Are you scientifically literate?

82%, got wrong the following:

- In 1989, the US postal service drew criticism from paleontologists for releasing a stamp with what obsolete genus name, which translates from Greek as "Thunder Lizard"?
- What is the heaviest noble gas?
- What moon, the largest moon orbiting Saturn, is the only known object in the solar system other than Earth that is known to have liquid on its surface?
- The 2006 demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet was precipitated by the discovery of what object orbiting beyond Pluto, believed to be 27 percent more massive than Pluto and named for the Greek goddess of strife and discord?
- In classical mechanics, what is defined as the product of an object's mass and velocity?
- The mathematical constant e is defined as the base of the natural system of logarithms, having a numerical value of approximately what?
- What word, which derives from a Greek term meaning "unequal" or "bent," describes a triangle whose three sides are of unequal length?
- Over half of the world's supply of what element, which gets its name from the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, is used in catalytic converters?
- In meteorology, what does the suffix -nimbus added to the name of a cloud indicate?

A few of them I kicked myself over upon seeing the answer. IMO not much of this quiz is about science literacy. I'd say questions concerning what is science, how does the scientific method work, what is peer review etc a long with a few basic questions from each field (rather than random trivia questions) would be a far better test.

I absolutely agree with Ryan. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". If you teach a guy only science trivia or information rather than teaching the proper way to do science, he may not do it right in the future.

Ah, but how many actually do science as a profession?

Do you not think that people who are not science professionals should know their science facts?

While I agree that some knowledge of science facts is useful, my opinion is that scientific methodology is far more useful in everyday life. I've never used my knowledge of Newton's law of gravity for anything except a little game programming. I use the ideas of hypothesis formation, systematic testing, and 'no dogma' (to one extent or another!) nearly every time I think about a problem.

Analogy: I think there's more utility in being able to sketch than there is in knowing your cubist from your post-impressionist, for most people.

6. How many nanometers are there in a centimeter?
1,000
1,000,000
10,000,000
100,000,000

I'd like to know how everyone figured out the following:



Only an idiot savant or a mathematical order of magnitude nerd would know this off the top of his head.

I think I spent the most time on this one. Just looking at it now, I can only guess that it's one of the last two.

centi : 10^-2
nano: 10^-9

divide: 10^7

I should think a few seconds is much longer than needed for this one.

Depends, if you happen to live metric, you learn "deci" in the third grade or something. Centimeters and decimeters or even decameters (10) and hecto meters (100) are just as common as furlongs, forthnights, etc.

Yah. But a nano? That's somewhere around a pico isn't it? Maybe it's just my dyslexia.

Around these parts, nano is beaten into our heads.

Maybe it's a non-American thing.

Eighty six. Shamefully I missed the how many nanometers is there in a centimeter. I knew that 1nm=10^-9m and 1cm=10^-2m making the answer 10^7, I don't know how I failed that question lol. I guess I miscounted the 0's...

6. How many nanometers are there in a centimeter?
1,000
1,000,000
10,000,000
100,000,000

Around these parts, nano is beaten into our heads.

Maybe it's a non-American thing.

In Hero Games RPG, that would be the difference between
- a Knowledge Skill (do you know lots about something), and
- a Professional Skill (do you know how to make a living doing something).

Oops. My freak flag slipped out. I'll just tuck that back in...

Americans shun the metric system like you normal-measurement-using-people wouldn't believe.

The obvious practical measurement system is light nanoseconds and inches.

...
But seriously, the conversion from cm to nm was about the only thing in the quiz that imho every scientifically literate person should get right.
...

The millifarad is less used in practice, so that a capacitance of 4.7×10−3 F, for example, is sometimes written as 4700 µF; industrial parts at times use the abbreviation MFD. North American usage also avoids nanofarads: a capacitance of 1×10−9 F will frequently be indicated as 1000 pF; and a capacitance of 1×10−7 F as 0.1 μF.