Q 01/05

Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics especially cited his discovery of the law of which effect?

A) Compton effect

B) Zeeman effect

C) Photoelectric effect

D) Seebeck effect

Answer · why

C) Photoelectric effect

The photoelectric effect, not relativity, is what Einstein's Nobel citation names, and Millikan won the 1923 Nobel partly for his work on it.

Q 02/05

How many prisoners were inside the Bastille when Parisians stormed it in July 1789?

A) Seven

B) Thirty

C) Two hundred

D) One thousand

Answer · why

A) Seven

Seven inmates were all the Bastille held, and Lafayette later sent the fortress's main key to George Washington, whose Mount Vernon home still display...

Q 03/05

Whose DNA research produced Photo 51, the X-ray image Maurice Wilkins showed James Watson before the double-helix paper?

A) Barbara McClintock

B) Rosalind Franklin

C) Dorothy Hodgkin

D) Marie Curie

Answer · why

B) Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin captured Photo 51 with her PhD student Raymond Gosling, but she died in 1958, four years before Watson, Crick and Wilkins won the No...

Q 04/05

Which polymer was discovered by accident at DuPont in 1938, when a gas cylinder turned out to hold a white solid?

A) Nylon

B) Bakelite

C) Kevlar

D) Teflon

Answer · why

D) Teflon

Teflon's first job was in the Manhattan Project, coating valves and seals against corrosive uranium hexafluoride, years before non-stick pans.

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 the universal red-cell donor, but plasma rules run in reverse, so type AB is the universal plasma donor.