Random Mode Keyboard shortcut: Command/Ctrl + Shift + R
thumbnail

Science General Knowledge #1

Can you answer these random questions from the realm of science?
Quiz idea and some questions from Kestrana
Quiz by Quizmaster
Rate:
Last updated: December 22, 2019
You have not attempted this quiz yet.
First submittedMay 15, 2016
Times taken118,937
Average score70.0%
Rating4.50
5:00
Enter answer here
0
 / 20 guessed
The quiz is paused. You have remaining.
Scoring
You scored / = %
This beats or equals % of test takers also scored 100%
The average score is
Your high score is
Your fastest time is
Keep scrolling down for answers and more stats ...
Question
Answer
In what galaxy is the solar system located?
Milky Way
What species is the closest living relative to humans?
Chimpanzees
What is equal to mass times acceleration?
Force
What is the chemical formula for water?
H2O
Who was the first person to see the moons of Jupiter?
Galileo Galilei
What is the hardest known naturally-occurring material?
Diamond
What is pencil "lead" made from?
Graphite
What element are both of the above minerals made from?
Carbon
The sun is currently a yellow dwarf. What type of star will it become in
about 5 billion years?
Red Giant
What are the two types of particles in the nucleus of an atom?
Proton
Neutron
What Polish astronomer postulated that the Sun is the center of the solar system?
Nicolaus Copernicus
What process do plants use to turn light into energy?
Photosynthesis
Where would you find Olympus Mons?
Mars
What does a chronometer measure?
Time
What is the duodenum a part of?
Small intestine
What type of sugar does the brain use for energy?
Glucose
Two elements of the Periodic Table are named after U.S. states.
Name either element.
Californium /
Tennessine
What is the largest asteroid in the solar system?
Ceres
What do most humans have 23 pairs of?
Chromosomes
+43
Level 90
May 16, 2016
Though it is located in the asteroid belt, the answer you list for the largest asteroid is not actually an asteroid. It was promoted to dwarf planet status years ago. I suggest you change the question to read: "What is the largest object orbiting within the solar system's asteroid belt?"
+3
Level 69
Jun 7, 2016
Was just about to post the same thing. +1.
+7
Level 66
Jul 20, 2016
I thought the same, but the fastidious, possibly picayune writers/editors on Wikipedia state that Ceres is both a dwarf planet and an asteroid.
+45
Level 90
Jun 16, 2017
A plasteroid, if you will.
+1
Level 15
Jun 30, 2017
^ I love it
+1
Level 66
Aug 27, 2018
Then, I won't
+3
Level 88
Nov 13, 2018
The writers of Wikipedia are anyone with an internet connection.
+2
Level 66
Dec 20, 2018
@GeographyGeek42 Im sure the plasteroid would not mind to be loved by both of you
+12
Level 84
Jul 20, 2016
Ceres is a dwarf planet and an asteroid, just as Pluto is a dwarf planet and a Trans-Neptunian Object, a Kuipier belt Object, and a Plutino. All minor planets between Mars and Jupiter are asteroids, even if they are also dwarf planets.
+2
Level 38
Dec 11, 2016
There is are still many arguments about ceres, it's shaped like you would expect a asteroid to be but is incredibly large..
+3
Level ∞
Mar 13, 2020
As Quizley and sumguy have pointed out, Ceres is both an asteroid and a dwarf planet. The question is correct.
+2
Level 61
Mar 28, 2020
Nasa considers it a dwarf planet. That's enough for me.
+1
Level 68
Oct 13, 2020
I was surprised by this question as well, but quizmaster is correct. Learned something new today! Very cool.
+1
Level 61
Mar 28, 2020
Vesta or whatever is the actual largest asteroid should be acceptable even if Jetpunk insists on Ceres as an answer.
+1
Level 76
Dec 18, 2023
No, it actually isn't. Ceres is considerably larger. Vesta doesn't even have a spherical shape (Ceres does). This is because it hasn't reached hidrostatic equilibrium, which indicates it's quite small.
+2
Level 47
Jul 20, 2016
Missed Copernicus and Ceres. For shame!
+1
Level 79
Mar 13, 2019
I missed those two (and only those two) as well!
+2
Level 56
Jul 20, 2016
Damn all you fancy-shmancy Latin names, Estonians simply call it "kaksteistsõrmiksool" ("twelve-finger-intestine"). P.S. I have absolutely no idea why.
+6
Level 66
Jul 20, 2016
As duodenum comes from the Latin for "in twelves," the pattern holds.
+1
Level 66
Dec 20, 2018
my latin isnt that well so immediately believe you. It is well enough to sort of go ow yea after your comment, but I would ve expected duodecum (or similar) then.
+3
Level 71
Jul 20, 2016
The 'Fancy-shmancy Latin names' you mention make it possible for all nations and languages to have a common scientific names for all people. What use would it be if the official international name for the 'Duodenum' was 'kaksteistsormiksool' and dodekadaktlylos and zwollffingerdarm etc etc ........ nobody would have a clue what they were talking about. Every doctor/scientist in the world understands what the word 'Duodenum' is referring to.
+1
Level 66
Dec 20, 2018
we call it twaalfvingerige darm so the same.

I was curious if duodenum was the every day common english name for it or the offical? like tailbone and coccyx for instance. or collarbone/clavicle.

+2
Level 72
Mar 24, 2020
Duodenum is the normal word sifhraven, no-one calls it the "twelve-fingery-intestine" in English. Just to be helpful - I know adverbs don't come naturally to Dutch speakers - where you say "my latin isn't that well", it sounds like it has a cold, or maybe something worse, God forbid. You mean it isn't that good.
+1
Level 68
Dec 12, 2023
In common language, most people still call it a kaksteistsõrmiksool.
+1
Level 73
Jul 20, 2016
As of Jun 2016, you need to allow Tennessine as an element named after a US state
+1
Level 92
Jul 20, 2016
Think that's jumping the gun a bit, as the name hasn't been confirmed yet. Last timeline I saw put approval likely in November.
+2
Level 65
Jul 20, 2016
I never knew Copernicus was Polish. That's hardly a Polish last name.
+13
Level 69
Jul 20, 2016
He was born as Mikołaj Kopernik. In those days scientists, writers, composers and such folk used to give a Latin ring to their names, to give them more street cred.
+1
Level 67
Jul 21, 2016
This is a very interesting piece of information. I knew Copernicus was Polish, but I had always wondered about his name.
+1
Level 38
Aug 24, 2016
Pretty sure there's some element of myth wrapped up in Copernicus. As though he smashed established thought regarding celestial movement, when actually it was generally accepted that the earth was round and went round the sun. Galileo in his war against the church made a lot of brash statements that kind of left a legacy of the church propogating ignorance, but according to the sources I've read, the immanence just doesn't seem to have been there.
+1
Level 88
Nov 13, 2018
It was his gangsta rap name?
+2
Level 78
Mar 28, 2020
There seems to be no source calling him Mikołaj Kopernik during his lifetime. He was spelled Niclas Koppernigk, Nicolaus Kopperlingk, Nicolaus Copernik, Nicolaus Cop(p)ernicus, Nicolaus Coppernic(k), Nicolaus Coppernig, Nicolaj Copphernicj. Fixed spelling wasn't a thing back then. See here and here.
+2
Level 71
Mar 6, 2018
Aristarchus of Samos was an ancient Greek scholar that first wrote about the earth and planets going round the sun. Copernicus in his notes to be published gave credence to Aristarchus as the first. Copernicus' editors convinced him to cross out any reference to Aristarchus and his claim to be the first made him famous.
+1
Level 58
Mar 28, 2020
was also going to point this out
+1
Level 43
Jun 9, 2022
He wasnt polish. He was prussian.
+1
Level 59
Oct 24, 2023
He was born in Toruń, so he was Polish
+1
Level 68
Dec 12, 2023
I'm gonna make a quiz calling Copernicus French, just to enrage the Polish nationalists.
+2
Level 69
Jul 21, 2016
element named after US State?

"Tennessine! Tennissine! Tennissine!" shouts the man from Tennessee. (New name for element 117) :)

+2
Level 67
Jul 21, 2016
That sounds like the opening to a country song.
+5
Level 60
Jul 28, 2016
It's the opening line of my new single, "Tennesseein' is Tennebelievin'"
+1
Level 46
Apr 21, 2018
should have been oakridgium and sung by ... well, you know
+1
Level 82
Dec 4, 2016
It's been official since last Monday (28th November 2016) – the 18th question has two possible answers :)
+1
Level ∞
Dec 5, 2016
Updated!
+1
Level 7
Feb 22, 2017
Ceres is now a dwarf planet, the new biggest asteroid is 4Vesta.
+3
Level 76
Aug 2, 2019
Ceres is a dwarf planet, but it is also still an asteroid.
+9
Level 80
Mar 6, 2018
With so many answers being from astronomy, I thought for sure that the answer to "Duodenum" would be Uranus.
+2
Level 68
Mar 6, 2018
^Winner
+1
Level 42
Aug 27, 2018
lol
+6
Level 72
Jul 6, 2018
Not sure if you really need to give the "synthesis" part of the 12th question's answer. It's already easy enough to guess. We all learned the word in elementary school...
+1
Level 27
Feb 4, 2024
shut up, the world begs of you
+1
Level 75
Aug 18, 2018
https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/290321/name-the-blood-cell
+1
Level 70
Oct 2, 2018
The "fun fact" answer to the hardest material question may be diamond, but this is not actually true. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16610-diamond-no-longer-natures-hardest-material/
+1
Level 88
Nov 13, 2018
You had the 46th comment. It should've been about chromosomes.
+1
Level 70
Mar 13, 2019
You had the 47th. It should have been about Kalashnikov rifles.
+1
Level ∞
Mar 13, 2020
Science journalism makes me mad. The headline to that article is garbage. If you read the article, you'll see that those materials are "predicted" to be harder than diamond, but it can't be tested because they are so incredibly rare. Diamond is still the correct answer until someone proves otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhard_material

"Diamond is the hardest known material to date"

+1
Level 66
Dec 20, 2018
18/20 :) happy with that as on average I tend to go more towards three quarters of correct answers. I guess it was because this was more sciency, no sports, hardly history and all international questions. MIssed ceres, and allmost had red giant correct. Couldnt get it, tried red dwarf, red star, red sun ( out of desperation) supernova even black hole haha, though my first thought was red soemthing
+1
Level 66
Dec 20, 2018
hahaha ok... only now I see that this wasnt a general knowledge but a science general knowledge. Well arent scientists known to be a bit scatterbrained hahaha (I opened this quiz yesterday, by clicking on random so didnt read it well, and only actually took it today, because it was after midnight already yesterday)

It explains Everything!!

+1
Level 66
Dec 20, 2018
Also why I put brinta in my tea last week.. wait no that was because of lack of sleep...(for which this site is partially responsible, but mainly health reasons)
+1
Level 70
Mar 13, 2019
Why does it specify that it is the brain that uses glucose for energy? The entirety of the body uses it, not just the brain.
+1
Level 76
Mar 13, 2019
Because the question is about the brain.
+1
Level 70
Mar 25, 2019
So why is the answer glucose? Glucose has nothing directly to do with the brain.
+3
Level 76
Aug 2, 2019
Sure it does. The brain uses it for energy.
+3
Level 58
Mar 30, 2020
It's an unfortunately worded question which only biologists would really understand. The brain doesn't have the capacity to break down glycogen, use proteins or lipids for energy production. The rest of the body can do this by inserting various metabolites from breaking these down, into the Krebs or citric acid cycle. The brain relies upon the rest of the body to supply it with glucose from food or the breakdown of glycogen. Only in very extreme circumstances can it use ketones, and that causes physical damage to the blood brain barrier and the brain itself due to the extensive high levels of ketones in the blood that would enable them to infiltrate the central nervous system. The question is basically asking 'What is typically the only substance the brain can use for energy?'
+1
Level 20
Apr 16, 2019
Yes it does actually
+1
Level 20
Apr 16, 2019
18/20 and just turned 13 yasss 7th grade science in Hawaii lol
+1
Level 20
Apr 16, 2019
Yessuh Marlowe I like the simplicity
+1
Level 79
Jan 22, 2020
This was a fun quiz.
+1
Level 81
Jan 23, 2020
I've tried, out of curiosity, to answer "H20" (meaning H-twenty) to the water question, and, to my surprise, the answer was considered to be correct. I really think it shouldn't be, since it is inherently wrong. Water molecule doesn't have 20 hydrogen atoms, and if some people don't know that, they should be educated, not kept in their ignorance, by accepting the wrong answer.
+1
Level 37
Aug 13, 2021
Wow, no need to be so nitpicky
+2
Level 59
Mar 28, 2020
Could you add "grafite" as a type-in?
+1
Level 37
Aug 13, 2021
Why would they accept something spelt wrong?
+3
Level 71
Jun 7, 2022
Across the site, many misspellings, common or otherwise, are accepted.

This is a philosophical question--is every quiz also a spelling quiz? Quizmaster seems to believe, within some reasonable limit, that knowing the answer to a question and knowing how to spell the words are separate things. After all, if you were administering an oral trivia quiz, you would receive a correct answer whether you knew how to spell it or not.

It's a judgement call about whether or not a misspelling is "close enough". I'd love to have the option (strict spelling or not) on each quiz, but I imagine that would be an impractical amount of work (for one thing, we'd get into a lot of arguments about what is a valid alternate answer, a valid variant spelling, or a misspelling acceptable under the looser standard; for the second, you'd have to effectively have two sets of answer patterns).

If you're going to accept misspellings at all, I'd favor "grafite", especially for those coming from other tongues.

+2
Level 52
Mar 28, 2020
C6H12O6 should work for glucose
+2
Level 53
May 20, 2020
No, disagree, a lot of compounds other than glucose have this formula.
+1
Level 70
Mar 28, 2020
I would like to point out that mass times acceleration is not equal to simply Force it is equal to net force along a certain axis.
+1
Level 14
Mar 31, 2020
First quiz (out of 90+) i got 100%
+1
Level 72
Apr 3, 2020
Maybe a nitpick, but the term "yellow dwarf" is not technically correct. The peak spectral output of the sun is actually in the blue-green range. The sun appears yellow on Earth due to atmospheric scattering. "Dwarf" can be argued, as it is opposed to "giant," but the accepted terminology is "main sequence star." It doesn't really affect the way people guess the answer, thoguh, I suppose.
+2
Level 68
May 28, 2020
How do three times as many people know about the duodenum than Ceres?
+2
Level 70
Jun 7, 2022
I imagine the duodenum is more important to most people's daily lives than Ceres....
+1
Level 59
Oct 17, 2020
WOW i did really good :D
+1
Level 23
Nov 18, 2020
isnt ceres a dwarf
+1
Level 76
Dec 20, 2021
I thought Ceres was a dwarf planet.
+1
Level ∞
Jun 3, 2022
I thought tomato was a fruit.
+1
Level 89
Jun 7, 2022
I thought Cyprus was in Asia.
+1
Level 32
Aug 12, 2022
hahahahahahahahahahahaha not everyone has 23 pairs of Chromosomes you should change it 'most' people.

Thanks love

+2
Level 56
Sep 27, 2022
Maybe clarify the hardest material to be on Earth, otherwise the answer ought to be the centre of a neutron star.

And although the current answer for an atom's nucleus is obvious, up quark and down quark are also correct answers. Very sad when they didn't work :'(

+1
Level 38
Dec 11, 2023
I tried that too, also, gluons are the only thing keeping the nucleus together.
+1
Level 63
Oct 21, 2022
Arent the gibbon and the chimpanzee both the closest relatives of humans i thought both were as close as each other related to us
+1
Level 76
Dec 7, 2023
Nope, gibbons are actually the ape we are least closely related to, having split off from the great apes around 17 million years ago. We're more closely related to gorillas, having split off from them around 7 million years ago, and most closely related to chimpanzees, with that split happening around 5 million years ago.
+1
Level 75
Nov 21, 2023
I propose to change the name of the largest asteroid in the solar system to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
+5
Level 78
Nov 27, 2023
"What form of carbon is pencil "lead" made from?"

this question pretty much gives away the answer to the next one about what element is graphite made of

+1
Level ∞
Dec 9, 2023
Fixed!
+1
Level 61
Dec 7, 2023
isnt wurtzite harder than diamond and occurs naturally?

(and i dont think graphene occurs naturally)

+2
Level 67
Dec 8, 2023
Can you accept “Dihydrogen Monoxide”?
+1
Level 56
Dec 9, 2023
I'd suggest rephrasing the question about graphite, since it gives out the answer for the next question ("What form of CARBON… ; What ELEMENT…).
+1
Level ∞
Dec 9, 2023
Yes, fixed.