Q 01/05

Luigi Galvani's 1780s discovery of "animal electricity" came when sparks made the severed legs of which animals twitch?

A) Frogs

B) Rabbits

C) Chickens

D) Mice

Answer · why

A) Frogs

Frogs twitching on his bench convinced Galvani that animals run on electricity, and talk of such "galvanism" helped inspire Mary Shelley's Frankenstei...

Q 02/05

The word "electricity" comes from the Greek name for which material, which attracts light objects after being rubbed?

A) Glass

B) Amber

C) Wool

D) Silk

Answer · why

B) Amber

Amber is "elektron" in Greek, and people around the ancient Mediterranean knew that a rod of it rubbed with cat's fur would pull in feathers.

Q 03/05

Which 18th-century experimenter borrowed a military term to call his linked set of electrical capacitors a "battery"?

A) Joseph Priestley

B) Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

C) Benjamin Franklin

D) Henry Cavendish

Answer · why

C) Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin took the word in 1749 from the military term for weapons working together, and later proposed flying a kite in a storm to show that ...

Q 04/05

In the War of the Currents, Thomas Edison campaigned against which electrical system promoted by George Westinghouse?

A) Direct current

B) Alternating current

C) Wireless transmission

D) Static electricity

Answer · why

B) Alternating current

Alternating current was painted as deadly by Edison's allies, who killed stray dogs with it at public demonstrations, yet it became the standard for p...

Q 05/05

Which layer of Earth, a churning mix of molten iron and nickel, generates the global magnetic field?

A) The crust

B) The mantle

C) The inner core

D) The outer core

Answer · why

D) The outer core

The outer core is stirred by heat escaping from the planet's centre, and the field inside it is about 50 times stronger than the one felt at the surfa...