How Scientifically Literate Are You?

I think an interesting item is tha 77% of people knew that the continents had been moving for millions of years. I wonder how many people held their nose and marked this question the way a scientist would mark it.For example, I am guessing that Faith does not believe that the earth is millions of years old. Yet she marked the correct answer to this question.

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I missed one, but unlike many here I don't work in any scientific field and I spent just a few semesters in college.I would guess that many of my peers would score much lower, based on my personal experience.*sigh*

Which one?Was it the gases in air question?That is the one that caught out a couple of others I have shown this to.

Yes - I out-thought myself on that one.

Am I the only one surprised that the answer to the fracking question was natural gas? Not that it's the wrong answer, it isn't, but I thought the economics are driven by oil and that natural gas is just a welcome byproduct. I was expecting to see oil in the list of answers, not natural gas.I don't know what answer I might have given to some of the questions as a kid in the 1960's. Nanotechnology didn't exist and bacterial resistance wasn't a problem that was receiving any widespread attention. The same was true of greenhouse gases, and global cooling seemed as likely as global warming.--Percy

Ditto, . . . I remembered hydrogen being 'number one' on the Periodic Table of Elements, so I erroneously thought hydrogen was the correct answer.My, and unfortunately early 1900's dirigible technology's wrong choice . . . oh the humanity. Edited by dronester, : No reason given.

I was disappointed that they did not have the correct answer for the function of red blood cells ("provide food and shelter for Plasmodium falciparum parasites"). Oh well.

Excellent point.I think that the prefix nano- gives a strong enough hint to answer the question nanotech questionn. And as I recall, at least two of the answers to the bacterial resistance question seemed pretty silly.

Actually I wouldn't have gotten the fracking question except for the fact that my wife has an American friend who protests it. I wouldn't have had a clue on my own and I still wasn't totally certain it was natural gas. A good few of my (mostly European colleagues) didn't have a clue either.

I got 100%Girlfriend missed the atmospheric gas question.Interesting that Faith obviously answered questions correctly that she doesn't actually believe to be accurate. I wonder how many people do that?

With natural gas at $4 and crude oil around $90, it is indeed oil that most fracking is going after. The fracking of 6 or 8 years ago in North Texas and Pennsylvania found so much natural gas that we North Americans are oversupplied with it at present.Gas isn't even a welcome byproduct in some situations, say, in places in North Dakota. There aren't pipelines yet to collect it, so many operators either burn it (legally) or just let it escape (illegally).

Fracking is a big political deal in North Carolina right now. Apparently there is just enough natural gas suspected to be here to fight about the pros and cons. There is no doubt in my mind that the state is going to screw it up on regulating fracking.Any how, the local public radio has somebody on every other week on some side of the fracking issue.I think this is largely a US issue.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I did notice they had one question wrong. The one on plate tectonics is technically wrong.. because not all continents are moving further apart. North American and North Asia are getting closer together, as well as south America and southern asia.