Q 01/05

Alchemist Hennig Brand boiled down buckets of urine hunting for gold and instead found which glowing element?

A) Radium

B) Promethium

C) Phosphorus

D) Magnesium

Answer · why

C) Phosphorus

Phosphorus glowed pale green in the jar, so Brand named it after the Greek for light-bearer. He needed about 1,500 gallons of urine to make just 120 g...

Q 02/05

Which piece of kitchen equipment is traditionally credited to a woman alchemist of ancient Alexandria?

A) Bain-marie

B) Dutch oven

C) Mason jar

D) Tagine

Answer · why

A) Bain-marie

The bain-marie, or Mary's bath, is traditionally credited to Mary the Jewess, whom later writers called the first true alchemist of the Western world.

Q 03/05

Chinese alchemists hunting for a potion of immortality are thought to have stumbled on which explosive mixture?

A) Gelignite

B) Dynamite

C) Thermite

D) Gunpowder

Answer · why

D) Gunpowder

Gunpowder probably began as a lab accident: old Chinese texts warn of mixtures of sulfur, saltpeter and honey that burned experimenters' hands and fac...

Q 04/05

Johann Böttger, an alchemist jailed by Augustus the Strong to make gold, instead gave Europe which luxury material?

A) Lacquer

B) Porcelain

C) Damask

D) Cut crystal

Answer · why

B) Porcelain

Porcelain was the next best thing to gold for a monarch always short of money: Böttger's hard-paste recipe of 1708 led to the Meissen factory two year...

Q 05/05

Which English scientist wrote far more about alchemy than about optics or physics, the fields that made him famous?

A) Edmond Halley

B) Isaac Newton

C) John Flamsteed

D) Christopher Wren

Answer · why

B) Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton's alchemy papers were judged unfit to publish and resurfaced at a 1936 auction, where economist John Maynard Keynes bought many and calle...