Q 01/05

Whose 1890s laboratory notebooks are still so radioactive that they are stored in lead-lined boxes?

A) Marie Curie

B) Ernest Rutherford

C) Wilhelm Röntgen

D) Henri Becquerel

Answer · why

A) Marie Curie

Marie Curie carried test tubes of radioactive material in her pocket and kept them in her desk drawer, admiring their faint glow in the dark. Even her...

Q 02/05

Chemist Karen Wetterhahn died after a drop or two of a compound of which metal soaked through her latex gloves?

A) Lead

B) Mercury

C) Thallium

D) Cadmium

Answer · why

B) Mercury

Mercury, in the form of dimethylmercury, passed through her gloves within seconds and proved fatal in less than a year. Her colleagues then tested oth...

Q 03/05

Chemists pour sulfuric acid into water, never the reverse, because adding water to the acid can do what?

A) Freeze the mixture solid

B) Release chlorine gas

C) Set the bench alight

D) Boil and spatter out

Answer · why

D) Boil and spatter out

Mixing releases so much heat that a little water can boil and spatter out of the container, carrying hot acid with it. Even done the right way round, ...

Q 04/05

Janet Parker became the last person known to die of which disease after it escaped a Birmingham university lab?

A) Smallpox

B) Anthrax

C) Diphtheria

D) Cholera

Answer · why

A) Smallpox

Smallpox virus grown in a research lab on the floor below her darkroom infected her in 1978. An inquiry concluded it most likely travelled up a poorly...

Q 05/05

Which German chemist, blinded in one eye by a lab explosion, has a name that lives on in school lab equipment?

A) Justus von Liebig

B) Emil Erlenmeyer

C) Robert Bunsen

D) Friedrich Wöhler

Answer · why

C) Robert Bunsen

Robert Bunsen lost the sight in his right eye when the toxic compound cacodyl exploded, and he nearly died of arsenic poisoning as well. The burner th...