Study: American's don't know much about science

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/06/15/not.rocket.scientists.ap/index.html

“E equals MC-wha?
Americans don’t know much about science, and that’s cause for concern”

I love the ‘not.rocket.scientists’ part of the URL, which is why I left it visible.

There’s a javascript launch of the quiz on that page. Instant results when you click. The ‘Next Question’ link becomes a ‘Start Over’ link at the very anti-climactic end. Yes, I clicked it…so I guess I failed.

I’ve no cause for concern.

Americans, in general, don’t know much about anything beyond what’s on TV right now… which makes this a great country for us overeducated yahoos to feel all superior. I love being American.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Apparently they don’t know much about punctuation, either :wink:

I got all answers correct! Then again, I’m not an American. :wink:

Seriously, anyone who finished high school ought to be able to ace that test.

Those questions were very easy.

I would hope that an 8th grader would know that.

CNN published an ‘anonymous’ AP article (no byline) from New York. This doesn’t pass the bullshit test for me.

In the meantime, Coldfire, please delete http://cnn.com =)

Then again, that report culls its examples from watching Jay Leno’s “streetwalking” segments. For those of you avoiding NBC or just Leno himself, those segments go out of their way to select the dumbest (and therefore most entertaining :rolleyes: ) responses from people wandering the streets (or Universal Studios, or wherever they are that time).

So the folks from Baile Átha Cliath, Yurp and Tartarus and SoCal have posted their perfect scores.

I still think:

  • CNN published a dumbass article that opens, as I quoted above, with dumbass statements attributed to AP in NY

  • we should wait till the other 46 states check in

7/7, yay! Although, one did give me pause - I sure wouldn’t have known it in eighth grade. I won’t say what it was about, for people who haven’t taken it yet.

Count yourself lucky, Americans.

I got them all right, but one…The one about:

The father’s gene deciding if the baby is a boy or a girl. What the?! Okay I guess because of the Y chromosome, but I still think it’s damned sexist. :slight_smile:

Hm. I got them all right. Does that mean I’m not American? :confused:

:smiley:

Achernar: For the life of me, I can’t guess which one wouldn’t have been known in the eight grade. Which one was it? (You can use the spoiler tag.)

Aced it… Where’s my gold star?

That’s very, very depressing. Most middle-schoolers should have been able to answer those.

7 outa 7. I never trust these studys anyway.

Yep, aced it.

And personally, I think the Leno quizzes are completely staged.

Oh sure, all you perfect scorers must have Nobel Physics Prizes on your mantels at home.:confused:

But seriously, I aced it, and didn’t think any of the 7 questions were challenging in the slightest.

Are Americans really that scientifically illiterate? It always amazes me how many people are clueless on the Earth & Sun question.

I aced it too! And I was an English major!

Seriously, it looks like most of us are kicking ass on this, but that’s no surprise; we are obviously not even remotely a representative sample of the U.S. population, any more than Mensans are.

Speaking of which, Mensa has a sample test on their site, which is kind of a kick (even though the page linked here has a deplorable grammatical error on it):

http://www.mensa.org/workout.html

ehh only one i missed was the questions on the gene question ,

But folks we’ve heard this complaint for decades espically after sputnik happened

And were always compared to some other country … Usually the russians or japanese or chinese

So this is soemthing thats been done before …

I had to think about the one that says “Radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling it.” I had no idea what radioactivity was in eighth grade. I think that a lot of people who get it get it because they think, “Oh, radiation bad. Boiling no help. False!” However, if you asked them something trickier like "Microwaves use high-energy radiation to cook food."they’d get it wrong.