Wanna take a test.... just because..?

1: The ovaries produce:b

2: Mushrooms belong to which of following kingdoms:

3: Muscles attach to bone with:

4: The digestive system includes the:

5: Blood leaving the lungs is:

6: Vitamin A can be found in:

7: Mitosis is a process of:

8: Animal cells have all the following parts EXCEPT:

9: The movement of particles from an area of high concentration to an area of lower concentration is called:

10: The freezing point on the Fahrenheit scale is:

11: Electric charges can be:

12: Refraction occurs when

13: Hydrogen has the atomic number 1. This means that hydrogen has:

14: In their ecosystem, green plants require:

15: Organisms that eat other organisms are called:

A person with homozygous genes for eye color would have the pattern

17: The metric measurement for mass is:

18: Kinetic energy is the energy

19: A storage battery is an example of:

20: A step-up transformer

21. Simple magnets have:

22: Passing sunlight through a prism

23: Molecules are created when

24: Humidity is:

25: The vernal equinox is:

Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : Formatting errors

M'kay..... guess that's a 'no.'

That looks like the basic sort of toolkit of science knowledge you should have to graduate from high school. Instead, we have half the population not knowing that the Earth takes a year to make a trip around the Sun.

It is basic science, which is why I'm surprised that no one wants to take it.Half the population doesn't know that it takes the Earth a year to go around the sun? *wonders what they think a year constitutes*

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Faith is not a pathetic sentiment, but robust, vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. You cannot see Him just now, you cannot fully understand what He's doing, but you know that you know Him." -Oswald Chambers

You'd be surprised to find out how many people graduated from high school that don't know the most basic things about stuff. While I was a TA for college physics, I had trouble trying to make people to understand that stars are not the size of golf balls. An honest to god college student asked me "if stars are like the sun, how come they appear so small?" I wanted to bang my head into the wall and pass out for the rest of the day right then.That's not to mention the quizzes and tests I had to grade.

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Probably the time from one Rose Bowl game to the next. Check out http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/c7/c7h.htm , particularly the tables, if you want a hint as to how bad the situation really is.http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/append/c7/at07-10.xls is the most pertinent table

Stop it! You're kidding, right? That's really bad...

I know America has lapsed woefully behind most of the civilized world in the last 40-50 years or so, but that's simply unacceptable. There is a noticeable disparity when we think that the average Japanese student takes Calculus in about the 5^th grade, while most Americans never touch Calculus in their entire lives!I guess one could make the argument that Calculus is only pertinent to somebody directly involved on a job that requires advanced mathematics, such as architecture or astronomy, but not knowing basic science seems particularly disturbing. I've always struggled with mathematics, but I've manage to stay in the upper range with writing, science, history, and the like.

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Faith is not a pathetic sentiment, but robust, vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. You cannot see Him just now, you cannot fully understand what He's doing, but you know that you know Him." -Oswald Chambers

Nope. I had to actually climb up a ladder and drop a bowling ball and a tennis ball to demonstrate that all "stuff" fall at the same rate (I couldn't use the word acceleration for fear of more stupid questions) for some people to believe me. One time, someone asked what would happen to a bullet if you shoot it completely horizontal to the ground. Even after I did all the calculations on the board, there were still some people unwilling to believe that a bullet if shot completely parallel to the ground would hit the ground at the same time as the gun if I were to just drop it from the same height.That was all just basic kinematics. When we got to the chapter on cosmology, I almost pulled all my hair out trying to make them understand parallax. I didn't believe it then and I still don't believe that relativity should be taught in basic college physics... or any level of physics below the level where you actually learn the mathematics behind the theory. Professors don't know what kind of pain the TA's go through with trying to help the english and history majors.Ok, may be I shouldn't blame them that much. These were english majors who had to take the most basic of all science classes. Still, the level of ignorance was astounding.On the other hand, though, you should have seen all the points I took off for bad grammar and spelling on their papers. Heck, you should have seen the stuff on their papers.On a different note, here is a funny but sad story. One time another TA started laughing while grading a paper. We were in the TA office. We asked him what and he started reading the section of the paper that made him laugh. Can't remember the specifics, but it had something to do with stuff falling. It was the stupidest thing I ever heard. Worse, the grammar sounded like someone just came straight from China. We all had a laugh about it. Suddenly, he stopped laughing and it looked almost like he was embarrassed. Later on, he told us that the girl that wrote that paper was sitting there being tutored by one of the TA's. Man, did we feel bad.Anyway, my experiences as a college TA were mostly responsible for why I almost always avoid talking about science to people. Never know when it's one of those that still thinks the world is flat.

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Actually, that's only part of the truth. Much of the rest of the world use the english ed system. In it, you pick from very early on which field you go into and then you don't learn anything else. This is one reason why some international students have trouble with simple english or math classes in the states. They've been made to specialize in a certain area while american students continue to take the general courses well into their college years.This is the main reason why comparasons of test scores between american students and other students don't really tell the whole story. Test scores in math are compared between american students who have been taking general courses all their lives and hong kong students who have taken nothing but math since 5th grade. It's simply not fair.While I was in college, I met a few students from hong kong. There was one in particular who couldn't even compose a simple paper for his world lit class. He told me that he had been in math and science classes all his life. There was another student who had trouble with basic trig and calc. He could crank out a very well written paper in a couple hours, though.So, on that note, I don't think american students are that far behind internationally. I think the only problem we have is there are too many fundamentalist parents and communities who want their children exposed to dangerous ideas (aka science) as late as possible. I just thought it's such a strange coincidence that most of the people who had trouble believing basic concepts in physics like kinematics and such were also the ones that tried to save people's souls from eternal damnation.

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Heh. This being the web anyone could google for the answers!However, I freely admit to having to crib up on the Eye Colour and Vitamin A questions. I always get those vitamins mixed up. It's probably because, like most people, I'm bombarded with TV ads telling me which one I'm not eating enough of....Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

I think I have you beat. While a TA for college chem I had to help one of the school's athletes (relatively big team for college division). To get started I had to help him understand basic conversions. So I am doing this conversion which involved time and wrote out the equation converting this hypothetical time in hours down to seconds (in a few steps).He was very troubled and asked how I knew that. So I explained how each thing cancels each other out (nominator-denominator). And he still looked pained and said "No, how do you know THAT?" I looked at the equation and couldn't figure out what he was talking about. So I asked him to be more specific.He looked at me in complete bewilderment and asked "How do you know there are 60 minutes in an hour?"

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

Don't you just love stoichiometry?

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I had the same trouble with conversions when I was a tutor for chemistry. Just basic unit conversions. I don't think you can make it any more basic than using the money analogy: 4 quarters in a dollar, you have 10 dollars, how many quarters? They didn't understand that 4 quarters and one dollar are measuring the exact same concept (i.e. money) with different units, which means when you multiply 10 dollars by the ratio 4Q/1D you are really multiplying it by 1.I thought this was all just going to be a 30 second review, but it turned into an entire class lesson, and kept popping up throughout the rest of the sessions.Then I tried to explain to them that stoichiometry is subtlely different because you aren't just changing units, but trying to figure out how much product is produced from reactants. So you know with the formula2H2 + O2 --> 2H20Assuming H2 is the limiting reactant, and you have x many moles of H2, how many moles of H20 is produced.Well, you end up doing the same type of math as unit conversion, but it isn't unit conversion since 2H2/2H20 aren't measuring the same underlying substance or concept.The moral of the story once I tried to explain this all hell broke loose and that took about another 2 sessions before they understood it (or maybe I just gave up, I forget now.)

I remember one time I actually told them to "trust me on it" and went on with other materials.My biggest complaint was the kind of grammar I encountered. Papers I graded that were supposed to be written by english majors looked like stuff from high school. Some were very good, but some were terrible. I remember one time I saw the word "nowindays" instead of "nowadays". I circled it in red and took a point off. The next day, that little red circle with the -1 point turned into a 10-20 minute debate about whether "nowindays" or "nowadays" was correct. Being soft-hearted, I finally told her I'd give her back the point and in return she'd have to go to her english prof and ask him if it was one or the other. She never got back to me on that.

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