Thursday Science Quiz: Can you do science better than 93% of Americans?

Have to ask ernie_lynch – did you actually do the test??

Yes I did, thanks for asking.

eh ? 1% out of 1006 got them all wrong 😯

My pleasure.

1% out of 1006 got them all wrong

They probably didn’t answer the phone 🙂

Yeah, a German Jewish fella.

But the guy who showed them how to build space rockets was a German war criminal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

If my maths was right earlier on you’d expect 2 people out of 1000 to get them all wrong if everyone was guessing.

Phew 13/13. that desmond did me proud

Now I’m depressed, we are being told what to do by the thick bully in the playground, who’d a thunk it?

Yawn. Think you would find exactly the same (if not probably worse) in the UK to be honest with the poor level of science teaching in british schools.

Talking to my wife about this.. it seems that in US education they still do a certain amount of drilling of a selection of facts, which isn’t really popular here. So the function of red blood cells is subject to drilling, but the composition of the atmosphere is not. So the former becomes something that ‘everyone knows’. The stats for the respective questions back that up.

I got 13/13, but I teach A level physics and have taught GCSE Science, so you’d hope that I would 🙂

Yawn. Think you would find exactly the same (if not probably worse) in the UK to be honest with the poor level of science teaching in british schools.

Anyone passing GCSE Science would should know the answers to all 13 questions. Do you have any evidence for alleged poor level of science teaching in the UK? (Better evidence than for Diet Coke being bad for you, obviously.)

Disagree with poor science teaching argument. I reckon:

Common Entrance science covers 1,4,5,7,10,12
GSCE 2,8,9
Inbetween/common sense 3,6,11,13

School kids should be able to score well but parents may have “forgotten” some of it!!!

Edit: (oops wrong thread)

Edit for edit!!

13/13 not hard if you have done some science

13/13 here
Mostly just general knowledge though surely?

Apparently the nitrogen thing is not general knowledge. Unless you’re a science geek like me, in which case it is along with other facts like why the sky is blue and how long it takes sunlight to get to the earth.

LHS, read this recently? I think you’d enjoy it.

So does that mean that we of STW forum are the 7%?

I am not a number!!!!!!!!

And I thought 13 looked like this….

Apparently the nitrogen thing is not general knowledge.

I’d agree that it’s not something everyone would immediately know; but in the multiple guess question posed I’d have thought most people sciency enough to be doing a science quiz in the first place would quickly reject the other three.

(oh, a smug 13 here too, btw)

Question 14: What is the probability of someone guessing incorrectly 13 times?
I *think* about 0.21%, but probability was never my strong point…

0.22% I make it (based on 5 questions with 2 answers, 3 questions with 3 answers, 5 questions with 4 answers) – I guess you have rounding errors 😉 I got 5 right selecting randomly in order to check the number of answers.

Though looking at those results, some of them are worse than you’d expect from randomly guessing (e.g. only 48% get the True/False one about lasers correct, and only 47% get a True/False on atoms correct)

It’s even worse if you select subsets of the demographic – only 27% of over 65s got the laser one correct. The nitrogen question also has worse stats than you’d expect from random guessing, should be 25% and those who didn’t go to college only got 12%!

Which does bring up the idea of an interesting experiment. Over 65 women who didn’t go to college in one room, trained monkeys in the other. Cherry pick the questions to prove just how much more intelligent the monkeys are 🙂

Interestingly men seem to do better than women on average in all of the questions except the two drugs relates ones 🙂

Over 65 women who didn’t go to college in one room, trained monkeys in the other.

I think it’d be more fun to put monkeys in one room and creationists in the other 😀

11, the two I got wrong…

I didn’t know about the relative sizes of atoms and electrons and guessed wrong.

Answered Oxygen for the Earth’s atmosphere question, had a feeling this was wrong but couldn’t remember where I’d heard it or what the actual answer was. So I just went with it…

Markie – Member

Nitrogen. Who knew.

I obviously didn’t. 😳

12/13 here.

100% here 😀

That was more like a general knowledge quiz!

13. Getting a bit crowded up here on Mount Olympus.

My 17 yr old daughter got 12 (got nitrogen, but messed up with the atoms). Whats more she did it the usual teen way by seemingly concentrating on something else whilst clicking buttons at the speed of light 🙄

I’ll try it on the younger one if I can prise her off her boyfriend 👿

13, I’m about to test my U.S. colleges. Update shortly, it’ll be like a mini poll!

To be fair to the Americans, it would be harder to get them right over the phone – read out the options, what was the second one again? Sorry, what was the third one? Oh, the first one then, what was it again?

Much easier with the options written down in front of you imo

13/13 btw

So one got 12/13 and the other 9/13. Both wrong on the Nitrogen question, not sure of the other wrong answers.

I’m about to test my U.S. colleges

How many US colleges do you have? Did any of your colleagues go there?

😉

Younger daughter (15) got 11 – nitrogen and rusty nails fail. Still better than or equal to 85% of Americans though 😀

Room for one more up on that high horse? (13/13 and pretty darn quickly as well).

How many US colleges do you have? Did any of your colleagues go there?

That was an unfortunate error, yes colleagues. Neither went to college.

I failed all my ‘O’ levels at school. Twice. Ended up with a few pointless CSE grade 2’s and 3’s in English , Maths and plant care ( Environmental Studies )
Yet , as a complete div I still managed to get 13/13 .

12/13

As soon as I hit hydrogen I knew it was wrong. Numpty

13, but theres no pride in that.
12 year old daughter got 12/13 (man made radiation), 15 year old son got 13 on threat of PC removal if he scored less….he has triple GCSE science next year, failure will not be tolerated. 🙂