@aerodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aerodave)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/111 "2012-01-21T21:29:46Z")
I got all 50. My excuse is that I’m a trivia sponge with very good recall. The only one I didn’t know outright without thinking was “Mars”. I had to use some deduction on that real quick, but it became apparent that it was the only possible choice. Don’t worry, though…I’d bomb a literature quiz in spectacular “are you mentally handicapped?” fashion. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/112 "2012-01-21T21:40:21Z")
39/50. Can’t believe how much chemistry I could remember. Ones I got wrong; Mendel’s observations, I thought fruit flies based on fast reproduction cycle. Nanocentimetres I should have known, said 1,000,000. For some reason I thought carbon was the most common element in the crust. The DNA one was a blind guess. So was the Newton on a 200g object. An object’s mass and velocity equalling force I should have known. Mathematical constant e; no bloody idea. Friction I misremembered as epsilon, not mu. Triangle question was just embarrassing, I said isosceles. Was torn between Plank and Heisenberg for the sizes of quanta and went for the wrong one. No idea about clouds, seems to be a common theme. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/113 "2012-01-21T21:51:30Z")
39/50 According to the answer to question #47, the suffix nimbus added to the name of a cloud indicates “it is precipitating.” Nimbus means “rain”, but a cumulonimbus cloud doesn’t have to have precipitation falling from it, does it? ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/114 "2012-01-22T02:44:44Z")
> [@Dag\_Otto](#): > > 1. The chemistry\* and physics were cake, but the biology questions killed me.My confidence on those was 25%. Also 36, and it was exactly the other way around for me. Bio is my thing. Chem and phyisics, not so much. And why were there math problems on there? Math is a tool of science, not science itself. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/115 "2012-01-22T04:36:09Z")
41/50. I never took physics (which I highly regret), and my only chemistry was a killer soil chemistry class. On the other hand, I’m decent with Greek roots and great with Greek mythology, and those saved my score from being much lower. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/116 "2012-01-22T05:26:57Z")
48 out of 50: I missed zygote (thought that wasn’t until it had a handful of cells, not just one) and nimbus. On the question about e, you can actually use logarithms in _any_ base to do problems like radioactive decay and compound interest, and e actually shows up more obviously in compound interest than it does in most science problems. And for the record, Titan does _not_ have liquid water on its surface-- The question just said “liquid”, and the liquid on Titan is mostly methane and ammonia. ---
**Author:** ![Uber\_the\_Goober](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/58956e/32.png) [@Uber\_the\_Goober](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uber_the_Goober)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238/117 "2012-01-22T07:27:24Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > Why the fuck do you have to click twice for each question? Answer once, compile at the end! > > 41/50 Yay for ad views! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-science-quiz/609238.md?page=5)