Q 01/05

Which phenomenon, where light above a threshold frequency frees electrons from metal, earned Einstein's 1921 Nobel?

A) Compton effect

B) Zeeman effect

C) Photoelectric effect

D) Hall effect

Answer · why

C) Photoelectric effect

The photoelectric effect, not relativity, is what Einstein's Nobel citation names, and Millikan got his own 1923 Nobel for measuring it.

Q 02/05

How many prisoners were in the Bastille, already slated for demolition, when Parisians stormed it in July 1789?

A) Seven

B) Seventy

C) Two hundred

D) One thousand

Answer · why

A) Seven

Seven inmates, four forgers, two mentally ill men and a count jailed at his own family's request, were all the Bastille held that day.

Q 03/05

Whose X-ray image of DNA, Photo 51, was shown to James Watson without her permission before the double-helix paper?

A) Barbara McClintock

B) Rosalind Franklin

C) Dorothy Hodgkin

D) Marie Curie

Answer · why

B) Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin's Photo 51 was actually taken by her student Raymond Gosling; Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel for the structure, and...

Q 04/05

Which non-stick polymer was found by accident at DuPont in 1938, when a gas cylinder held a waxy white solid instead?

A) Nylon

B) Bakelite

C) Kevlar

D) Teflon

Answer · why

D) Teflon

Teflon, which Roy Plunkett found when his gas cylinder had quietly polymerised, has one of the lowest coefficients of friction of any solid.

Q 05/05

Which blood type is the universal red-cell donor, the one reached for in an emergency before the patient has been typed?

A) O positive

B) O negative

C) AB negative

D) AB positive

Answer · why

B) O negative

O negative is rationed: guidelines restrict it to O negative patients, women who might be pregnant and emergencies where typing is impracticable.