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Science Multiple Choice #1

Can you answer these multiple choice questions from the world of science?
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: November 30, 2020
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First submittedMarch 7, 2019
Times taken76,284
Average score68.8%
Rating4.50
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1. What is heavier, the Earth or the Sun?
Earth
Sun
The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as the Earth
2. What do herpetologists study?
Blood
Herpes
Insects
Reptiles and amphibians
3. Which of these is a virus?
Chicken pox
Leukemia
Scoliosis
Staphylococcus
4. Among these elements, which one has the highest atomic mass?
Copper
Helium
Sodium
Uranium
5. Which one of these is NOT a mineral?
Calcite
Diamond
Lithium
Quartz
6. Which of these has the longest wave length?
Radio waves
Visible light
X-rays
7. What is the pH of pure water?
0
1
7
273.15
8. What is the function of mitochondria in the cell?
To generate energy
To kill viruses or other antigens
To process waste
To repair damage
9. True or false. There are trees alive today that were alive in the year 1 AD.
True
False
The world's oldest known tree is a bristlecone pine living in California that is over 5,000 years old
10. How old is the Earth approximately?
50,000 years
300 million years
4.5 billion years
no one knows
11. What is Andromeda?
An array of radio telescopes
A bacteria that can cause death
An element of the Periodic Table
The nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way
12. Which of these units would you use to measure the total amount of energy it takes to lift a weight a certain distance?
Joule
Kilogram
Watt
13. What is less dense, hot air or cold air?
Cold air
Hot air
14. How many pairs of chromosomes are in the genome of a typical person?
1
23
88
7921
15. What is the largest moon in the Solar System?
The Earth's Moon
Europa
Ganymede
Pluto
16. What element do organic compounds contain?
Carbon
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Oxygen
80 Comments
+15
Level 86
Mar 8, 2019
99% percent of quiztakers know what is Andromeda but only 84% percents of them know that Sun is heavier than Earth? Also only 76% knows the pH of water and 66% knows the function of mitochondria. They are very basic knowledges that any middleschool student can easily answer.
+16
Level 73
Mar 8, 2019
Don't forget that the school systems can be widely differ between countries or even states. And from comments under other quizzes I get the impression that for some people here the middle school was long time ago. Do you really remember everything you learned back then?
+15
Level 63
Mar 11, 2019
Good for you that you can remember everything you ever learned in middle school. I wasn't interested in science back then. Most things I know now I looked up myself when that changed. And multiple choice sometimes makes you rethink logical things or things you thought you knew. Yes, our sun is so much bigger than the earth but is it that clear it's heavier? I mean it's mostly made up of gasses which could easily be lighter no matter the enormous size. Just saying.
+9
Level 54
Jun 2, 2019
That was exactly my thinking when I got the earth/sun question wrong. Knowing how vastly greater the sun is only makes me think it could be a "trick" question. :P
+2
Level 74
Jun 2, 2019
Same here - "Hmmm, made of gases...it must be a tricksy question."
+2
Level 32
Jun 10, 2019
That was my initial thought, too, and I obviously got it wrong. I thought it was a trick question.

But if you consider how many times Earth would fit in the Sun, then you realise that our reasoning was totally stupid! lol

+6
Level 82
Mar 26, 2021
Okay, I can see how, if you didn't have a particular interest in or need to know about astronomy, astrophysics and the like that you might think that was a trick question. But I feel like one basic fact should immediately arrest this line of reasoning: if the Sun were lighter than Earth, the Earth wouldn't orbit the Sun, but rather it would be the other way around. The relative mass of astronomical objects may not be general knowledge, but I was under the impression that the fact that more massive things have stronger gravitational pulls was.
+1
Level 48
Aug 23, 2021
Honestly, if I'd put more thought into it, I would have got it right... but I had a complete brain blarp and decided it had to be a trick question, even though it didn't make sense for the Earth to be heavier xD

I got everything else, except the waves question right. Couldn't remember which way it went for longer or shorter waves -.-

+1
Level 33
May 9, 2023
These are actually easier than the "General Knowledge" quizzes. You just didn't pay attention in any kind of class.
+1
Level 45
Sep 5, 2024
Or the class in question was decades ago. Astronomy and microbiology is useless to the vast majority of adults, so it makes sense that we forget those.
+2
Level 83
Mar 11, 2019
This is a trivia site, and as such, much of what is quizzed here is "trivial", as in "not much use in everyday life." How often does an average person use info like the pH of water or the purpose of mitochondria or whether the sun is heavier than the earth (I'm honestly surprised even 84% get that right)? No need to be shocked that not everyone knows these things.
+10
Level 68
Apr 22, 2019
You don't actually need to know the pH of water to get that question right – you only need a vague sense of how the pH scale works. And if there is anyone here high school age or over that can't logic out that the sun is heavier than the Earth, I am very sad about the state of basic science knowledge in the world. I agree with you that not everyone will know all these answers because some are indeed "trivial" (I had no idea about the 5,000-year-old tree, for example), but most of these questions had choices that could be figured out with basic knowledge that in my opinion, should. be. known.
+5
Level 73
Mar 12, 2019
Having taught middle schoolers I can definitely say next to none of them would know these facts. Perhaps that says something about the US school system...
+2
Level 85
Jun 2, 2019
Having taught both high school and middle school science I would say that trivial knowledge of irrelevant facts are not an indicator of anything. Students who end up in the sciences would know these. Adults who don't work in these fields offload any knowledge that's irrelevant to their current jobs or life.

For example, I imagine there is a higher rate of parents getting the chicken pox answer correct than adult non-parents - especially parents who were around before the vaccine. That doesn't make adults smarter than non-parents. It's just trivia.

+1
Level 75
Jun 4, 2019
Unfortunately there are still some geocentrists about
+1
Level 82
Jun 4, 2019
"any middleschool student can easily answer" This is true, but once you leave middle school you have to retain the knowledge. People forget a lot of things if they don't use the knowledge in their daily lives. I got 100%, but there is plenty of knowledge I have forgotten that I once knew in middle school.
+1
Level 72
Jun 5, 2019
I think I remembered everything besides the mandatory year of history, and the german die,das der, den, die grammar. (also a mandatory subject which I didnt choose). Ow and maybe some artmovement stuff (again mandatory which I dropped).

I honestly dont think I remember anything I learned in history class. (Only the stuff I allready knew beforehand) I cant think of anything I learned there now anyway, trying hard to think of something.

(I do like history though, but more about civilisations and not about dates of wars and names of generals etc)

+1
Level 53
Jun 11, 2019
No, 99% of people can guess the right answer from the options provided. Don't interpret multiple choice questions without acknowledging the weakness of the process.
+1
Level 46
Nov 18, 2020
For the pure water one, I think we all confused 0 as the neutral zone.
+1
Level 27
Aug 28, 2021
Basic? We've only just started learning about space and I'm hoping into year 11
+2
Level 83
Mar 8, 2019
Andromeda is a constellation. The Andromeda Galaxy is (unsurprisingly) a galaxy, but it's not the same thing.
+17
Level 77
Jun 4, 2019
If you wanna get pedantic, Andromeda is a character from greek mythology. The Andromeda *constellation* is a constellation. And the Andromeda galaxy is a galaxy. Department of Redundancy Department.
+3
Level 75
Jun 2, 2019
I'm so done with myself. I said The Earth was heavier than the Sun......
+11
Level 62
Jun 2, 2019
perhaps you should start thinking more down to earth...
+1
Level 72
Jun 5, 2019
Get your head out of the clouds
+23
Level 81
Jun 2, 2019
I'm still waiting for my results from 7921 and Me
+1
Level 62
Jun 2, 2019
this is a good joke
+1
Level 74
Jun 2, 2019
Had to think about that one for a minute, but yeah, pretty good one.
+1
Level 69
Jun 2, 2019
Would you please care to explain it to me? I don't understand it.
+7
Level 73
Jun 2, 2019
@NINJAQKk there's a company in the US called 23 and me, which offers the service to analyse your genetic sequence (the 23 chromosomes) and give you information about your ancestry, predisposition to illnesses etc. Kal just replaced the correct answer to the genome question in the quiz with one of the wrong options.
+1
Level 62
Jun 2, 2019
That question about the moon was so wrong in terms of expression...it should be *natural satellite cause it basically asks what is the largest natural satellite of our solar system
+8
Level 70
Jun 2, 2019
A moon is a natural satellite of a planet. All sufficiently large objects in the solar system are natural satellites of something, so the answer if it was changed to natural satellite would be the sun.
+2
Level 33
May 9, 2023
Moons.... are natural satellites..?

They're the same thing..?

+16
Level 57
Jun 2, 2019
Well...

Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!

+4
Level 70
Jun 2, 2019
Just a few nitpicky comments -

The word "heavy" generally refers to weight and not mass so question one should probably ask which has the higher mass, not which is heavier.

A better answer to question 8 would probably be to conduct aerobic respiration, as energy is not really "generated" per se, it is released from the glucose and oxygen.

An amount of energy is always measured in joules (or some equivalent unit such as electron-volts or kilowatt-hours), so for question 12 the question could be phrased more generally (though it is fine as it is).

Overall a very good quiz though.

+4
Level 81
Jun 2, 2019
"Heavy" is used in this sense commonly, though, even by astrophysicists. It's commonly understood what is meant by it is how heavy something would be given its mass if it were at normal Earth gravity.
+4
Level 70
Jun 2, 2019
It was a very nitpicky comment.
+1
Level 60
Jul 26, 2022
I second these actually
+3
Level 52
Jun 2, 2019
The mitichondria is the powerhouse of the cell
+5
Level 66
Jul 31, 2019
The mitochondria ARE the powerhouseS of the cell
+1
Level 80
Jun 2, 2019
Although it's mostly accepted that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, the real answer is no one knows (for sure) because it is unmeasurable. It could be 4.6 or 4.4 billion, for example.
+6
Level ∞
Jun 2, 2019
We know how old the Earth is to within a reasonable degree of approximation.
+3
Level 65
Aug 23, 2021
We don't know this for sure. It is based on a theoretical scientific process with no way to verify it is accurate. Carbon dating or any other method used to date the earth is proven to be accurate for items that are relatively "young" because we can look to historical records to verify them, but for items that are millions or billions of years old, there is no evidence by which our dating methods can be verified.

The modern scientific community has a bad habit of accepting unproven scientific theories like this as fact. It would be better to re-word this question something like, "What is accepted by the scientific community as the best approximate age of earth?" The wording of the question here is not correct. They really don't "know" for sure.

+3
Level 79
May 4, 2022
I mean, do I know you're not a penguin? I've got a lot of evidence throughout my life that penguins aren't able to type and aren't able to form complex ideas about the derivations of the age of the Earth... but on the other hand, I've never met you. Plus, science can only base its knowledge on the penguins its observed. Is it truly impossible that there's a hyper-intelligent breed of penguins secretly taking JetPunk quizzes? Science can't definitively prove that you're not a penguin. "Is ctleng76 a penguin?" I suppose the answer is: nobody knows.
+2
Level 82
Sep 19, 2022
This is the most technical explanation for the stupidest thing. Thank you Dimby, you made my day.
+1
Level 66
May 9, 2023
I agree that the answer should be 'no one knows.' We can show through documentation that a person is a certain age, or when the Coliseum was built. We can use rings to find out the age of a bristlecone pine tree. But with the Earth we are only guessing within a half a billion years? If we could use a half a billion units of anything to approximate the size of anything else, we'd never get any question wrong. How much money does quizzicalguy have in the bank? Something between $1 and $500,000,000. Correct!
+2
Level 73
Jun 2, 2019
No one knows how old the universe is. No one. This answer is just someone's best guess. B.S. question.
+8
Level 70
Jun 2, 2019
This is about how old the Earth is, not the universe. We know how old the Earth is, as QM said above, to a reasonable degree of approximation, and the same is thought to be true of the universe though I recently saw an article saying new evidence suggests that it may be significantly younger (significantly in this context means around 12.5 billion years instead of 13.8 billion years).
+1
Level 44
Jun 2, 2019
The age of the Earth is very debatable. Because carbon dating has been proven to be very faulty, it is not a reliable source to date anything.
+8
Level 78
Aug 23, 2021
Lucky we don't use carbon dating to determine the age of the Earth, then.
+2
Level 70
Jun 3, 2019
Only missed Ganymede and Sodium. I for some reason remember it being a mineral also, just like calcium is a mineral.
+1
Level 70
Jun 3, 2019
Yes, Sodium is a mineral.
+4
Level ∞
Jun 3, 2019
Grrr.... I guess so. Sodium is a mineral in the dietary sense. It isn't a mineral in the sense the question was asking. Here's a list of all mineral species. Sodium is absent. In any case, changed the answer to Lithium to avoid further discussion.
+1
Level 82
Jun 4, 2019
Sodium is not a mineral.
+1
Level ∞
Apr 11, 2023
Yeah, I know. I just want less whining.
+2
Level 67
May 9, 2023
Seems like Quizmaster is whining about some genuine good faith comments...
+1
Level 72
Jun 5, 2019
Only got the mineral one wrong, couldnt think straight anymore..
+5
Level 61
Oct 29, 2020
What element do organic compounds contain? is a really terrible way to set up a question as organic compounds can have all of the 4 elements mentioned. They are described as generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen bonds.
+1
Level 79
Mar 17, 2021
My study of chemistry at university was many years ago, but from what I remember, there is no official definition of organic compound. I'd say any chemist would agree that carbon is definitely required, and hydrogen is usually required. If you have a covalent bond between carbon atoms and something in the place of hydrogen, I'm not sure if that's still organic or not. Certainly something chemists can discuss and likely disagree upon.
+2
Level 71
Aug 23, 2021
I took organic chemistry last semester. There's no widely agreed upon definition, but the way I learned it and what most scientists (as well as Wikipedia) seem to agree on is that any compound with C-H bonds is considered organic. Thus, something like methane is considered organic and something like carbon dioxide is inorganic.

That being said, the "backbone" of organic compounds is always carbon... so I think the question is okay (although I agree that getting rid of "hydrogen" as an option might make it better).

+1
Level 80
Feb 21, 2021
Only got the largest moon wrong!
+1
Level 57
Aug 23, 2021
You want science, crack a bible. That's the only science you need.
+6
Level 81
Aug 24, 2021
If you want to be stuck in the Bronze Age.
+1
Level 33
May 9, 2023
So.... you're saying we should use fire and wood for tools instead of coming up with new, innovative ways to create new things? Cool.
+1
Level 46
Aug 24, 2021
16/16, first try :)
+1
Level 80
Sep 13, 2022
You can just use 1--no need for the AD. If it was BC/BCE, you could just use that as the indicator.
+2
Level 68
Dec 16, 2022
Aren't both AD/BC and BCE/CE correct?
+1
Level 18
May 9, 2023
I saw "What is more dense, Hot air or cold air?" for that question. sigh
+1
Level 87
May 9, 2023
intersting...very good
+2
Level 34
May 9, 2023
well, organic compounds include carbon as well as hydrogen...
+1
Level 51
May 9, 2023
Chem grad student here

If you ask different chemists what an organic compound is, they will give you different answers. Some will say that carbon alone makes something organic. However, I find that this definition is too broad as it would include cyanide ions, carbon dioxide, graphite and diamonds. I'm of the opinion that you have to have both carbons and hydrogens to be considered organic.

Regardless, we care more about the material properties these days than the categories they occupy. As such, there is much overlap between fields and where to define the categories is not so clear cut.

+1
Level 72
May 11, 2023
Earth is only about 12-15k years old people
+2
Level 56
May 11, 2023
source?
+1
Level 68
May 25, 2023
lol, no
+1
Level 46
May 30, 2023
Theoretically I think all organic compounds contain hydrogen too, but I know what you mean. Cool quiz
+1
Level 70
Dec 7, 2023
Nobody really knows how old the Earth is.
+1
Level 66
Feb 14, 2024
We can't say it's exactly 4.5 billion years, but it's something around that. We have crystals on Earth that we can date to be 4.4 billion years old.
+1
Level 33
May 11, 2024
in number 10 i answered no one knows
+1
Level 32
Jun 17, 2024
"Organic" in chemistry is a very loose term: most of compounds you call organic contain all 4 of those elements
+1
Level 42
Oct 8, 2024
Great quiz. That is a very old tree.