while we're talking about science...

[_Sethbag]

My dad sent me this "Are you scientifically literate?" quiz from the Christian Science Monitor webpage, and I took it. It's interesting, and asks a wide variety of questions that cover most of the physical sciences. Scoring well on it doesn't mean one is a scientist - only that one has been paying attention. I am not a scientist, for example, but have always felt like I gave a crap about science, and paid attention.

It's 50 questions, and actually took me like 10 minutes to grind through, mostly waiting for page refreshes. I scored 45/50 for a 90%. One or two of the ones I missed I missed stupidly and should have gotten, but the other 3-4 were legitimate "I simply don't know" misses. Some won't have the patience or desire actually to go through it all, since it's fairly long, but I think it would be interesting to see how many of us on the board compare on it. If you take it, be honest, don't consult any source outside your brain and what you already know, and don't take longer than 10 seconds or so thinking about each answer. It's the kind of thing where you either know it, or you don't, and that shouldn't take 10 seconds to figure out.

[_Aristotle Smith]

[_Sethbag]

Wow dude. Good job! I'm curious which two you got wrong, if you wanna PM me.

[_Aristotle Smith]

Wow dude. Good job! I'm curious which two you got wrong, if you wanna PM me.

1) The name of a triangle that has three unequal sides
2) What does the suffix "-nimbus" mean in meteorology

[_Buffalo]

bcspace be flunkin question 9

[_MsJack]

You can get a whole bunch of those right without being particularly science-literate if you:

(1) Know Latin.
(2) Know Greek.
(3) Have a good handle on Greek and Roman mythology.
(4) Watch Big Bang Theory regularly.

Just sayin'.

[_Sethbag]

by the way, many of the questions are specific enough (wanted to say "tough enough", but that doesn't really do it) that I'd say anyone who does better than around 30-35/50 is actually doing pretty well. I'd guess the general public wouldn't do dramatically better than 25%, or random guessing.

[_malkie]

43 - I was disappointed, but hey, that's one better than "the answer to life the universe and everything".

[_Buffalo]

I got like a D+ on that :o

[_Blixa]

47.

Like Ms. Jack said, my knowledge of Greek, Latin and classical mythology helped, but I also knew a lot more than I would have thought. Also, some answers I wasn't completely sure about could be narrowed down from the other choices.

I missed the following:

--The mathematical constant e is defined as the base of the natural system of logarithms, having a numerical value of approximately what?

--If you were to apply a net force of one Newton on a 200 gram object, what would be the acceleration of the object?

--In physics, what letter is used to represent the speed of light in a vacuum?