Last Word Challenge - The Ultimate Science Quiz
September 24, 2010 9:34 AM Subscribe
Last Word Challenge - The Ultimate Science Quiz
New Scientist have run a column called the Last Word for past fifteen years, featuring questions like Do upside down bats get dizzy?, What's the capacity of the human brain in gigabytes? and Why can't elephants jump?. We worked with the editors at New Scientist to take 120 of the best questions and turn them into a quiz called The Last Word Challenge - and you can adapt them into your own quizzes as well!
This project was done by my company, Six to Start, and it's been a lot of fun picking the best questions from all of the columns. I used to be a neuroscientist, so I consider myself reasonably scientifically literate, but a lot of the common-sense answers you might expect (e.g. why is it easier to stay upright on a moving bicycle than a stationary one? Hint - it's not gyroscopic effects!) turn out to be wrong.
We're pretty sure it's one of the few quizzes online where all the answers have been exhaustively fact-checked, and it's guaranteed to provide even the most well-read scientists with some surprising moments.
New Scientist have run a column called the Last Word for past fifteen years, featuring questions like Do upside down bats get dizzy?, What's the capacity of the human brain in gigabytes? and Why can't elephants jump?. We worked with the editors at New Scientist to take 120 of the best questions and turn them into a quiz called The Last Word Challenge - and you can adapt them into your own quizzes as well!
This project was done by my company, Six to Start, and it's been a lot of fun picking the best questions from all of the columns. I used to be a neuroscientist, so I consider myself reasonably scientifically literate, but a lot of the common-sense answers you might expect (e.g. why is it easier to stay upright on a moving bicycle than a stationary one? Hint - it's not gyroscopic effects!) turn out to be wrong.
We're pretty sure it's one of the few quizzes online where all the answers have been exhaustively fact-checked, and it's guaranteed to provide even the most well-read scientists with some surprising moments.
i don't know anything! but this was a lot of fun.
posted by sawdustbear at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2010
posted by sawdustbear at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2010
A bit more feedback... it always seemingly asks the same questions in the same sequence. That's not much fun if you visit it, do a few, and come back later to do more.
If there are 120 questions, I'm certainly not going to do them all in one go. So either picking questions randomly or starting again where you left off would make this more enjoyable for me.
posted by philipy at 5:58 PM on September 27, 2010
If there are 120 questions, I'm certainly not going to do them all in one go. So either picking questions randomly or starting again where you left off would make this more enjoyable for me.
posted by philipy at 5:58 PM on September 27, 2010
Could you provide citations to the research with the answer?
posted by Blasdelb at 9:51 PM on October 2, 2010
posted by Blasdelb at 9:51 PM on October 2, 2010
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posted by philipy at 5:30 PM on September 24, 2010