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Missed the atmosphere question.

Picked hydrogen. =(

If hydrogen was the most common case in the atmosphere we'd all be dead.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:
If hydrogen was the most common case in the atmosphere we'd all be dead.

Kaboom.

Not necessarily kaboom, the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere would cap the potential explosivity... Perhaps more of a sizzle as the PH of the atmosphere would be way higher.

 Snrub wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I only missed "fracking". Feth me.

Shouldn't that be "Frack me"?

It was simply a case of having forgotten a vocabulary word, or never having learned it. Stupid jargon.


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 SlaveToDorkness wrote:

If you missed the Fracking one then you don't really watch the news much lately. Apparently it's the worst thing for the environment since sliced atoms.

We haven't watched broadcast TV since 2003. We get news from the internet, but we get to miss a lot of the "big stories".

 Corpsesarefun wrote:
Not necessarily kaboom, the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere would cap the potential explosivity... Perhaps more of a sizzle as the PH of the atmosphere would be way higher.

There should be enough O2 in the atmosphere to create at least a sizable reaction.

I've done far too little chemistry in far too long to calculate that.

Though for those that are curious the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen and only 0.000055% hydrogen!

i... don't think that this kind of test is a fair gauge of science literacy.

100%, not difficult really.

I got the one about the most common gas in the atmosphere wrong. I knew it was Nitrogen or Oxygen but I brain farted about which was higher.

 poda_t wrote:
i... don't think that this kind of test is a fair gauge of science literacy.

It was an interesting 'quiz' regardless.. I took the quiz, and while I'm not a science type of fellow, science was one of my best classes in high school, though I tried to avoid physics like the plague because I can deal with animals and bodies, etc... but I hates me some maths. I scored a 13/13 on the quiz.

I then gave the quiz to both of my parents. My dad is a college graduate and well read (sometimes...), while my mother has never stepped foot into a college classroom. She has spent her entire adult life without a college degree. My mom scored an 11/13, and screwed up the atmosphere question (she said hydrogen) and the temps rising question (she said helium because she didn't know the answer), other than that she took a guess on Nanotechnology, plate tectonics, and the function of red blood cells. My dad scored a 12/13 missing the atmostphere question, though he had answered oxygen. Now my mother was at the top end of the 50-64 age category and my father is in the 65+ category. Both of them scored at least better than 75% of the people that were originally polled for the study.

Also with the high number of perfect scores in this thread, I can see where you're coming from, but you have to remember a few things. Any one of us could be lying about their answers in an effort to not be singled out as the guy who doesn't know science, or we could be getting the number of high scores we are because the tabletop gaming community tends to consist of 'nerds' and these people tend to read a lot, be of a higher intelligence, etc...

BUT this is Dakka, so I'm willing to bet that we're all lying feths

 Ouze wrote:
12/13; i blew the electron/atom question.

Ditto. Stupid atoms, what have they done for me lately?

This can't be legitimate. I got 12 right. Is anyone else extremely suspicious of this? (I missed the one about the most prominent gas in the atmosphere.)

I had the gas question wrong. I knew we had nitrogen, but I was thinking it was in small amounts. It was only after getting the results I thought it out and said oh ya that makes more sense.

I'd say that the chemical reaction question could be hard if you never took chemistry.

well, I scored 100% as well, on a test that was very easy, and a poor measure of science literacy. Most of the stuff on here was common-knowledge level. I remember getting straight a's through all of my "achievment" and "provincial" tests, because the tests were so damn easy: the material was simple, and the curriculum was set up for test-taking, not knowledge integration. I would say on the whole, while I was able to do a lot of stuff and ride high grades through grade school, I remember nothing of it, because there was no reward for holding onto it, and often the questions that would end up on tests were such like "what is the name of the highway with the most lanes". Great trivia stuff, but useless otherwise, in one ear, out the other. When I compared what I was studying in grade 6 here, which is the start of trig and very distant start of algebra (which, my god, the study of algebra did more to confuse me through the ham-handed applied method of teaching), compared against, at least in back-wards eastblockia, simple concepts of physics which already need a reasonable understanding of trig and at times handling multiple variables. The relevancy here is that while my province was touting we had some of the smartest kids in north america, and around the world, by pointing at achievement test scores.......... yeah, there's a reason that the students fare so well, and that has to do with the style of question and the arrangement of the curriculum. Throw our kids into any asian or european school curriculum and watch as they collapse into a foetal position and cry. The questions on this test were elementary, and most of the "challenging" questions could easily be resolved by your ability to follow current news/political dialogue.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
Got 11/13. I too messed the atmosphere one and also the laser one. Not even sure what I put down for it.

Well the laser one was a simple true or false, so I think it should be pretty clear what you put down for that one.

Laser wasn't a true or false was it? It was a 4 answer one. I'm sure it was.

Pretty sure it was a T or F. Yep just went back and checked again. T or F.


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 SlaveToDorkness wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:
12/13 the one I got wrong on was the one about the most abundant element in the atmosphere thought it was hydrogen turns out it's nitrogen.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element overall. Nitrogen is the most abundant in our atmosphere.

100% here.

If you missed the Fracking one then you don't really watch the news much lately. Apparently it's the worst thing for the environment since sliced atoms.

Brought to you by the people who brought you global cooling, I mean warming, I mean cooling, I mean warming, I mean change.

You mean the sensationalist media? Because if you look at the actual scientific literature it's been "climate change" and less frequently "global warming" since the 70's, and even as far back as the 50's papers proposing/asserting a cooling trend were a very modest minority. And yes, a process which releases a substantial proportion of the methane gas it's attempting to extract into the atmosphere(methane is a far more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, those "worst case scenarios" you read about it aforementioned sensationalist press about huge sea level rises etc which are dismissed as madness are predicated on the very possible but still technically speculative scenario that we release enough CO2 into the atmosphere to raise the temperature enough to melt large swathes of permafrost in the northern hemisphere, which would release huge amounts of methane and lead to a drastic and much more rapid feedback loop), and which can force various industrial chemicals as well as further amounts of methane into the water table, that is a process that is pretty bad for the environment, and for any humans who happen to get their drinking water from said water table.

Oh please, Fracking is perfectly fine! I mean who Wouldn't want flamable tap water?!


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P.S. 100%

8 out of 13... Ouch.
Science was always my worst subject.

13. The only one that took me a second was the chemical reaction one, and then I was like "Oh yeah, duh."

 Bromsy wrote:
13. The only one that took me a second was the chemical reaction one, and then I was like "Oh yeah, duh."

me too!

You answered 13 of 13 questions correctly.

I guess i am

 Corpsesarefun wrote:
If hydrogen was the most common case in the atmosphere we'd all be dead.

No, we would all have evoloved different biochemistries and physiologies to cope with the environment thanks to the power of natural selection.

We had a little quiz using this test last night amongst the in laws and the lowest result was 10, strangely the most common incorrect answer was the function of red blood cells.

I don't think life could evolve in an atmosphere of 78% hydrogen, it would be far too volatile.

 poda_t wrote:
i... don't think that this kind of test is a fair gauge of science literacy.

It is more like a test of scientific illiteracy.

It's a set of pretty basic science facts that any GCSE level student could be expected to know most of. (Let's not get into the argument about knowledge of absolute truth.)

If you get low enough on this test it shows you are rather ignorant. Ignorance of course is lack of knowledge, not stupidity as such.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Also with the high number of perfect scores in this thread, I can see where you're coming from, but you have to remember a few things. Any one of us could be lying about their answers in an effort to not be singled out as the guy who doesn't know science, or we could be getting the number of high scores we are because the tabletop gaming community tends to consist of 'nerds' and these people tend to read a lot, be of a higher intelligence, etc...

BUT this is Dakka, so I'm willing to bet that we're all lying feths

You also need to remember that you have both a self selecting sample and a self reporting sample, two things which tend to increase the number of extreme results you will get

Yeah, no-one's going to come on here and boast they got only 3/13.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah, no-one's going to come on here and boast they got only 3/13.

Hence my hide in shame comment in the OP.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah, no-one's going to come on here and boast they got only 3/13.

Nor is it likely anyone who expects to get 3/13 to even consider doing the test in the first place.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah, no-one's going to come on here and boast they got only 3/13.

Maybe not boast but there's got to be someone who would joke around about their score, even if it was low right?

100% I would have gotten the fracking question wrong if it wasn't for my documentary addiction.

Yeah, missed the fracking one cause I haven't even heard that word before... Did get the rest.

feeder wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
12/13; i blew the electron/atom question.

Ditto. Stupid atoms, what have they done for me lately?

I've very pleased to see someone else missed this question because the subsequent nearly unbroken string of 13/13 responses were really making me feel like a dumbass (coupled with my asking my wife the question and her looking at me like I'm an idiot). While the fact I'm a dumbass isn't exactly a matter of opinion, it doesn't feel good to wallow in it.

So, we should hang out! Lets go drink cheap beer, watch American Idol, and handle firearms in an unsafe manner!