135 Science and Nature Trivia Questions and Answers
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Easy Science and Nature Trivia Questions
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Which evolutionary process can make helpful inherited traits more common?
Natural selection
Natural selection can make helpful inherited traits more common because individuals with those traits tend to survive and reproduce more, passing them to their offspring. Over many generations, this process can produce adaptations such as camouflage.
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What is the chemical symbol for silver?
Ag
Silver is represented by Ag, derived from the Latin word argentum.
-
Which physicist developed the theory of relativity?
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity.
-
The SI unit of electric potential honours which Italian scientist?
Alessandro Volta
The volt, the SI unit of electric potential, is named for Alessandro Volta.
-
What is the name for the larval stage of a frog?
Tadpole
A tadpole typically begins life with gills and a tail, then develops lungs and legs during metamorphosis. Its adult form is adapted for life on land as well as in water.
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The centigrade temperature scale honours which Swedish scientist?
Anders Celsius
The Celsius scale is named after Anders Celsius, who proposed it in 1742.
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Antibiotics are medicines designed primarily to treat infections caused by what?
Bacteria
Antibiotics are medicines designed to treat infections caused by bacteria. They do not work against viruses, which is why they cannot treat illnesses such as colds or the flu.
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Which ancient Greek formulated the buoyancy principle?
Archimedes
Archimedes formulated the principle explaining buoyant force in fluids.
-
What does an element's atomic number tell you?
Number of protons
An element's atomic number is the number of protons in each atom's nucleus.
-
What stream of charged particles from the Sun helps cause auroras?
The solar wind
The solar wind blows steadily outward from the Sun. Earth's magnetic field funnels some of those particles down towards the poles, where they collide with atmospheric gases and make them glow, most often the green of excited oxygen.
-
What is the chemical symbol for calcium?
Ca
Calcium is Ca. It is the metal locked into the mineral of bones and teeth, and into limestone, chalk and seashells.
-
Why do stars appear to twinkle when viewed from Earth?
Atmospheric turbulence refracts starlight
Moving pockets of air at different temperatures refract starlight in changing ways. Planets usually twinkle less because their apparent disks average out some of that variation.
-
Which chemical symbol represents iron?
Fe
Iron's symbol Fe comes from its Latin name, ferrum. Iron is the main structural metal in steel and is also essential for hemoglobin in red blood cells.
-
What thin, wispy cloud forms high in the atmosphere?
cirrus
Cirrus clouds are thin, wispy clouds found at high altitudes.
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Why does a person's breath become visible outdoors on a cold day?
Condensation
Water vapor in exhaled air condenses into tiny droplets in the cold air.
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What process makes warmer, less-dense air rise while cooler air sinks?
convection
This circulation drives everyday weather, from sea breezes that form as coastal air heats unevenly to the towering clouds inside a thunderstorm. The same principle, on a vastly slower scale, moves molten rock in Earth's mantle and helps drive the motion of tectonic plates.
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What causes the Coriolis effect?
Earth's rotation
It deflects moving air and water to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere, which is why hurricanes spin counterclockwise north of the equator and clockwise south of it. The effect is zero at the equator and strongest near the poles.
-
What is the chemical symbol for copper?
Cu
Copper is represented by Cu, derived from the Latin word cuprum.
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What tall cloud type is commonly linked with thunderstorms?
cumulonimbus
Cumulonimbus clouds are tall, vertically developed clouds associated with thunderstorms.
-
What puffy, cotton-like cloud often appears in fair weather?
cumulus
Cumulus clouds are rounded and puffy and commonly form in fair weather.
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Who wrote the landmark book On the Origin of Species?
Charles Darwin
Darwin's book presented evolution by natural selection as a mechanism for species change. Alfred Russel Wallace independently developed a similar idea and helped prompt Darwin to publish.
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Which biological group commonly acts as a decomposer in ecosystems?
Fungi
Fungi are widely identified as decomposers in ecosystems, including forests, where they break down organic material.
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What does DNA stand for?
Deoxyribonucleic acid
Deoxyribonucleic acid carries genetic instructions in nearly all living organisms, named for the deoxyribose sugar in its backbone.
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What causes the different colors in a typical fireworks display?
Different metal salts
Heated metal salts emit characteristic wavelengths of visible light.
-
About when did the non-avian dinosaurs go extinct?
About 66 million years ago
The extinction occurred at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods. Evidence points to the Chicxulub asteroid impact as the main trigger, alongside severe environmental disruption.
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What molecule carries hereditary information in most living organisms?
DNA
DNA holds the instructions for building an organism's proteins, written in a four-letter chemical alphabet. It is copied every time a cell divides and passed from parent to offspring, which is why traits run in families.
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Which desert is commonly cited as the driest nonpolar desert on Earth?
Atacama Desert
Parts of Chile's Atacama receive less than a millimeter of rain in an average year. Its dryness results from cold offshore water, subtropical high pressure, and rain-shadow effects from the Andes.
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What is dry ice?
Solid carbon dioxide
Dry ice is the solid form of carbon dioxide rather than frozen water.
-
What causes seasonal changes?
Earth's axial tilt
Earth's axial tilt changes the angle and duration of sunlight received by each hemisphere over the year.
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What role does a green plant usually play in a food chain?
A primary producer
Green plants produce organic food using light energy, so they form the producer level of food chains.
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What force provides the inward acceleration for a planet orbiting the Sun?
Gravity
Gravity attracts masses and provides the inward acceleration that maintains planetary orbits around the Sun.
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Which fossil fuel formed mainly from ancient swamp plants?
Coal
Coal formed from plant material buried in oxygen-poor swamps and transformed by heat and pressure over millions of years. Petroleum and natural gas mostly formed from ancient microscopic marine organisms.
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Paleontologists and archaeologists are often mixed up. What does a paleontologist study?
Fossils of ancient life
Paleontology reconstructs life from the distant past through fossils, which is why dinosaurs belong to paleontologists rather than archaeologists. Archaeology studies the human past through what people made and built, stratigraphy reads rock layers, and ancient scripts fall to epigraphy.
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Which is the hardest naturally occurring mineral on the Mohs scale?
Diamond
Diamond ranks 10, the highest value on the Mohs hardness scale. Its carbon atoms are locked into a very strong three-dimensional crystal lattice.
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What is the relatively calm center of a hurricane called?
The eye
The eye is the central region of a mature tropical cyclone, surrounded by the eyewall's strongest winds.
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What term describes a non-native organism that spreads through a new habitat and damages it?
An invasive species
An invasive species is one carried outside its native range that establishes itself, spreads and causes ecological or economic harm. Introduced species that settle in without doing damage are called naturalized instead.
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The SI unit of force honours which English scientist?
Isaac Newton
The newton, the SI unit of force, was named after Isaac Newton.
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Why does ice float in a glass of water?
Its density is lower than the surrounding liquid's.
Ice's open crystal structure makes it less dense than liquid water.
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The SI unit of energy honours which British physicist?
James Prescott Joule
The joule is named for James Prescott Joule, the Salford brewer's son who showed that heat and mechanical work are interchangeable by churning water with a falling-weight paddle wheel and measuring how much it warmed.
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The SI unit of power honours which Scottish scientist?
James Watt
The watt was named after James Watt, the Scottish engineer.
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What is the chemical symbol for potassium?
K
Potassium is K, from kalium, its Latin name, taken in turn from the Arabic word for the plant ash it was first extracted from. P belongs to phosphorus.
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What travels fastest through air?
Light
Light crosses air at roughly 300,000 kilometres per second; sound manages about 343 metres per second at room temperature, close to a million times slower. That gap is why a lightning flash is seen well before the thunder arrives, and why counting the seconds between them tells you how far away the strike was.
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What kind of measurement is a light-year?
Distance
A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about 9.46 trillion kilometres. Astronomers use it to describe distances between stars and other objects.
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What is lightning?
An electrical discharge
Lightning is a giant electrical discharge in the atmosphere, often within or between storm clouds or to the ground.
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Which metal is widely used for electrical wiring?
Copper
Copper conducts electricity nearly as well as silver at a tiny fraction of the price, and it is soft enough to be drawn into long thin wire without snapping. That combination is why it ended up inside almost every cable in a house.
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What is molten rock called while it is still beneath Earth's surface?
Magma
Molten rock underground is called magma; once it erupts onto the surface, it is called lava. Magma can cool underground to form intrusive igneous rock.
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Which object's gravity has the largest effect on Earth's ocean tides?
Moon
The Moon is much closer to Earth than the Sun, so its tidal effect is stronger despite the Sun's greater mass. The Sun still contributes to tides, producing spring and neap tide patterns with the Moon.
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Mushrooms belong to which biological kingdom?
Fungi
Mushrooms are the visible reproductive structures of certain fungi. Fungi obtain nutrients by breaking down and absorbing organic matter rather than by photosynthesis.
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Which science studies mushrooms, molds and yeasts?
Mycology
Mycology is the study of fungi, from the Greek mykes for mushroom. Fungi form a kingdom of their own and are genetically closer to animals than to plants: they do not photosynthesise, but absorb nutrients from whatever they are growing on.
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What is the chemical symbol for sodium?
Na
Sodium is represented by Na, derived from the Latin word natrium.
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What type of cell carries electrical signals through the nervous system?
Neuron
Neurons communicate using electrical impulses and chemical signals at junctions called synapses. Their long extensions can carry messages over substantial distances in the body.
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How many astronauts walked on the Moon during the Apollo programme?
12
They came from six landing missions between 1969 and 1972. Neil Armstrong was the first to step onto the surface, during Apollo 11, and Gene Cernan closed out the programme as the last, on Apollo 17.
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How many hearts does an octopus have?
3
An octopus has three hearts: two pump blood to its gills and one pumps it around the body.
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What chemical process gives exposed iron its familiar reddish coating?
Oxidation
The reaction needs both oxygen and water to proceed, producing hydrated iron oxide. Unlike the tight oxide layer that protects metals such as aluminum, rust is porous and flakes away, constantly exposing fresh metal underneath so the process never stops on its own.
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Which type of radiation is absorbed especially strongly by the ozone layer?
Ultraviolet radiation
Stratospheric ozone absorbs much of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. This shielding reduces the amount of DNA-damaging UV that reaches Earth's surface.
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How many oxygen atoms are in one ozone molecule?
Three
Ozone is O3, meaning each molecule contains three oxygen atoms.
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Which gas do plants take in for photosynthesis?
Carbon dioxide
Plants take in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and use light energy to make sugars, releasing oxygen as a byproduct.
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Which planet is closest to the Sun?
Mercury
Mercury orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 58 million kilometres. Its year lasts only 88 Earth days.
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Where do most plants get the nitrogen they need?
From the soil, through their roots
Air is about 78 per cent nitrogen, but plants cannot use the gas directly; its triple bond is too strong to break. They take nitrogen up through their roots as nitrate and ammonium dissolved in soil water. Legumes such as peas, beans and clover are the exception, housing bacteria in root nodules that convert nitrogen gas into a usable form.
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Which gas do green plants release during photosynthesis?
Oxygen
Photosynthesis uses light energy to split water molecules apart. The hydrogen goes into building sugar out of carbon dioxide, and the leftover oxygen is released into the air. Nearly all the oxygen we breathe came out of that reaction.
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What state of matter makes up most of the Sun?
Plasma
The Sun is made mostly of plasma, a hot ionized state of matter.
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In a flowering plant, pollination transfers pollen from where to where?
From anther to stigma
Pollination transfers pollen from the anther, the pollen-producing part of a flower, to the stigma. The pollen can then germinate on the stigma and grow a tube toward the ovule for fertilization.
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What is the primary pigment plants use to capture sunlight?
Chlorophyll
Chlorophyll absorbs blue and red wavelengths especially well and reflects more green light, making many leaves appear green. It is embedded in the photosynthetic membranes of chloroplasts.
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What is the approximate pH of pure water at 25 degrees Celsius?
7
A pH of 7 is considered neutral at 25 degrees Celsius because the concentrations of hydrogen and hydroxide ions are equal. Temperature changes can slightly shift the neutral pH.
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Which planet is commonly called the Red Planet?
Mars
Mars looks rusty because it is rusty: its surface dust is rich in iron oxide, which coats the ground and hangs in the thin atmosphere. That blood-coloured tint in the night sky is why the Romans named the planet after their god of war.
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Why does a straw appear kinked at the surface of a drink?
Refraction of light
Light changes direction as it passes between air and the drink.
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What does RNA stand for?
Ribonucleic acid
Ribonucleic acid differs from DNA in using ribose rather than deoxyribose, and uracil in place of thymine.
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What type of rock forms when magma or lava cools and solidifies?
Igneous rock
Igneous rocks form either underground from slowly cooling magma or at the surface from rapidly cooling lava. Granite and basalt are common examples.
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What does a control group provide in an experiment?
A baseline for comparison
A control group gives researchers a reference point for judging the effects of the tested variable.
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Beachcombers who take the hobby seriously call it conchology. What are they collecting?
Seashells
Conchology is the collecting and study of mollusc shells, from the Greek konkhe, meaning mussel or shell. The related science of malacology studies the soft-bodied animals that build the shells.
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What is the SI unit of electric current?
Ampere
The ampere measures the flow of electric charge. Volts measure potential difference, ohms measure resistance, and watts measure power.
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What are the especially high and low tides that occur when the Sun and Moon line up called?
Spring tides
At new and full moon the Sun and Moon pull along the same line, their tidal forces add together, and the gap between high and low water is at its greatest. The name comes from water springing up, not from the season. A week later the two pull at right angles and the range is at its smallest, giving a neap tide.
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What flat, gray cloud layer can cover much of the sky?
stratus
Stratus clouds form broad, flat layers that can make the sky look gray.
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What is the world's tallest tree species?
Coast redwood tree
Coast redwoods can exceed 370 feet and thrive in the foggy coastal climate of northern California. Giant sequoias are generally more massive, but coast redwoods are taller.
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What is the main geological cause of most earthquakes?
Plate movement
Most earthquakes occur when stress built up along faults is released as tectonic plates move. Volcanic activity and human activity can also trigger some earthquakes.
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The aurora borealis is named after the Roman goddess of what?
The dawn
Aurora was the Roman goddess of dawn, and borealis comes from Boreas, the Greek north wind. The name reads as 'dawn of the north'.
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The metal titanium is named after which figures from Greek myth?
The Titans
Martin Heinrich Klaproth named the element in 1795 after the Titans, the older generation of gods known for their strength.
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What supplies the main energy that powers a hurricane?
Warm ocean water
A hurricane runs on heat drawn from ocean water of roughly 26 degrees Celsius or warmer. Evaporation lifts that heat into the storm, where it is released as the vapour condenses. Cut off the warm water, by landfall or by moving over a cooler sea, and the storm weakens quickly.
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In which layer of Earth's atmosphere does most weather occur?
Troposphere
The troposphere is the lowest atmospheric layer and contains most of the atmosphere's water vapor. Rising and sinking air in this layer drives clouds, winds, and storms.
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At sea level, at what temperature does water boil on the Celsius scale?
100 degrees Celsius
At standard atmospheric pressure, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. The boiling point decreases at higher elevations because air pressure is lower.
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Which chemical formula represents water?
H2O
Each water molecule contains two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. The bent shape of the molecule gives water many of its unusual properties.
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What water-cycle process is associated with dew forming overnight?
Condensation
Dew forms when water vapor in the air cools and condenses into liquid water on cooler surfaces overnight. This usually happens when surfaces reach the dew point, the temperature at which the air becomes saturated.
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Which water-cycle process turns liquid water at a lake's surface into a gas?
Evaporation
It happens well below boiling point because only the fastest-moving surface molecules gain enough energy to escape into the air as vapor. That is also why it cools whatever liquid is left behind, the same principle that makes sweat effective at cooling skin.
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Water is unusual because its solid form floats on its liquid. Why?
Ice is less dense than liquid water
When water freezes, hydrogen bonds lock its molecules into an open hexagonal lattice with more empty space than in the liquid, so the same mass takes up about 9 percent more volume as ice. Very few other liquids expand rather than contract as they solidify.
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What is a tornado-like vortex over a lake or sea called?
waterspout
A waterspout is a rotating column of air that forms over a lake or sea, often drawing up water spray. Some waterspouts are tornadoes over water, while others form in fair weather beneath developing clouds.
Medium Science and Nature Trivia Questions
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The SI unit of electric current honours which French scientist?
André-Marie Ampère
The ampere, the SI unit of electric current, honours André-Marie Ampère.
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Under ideal conditions, roughly how much can the fastest-growing bamboo add in a single day?
About 3 feet
The quickest bamboos can put on close to a metre, about three feet, in twenty-four hours, which makes them the fastest-growing plants on Earth. The shoot manages it by stretching cells that are already formed rather than building new ones.
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The SI unit of pressure honours which French scientist?
Blaise Pascal
The pascal, the SI unit of pressure, bears Blaise Pascal's name.
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Which element has the atomic number 6?
Carbon
Carbon is element 6 on the periodic table; boron, nitrogen, and oxygen are neighboring light elements.
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Which gas is chiefly responsible for the fizz in most carbonated drinks?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide dissolves in the drink under pressure and comes back out as bubbles once the bottle is opened and that pressure drops.
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Which astronomer revived the Sun-centered model during the Renaissance?
Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus revived heliocentric astronomy during the Renaissance.
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What substance do coral polyps secrete to build reef skeletons?
Calcium carbonate
The compound is aragonite, a crystal form of calcium carbonate that also makes up limestone and chalk. Individual polyps are only a few millimeters wide, but generations of them building on top of each other's skeletons slowly form an entire reef.
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Corals are most closely related to which other animals?
Jellyfish and sea anemones
Coral polyps are cnidarians, the same group as jellyfish and sea anemones, and they carry the same stinging cells on their tentacles. A reef is the limestone left behind by generations of those polyps, built up over thousands of years.
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Roughly how long did dinosaurs exist before the non-bird lineages died out?
About 165 million years
Dinosaurs appeared in the Triassic around 230 million years ago and the non-bird lineages died out 66 million years ago, a reign of roughly 165 million years. Modern humans have managed about 0.3 million so far.
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In which century did the dodo become extinct?
The 17th century
The dodo was a large flightless pigeon relative found only on Mauritius. Dutch sailors reached the island in 1598, and between hunting and the rats, pigs and monkeys that came ashore with them the bird was gone within decades. The last widely accepted sighting was in 1662.
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Whose 1929 paper established that a galaxy's redshift increases with its distance from us?
Edwin Hubble
Hubble's 1929 paper plotted the distances of galaxies against their redshifts and found the two rise together, the first solid evidence that the universe is expanding. Vesto Slipher had measured many of those redshifts years earlier; the distances were the piece Hubble supplied.
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Which element formed largely before the first stars?
Hydrogen
Hydrogen formed largely in the first few minutes after the Big Bang, before the first stars existed. It remains the most abundant element in the universe, making up roughly 75% of ordinary matter by mass.
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What process turns a cut apple dark once it is left out in the air?
Enzymatic browning
Cutting an apple breaks its cells open and lets an enzyme meet oxygen and the fruit's own phenols, turning them into brown pigments within minutes. Lemon juice slows it because acid and vitamin C get in the way, and so does dropping the slices into cold water, which keeps the oxygen out.
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How does freezing rain form?
Snow melts in a warm layer aloft, then the raindrops freeze the instant they touch a surface that is below freezing
Freezing rain needs a temperature sandwich. Snow falls into a layer of above-freezing air and melts, then passes through air too shallow or too mild to refreeze it, so it arrives as liquid and turns to glaze the moment it lands on a road or a power line. If the cold layer near the ground is deeper, the drops refreeze in mid-air instead and fall as sleet.
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What geological feature intermittently erupts columns of hot water and steam?
Geyser
A geyser is a hot spring with a constriction underground, so pressure builds until the water flashes to steam and throws the column upward. A fumarole vents only steam and gas, and a mud pot bubbles acidic mud.
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The SI unit of frequency honours which German scientist?
Heinrich Hertz
The hertz, the SI unit of frequency, honours Heinrich Hertz.
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Which element is named after the Greek sun god, because it was first detected in sunlight?
Helium
Astronomers found an unexplained yellow line in the Sun's spectrum during the 1868 eclipse and named the new element for Helios. It was not found on Earth until 1895.
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What is the chemical symbol for mercury?
Hg
Mercury is represented by Hg, derived from its Greek name hydrargyrum.
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What is the air doing inside the eye of a mature hurricane?
Sinking, warming and drying as it descends
Air descends through the eye, warming and drying as it sinks, which clears the cloud and leaves the calm blue hole that satellite images show. The violently rising air is in the eyewall immediately outside it, where the strongest winds and heaviest rain sit.
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What makes a halo around the sun or moon?
ice crystals aloft
Halos form when light is refracted and reflected by ice crystals in high clouds.
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Approximately how hot can a lightning channel become?
About 30,000 kelvins
A lightning channel can briefly reach about 30,000 kelvins, hotter than the Sun's visible surface. The surrounding air expands explosively when heated, producing thunder.
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Which scientist is credited with discovering polonium?
Marie Curie
Marie Curie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of polonium in 1898.
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What biological process does a caterpillar undergo as it becomes an adult butterfly?
Metamorphosis
Butterflies go through complete metamorphosis, passing through egg, larva, pupa and adult stages, with the body largely rebuilt inside the pupa.
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What term describes animals that are active mainly at night?
Nocturnal
Nocturnal animals are active at night. Diurnal ones are active by day and crepuscular ones around dawn and dusk, while arboreal describes living in trees rather than any time of day.
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What gives an octopus's blood its blue color?
Copper-based hemocyanin
Octopus blood is blue because its oxygen-carrying hemocyanin is copper-based.
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What is the common name for a bright patch of light that appears beside the Sun when ice crystals hang in the air?
Sun dog
A sun dog is a bright, often faintly rainbow-tinted patch sitting about 22 degrees to the left or right of the Sun, at the same height above the horizon, and they frequently appear in pairs. Flat, plate-shaped ice crystals drifting horizontally in high cloud bend the sunlight sideways to make them. The formal name is a parhelion.
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What is the chemical symbol for lead?
Pb
Lead is represented by Pb, derived from the Latin word plumbum.
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Which combination of optical processes creates a primary rainbow?
Refraction, reflection, and dispersion
Sunlight refracts as it enters a raindrop, reflects from the inside, and disperses into its component colors. The different colors leave the drop at slightly different angles.
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Why does the daytime sky normally look blue?
Rayleigh scattering
Air molecules scatter shorter blue wavelengths more strongly than longer wavelengths.
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What is the chemical symbol for tin?
Sn
Tin is represented by Sn, derived from the Latin word stannum.
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What percentage of the solar system's mass is in the Sun?
About 99.9%
The Sun's mass gives it overwhelming gravitational control over the solar system. All the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets together make up only a small remainder.
-
Metrology is easily mistaken for meteorology. What does metrology actually cover?
The science of measurement
Metrology defines units, maintains the standards everything else is measured against, and states how uncertain any measurement is. It is the field behind the SI base units, including the 2019 redefinition of the kilogram in terms of the Planck constant.
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A steel spoon and a wooden spoon left in the same room are the same temperature, yet the steel one feels colder. Which property of steel explains that?
Thermal conductivity
Steel carries heat away from your skin far faster than wood does, so your hand cools quickly at the point of contact and your nerves report cold. Wood is a poor conductor, so the heat stays near your fingers and the spoon feels closer to body temperature.
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What is Venus's approximate average surface temperature?
About 465 °C
This makes Venus hotter than Mercury even though Mercury sits closer to the Sun, because Venus's thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps heat in a runaway greenhouse effect. Surface pressure is also about 92 times Earth's, similar to the crushing pressure nearly a kilometer under the ocean.
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What makes a cut onion sting the eyes?
Volatile sulfur compounds
Cutting an onion releases volatile sulfur compounds that irritate the eyes.
-
Name tungsten's chemical symbol.
W
Tungsten's chemical symbol is W, derived from its historical name wolfram. The alternatives are also valid one-letter chemical symbols.
Hard Science and Nature Trivia Questions
-
What is a trophic cascade?
A chain of ecological effects caused by changes at a higher feeding level
Removing or restoring a top predator ripples down through the levels below it. The return of wolves to Yellowstone is the best-known example.
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What are isotopes?
Atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons
Isotopes share a proton count, so they are the same element and behave the same chemically, but differ in neutrons and therefore in mass. Atoms that have gained or lost electrons are ions instead.
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Which geological era is commonly known as the Age of Mammals?
Cenozoic Era
The Cenozoic began about 66 million years ago, after the extinction that ended the dinosaurs, and mammals diversified into most of the forms alive today.
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Which physicist identified the atomic nucleus through gold-foil scattering?
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford inferred the atomic nucleus from gold-foil scattering results.
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Which phenomenon occurs when a massive object bends and magnifies light from a more distant object?
Gravitational lensing
A foreground mass curves spacetime and redirects the light passing it, so a background galaxy can appear brightened, distorted, or even repeated as multiple images.
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Why can't the Hubble Space Telescope photograph the Apollo spacecraft on the Moon's surface clearly?
Insufficient angular resolution
Hubble’s angular resolution is not fine enough to distinguish an Apollo spacecraft, which is only a few meters across, from the lunar surface. Its roughly 0.05-arcsecond resolution corresponds to details about 100 meters wide at the Moon.
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What are the two major groups of seed plants?
Gymnosperms and angiosperms
Seed plants are divided into gymnosperms, whose seeds are exposed, and angiosperms, whose seeds develop inside flowers and are usually enclosed in fruits.
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What is the term for a symbiotic relationship in which both organisms benefit?
Mutualism
In mutualism each partner gains something. In commensalism one gains and the other is unaffected, and in parasitism one gains at the other's expense.
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Who developed the induction motor for alternating-current systems?
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla developed the induction motor for alternating-current systems and patented his design in 1888. Its simple, brushless construction helped make AC power practical for widespread use.
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What is the name of the point in an orbit where an object is closest to the Sun?
Perihelion
Perihelion is the closest point to the Sun and aphelion the farthest. Perigee is the equivalent closest point to Earth, and a barycenter is the shared center of mass two bodies orbit.
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Compared with an identical clock at sea level, how does a clock high on a mountain run?
Slightly faster
Gravity slows time, so a clock deeper in the Earth's gravity ticks more slowly than one further out. A mountain-top clock therefore gains on a sea-level one, by nanoseconds a day. Atomic clocks have picked up the difference over a height change of about a foot, and GPS satellites have to correct for it to fix your position.
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What does the endosymbiotic theory propose about the origins of mitochondria and chloroplasts?
They descended from free-living bacteria
The theory holds that free-living bacteria were engulfed by an ancestral cell and became permanent residents. Both organelles still carry their own DNA and divide on their own, which is the strongest evidence for it.
-
What system currently rates U.S. tornado intensity?
Enhanced Fujita Scale
The scale runs from EF0 to EF5 and estimates wind speed from the damage left behind, such as how buildings and trees are torn apart, rather than from direct measurement. It replaced the original Fujita Scale, devised by scientist Tetsuya Fujita, in 2007.
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Which physicist formulated matrix mechanics, the first complete formulation of quantum theory?
Werner Heisenberg
Heisenberg worked it out in 1925 while recovering from hay fever on the island of Helgoland, describing an atom only through quantities that can actually be measured, arranged in arrays. Schrodinger's wave mechanics arrived a year later and the two turned out to be equivalent.
Related lists
Questions from this category also appear gathered together here.
Answered in full
These come up often enough that each one has its own page.
- What is the chemical symbol for potassium?
- What is the term for a symbiotic relationship in which both organisms benefit?
- Layers of earth’s atmosphere does most weather occur?
For younger players
The easiest of these are collected on their own page: Science and Nature trivia questions for kids.
Play it instead of reading it
All 135 are in the game, one at a time, in a random order.
Free, in your browser. No account needed. Science and Nature is one of 30 categories you can pick.