Q 01/05

Barium compounds are packed into fireworks to make them burn with which bright color?

A) Red

B) Green

C) Purple

D) Orange

Answer · why

B) Green

Green is barium's signature flame color, so reliable that chemists use it as a quick test for the element in an unknown sample.

Q 02/05

Which nut, also famous for its high selenium content, naturally contains small amounts of the metal barium?

A) Brazil nut

B) Macadamia nut

C) Cashew nut

D) Pine nut

Answer · why

A) Brazil nut

Brazil nut kernels carry traces of barium, but the amount is far too small to cause any of the sickness that larger doses of the metal bring on.

Q 03/05

Patients swallow a barium sulfate drink, nicknamed a barium meal, so their gut shows on which medical scan?

A) MRI scan

B) Ultrasound

C) X-ray

D) PET scan

Answer · why

C) X-ray

X-ray beams cannot pass through barium sulfate, so the coated esophagus and stomach stand out clearly on the finished image.

Q 04/05

Barium takes its name from the ancient Greek word barys, which has which meaning?

A) Heavy

B) Bright

C) Hidden

D) Bitter

Answer · why

A) Heavy

Heavy describes barium's ores rather than the metal: barite is so dense for a rock that miners knew it as heavy spar.

Q 05/05

Marie and Pierre Curie discovered which glowing radioactive element hiding alongside barium in uranium ore?

A) Polonium

B) Radon

C) Thorium

D) Radium

Answer · why

D) Radium

Radium behaves so much like barium, its neighbor in the periodic table, that separating the two in the ore proved very difficult.