🧪 Chemistry 🧪
True or False - sterling steel is pure silver
False - it contains up to 7.5% copper
After receiving his PhD in biophysics from Harvard University in 1967, Mario Capecchi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2007 for creating variants of what lab animals with certain genes turned off?
Mice
What is the name of the genetic structure in a cell, typically circular in bacteria, that can replicate independently of the chromosomes and which is commonly used as a vector in genetic engineering?
Plasmid
Although it's too faint to be seen by the unaided eye, what star is, at 4.2 million light years away, the closest star to us other than the Sun?
Proxima Centauri
Sometimes called the "fire of the desert," what is the national gemstone of Australia?
Opal
The chemical formula of water is H2O; the compound H2O2, which can be used in hair bleaches, is typically referred to by what two-word name?
Hydrogen peroxide
In mathematical physics, Minkowski space is a four-dimensional space consisting of three-dimensional Euclidean space and which other quantity?
Time
Which E-term describes an organism that gets heat from its environment (as opposed to one that creates heat for itself)?
Ectotherm
About 2.8 billion miles from the Sun and known for its powerful wind storms, which planet is the only one you can’t see from Earth with the naked eye?
Neptune
In what place would you find all of the following officially named rocks? Adirondack, Barnacle Bill, Bathurst Inlet, Big Joe.
Mars
Two different employees of General Electric, Irving Langmuir (1932) and Ivar Giaever (1973), have been awarded the Nobel Prize, one in Physics and one in which other scientific subject?
Chemistry
With a title that’s basically a synonym for “paradigm shift,” what 1989-1994 NBC sci-fi show starring Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, concerns a physicist who involuntarily travels through spacetime?
Quantum Leap
Born in 1822, which French chemist has a type of food preservation process (typically used for items like milk and juice) named after him and is recognized by many as the “Father of bacteriology” and the “Father of microbiology?”
Louis Pasteur
The third-oldest astronomical clock in the world was first installed in 1410 in what city in the heart of Europe?
Prague
What Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC created one of the first evidence-based systems of geology, theorizing that the Earth changes over time in ways one individual cannot see? He is known for being a student of Plato, and for writing such books as “Poetics.”
Aristotle
Carbon fixation, reduction, carbohydrate formation, and regeneration are the four basic phases of what photosynthesis cycle that's presumably pretty good friends with a comic strip tiger?
Calvin cycle
In particle physics, which property is a half-integer for fermions and an integer for bosons?
Spin
What is the only part of the human body to have absolutely no blood supply? Due to the lack of blood vessels, it is virtually transparent.
Cornea
What astronomy term is used to describe the phenomenon during the year when Earth is at its farthest point from the Sun? It happens in July.
Aphelion
As is commonly known, diamonds are made entirely of Carbon. With a single guess, name both of the two elements that make up rubies.
Aluminum and Oxygen
What 19th-century “P” French chemist discovered the enzyme diastase and the carbohydrate cellulose, leading to further exploration of chemical processes that happened at the cellular level?
Anselme Payen
In physics, what term describes the study of motion without considering cause? So, studying the motion of a thing without thinking about the forces involved?
Kinematics
The first published photograph of bacteria was made in 1877 by German physician and microbiologist Robert Koch. The bacteria in question causes what disease?
Anthrax
One of the great mysteries of the universe and puzzling questions in astronomy is why the magnetosphere of what planet in our solar system rotates at a rate close to that at which its clouds rotate?
Saturn
Which geological time period that began 358.9 million years ago, during which large coal deposits formed, has a name derived from the Latin for "coal-bearing?"
Carboniferous