Q 01/05

What is uranium's atomic number?

A) 82

B) 92

C) 94

D) 88

Answer · why

B) 92

Its symbol is U and it sits in the actinide series; it is the highest-numbered element found naturally in significant amounts.

Q 02/05

Which astronomer discovered Uranus, the planet uranium is named after?

A) Halley

B) Herschel

C) Messier

D) Laplace

Answer · why

B) Herschel

Herschel. William Herschel spotted it from his garden in Bath in 1781 and tried to name it George's Star after King George III, but the name did not s...

Q 03/05

Which chemist is credited with discovering uranium in 1789?

A) Antoine Lavoisier

B) Joseph Priestley

C) Carl Wilhelm Scheele

D) Martin Heinrich Klaproth

Answer · why

D) Martin Heinrich Klaproth

Martin Heinrich Klaproth. The Berlin chemist believed the black powder he had made was the new metal itself; it was only an oxide, and pure uranium wa...

Q 04/05

In which mineral was uranium first discovered?

A) Bauxite

B) Pitchblende

C) Chalcopyrite

D) Cinnabar

Answer · why

B) Pitchblende

Pitchblende. The heavy black ore turned out to be more radioactive than the uranium in it could explain, and chasing that puzzle led to the discovery ...

Q 05/05

Whose signed letter of 1939 warned President Roosevelt that uranium could be turned into extremely powerful bombs?

A) Niels Bohr

B) Albert Einstein

C) Enrico Fermi

D) Robert Oppenheimer

Answer · why

B) Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein. The warning was really Leo Szilard's idea: he drafted it and had himself driven out to Einstein's Long Island holiday cottage for the...