jefflundberg.com/blog

Americans are more scientifically literate than Europeans or Japanese, but 70 percent of them cannot understand the New York Times science section, according to a Michigan State University researcher. Are you scientifically literate? Here are some of the questions you should be able to answer:

• Provide a correct open-ended definition of a molecule
• Provide a correct open-ended definition of DNA
• Disagree that “Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria”
• Disagree that “Lasers work by focusing sound waves”
• Agree that “Electrons are smaller than atoms”
• Indicate that the Earth goes around the Sun once each year through a pair of closed-ended questions
• Disagree that “The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs”
• Disagree that “All radioactivity is man-made”
• Indicate that light travels faster than sound
• Disagree that “Radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling it”
• Agree that “The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future”
• Agree that “The center of the Earth is very hot”
• Agree that “The earth is over 4.5 billion years old”

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.