Online quizzes can be fun, but not always in the way the creators meant.
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You Passed 8th Grade Science |
 Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct! |
So I got a perfect score; I did in fact pass 8th grade science (about a billion years ago). However, I wonder if the people who created the quiz would pass! For example, here is a screen shot of one of their questions:
You tell me. What is the charge on a neuron? As you can see, I guessed they meant "neutron" and I was right. After all, neurons do pass electric charge!
Also, another question was poorly phrased. It was:
8. What causes the tides on Earth?
* The wind currents
* The gravitational pull of the moon
* The tilt of the Earth’s axis
* The speed at which the Earth rotates
While the gravity of the Moon is the main cause of gravitational tides, the Earth’s rotation does play a significant role in tides.
So I got an A+, but I give the quiz writers a C.
Tip o’ the propeller beanie to Ian Musgrave for this.
July 27th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Hey! You should’ve put a spoiler-warning before giving the answers out!
July 27th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Hmmm, yeah. OK, folks, spoilers above!
Now that I look at it, the cartoon they distribute is a little disturbing. I’m guessing the guy on the left is supposed to be primitive man, but it looks more like an Australian aborigine or something. Weird.
July 28th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Just what the heck is a nuclues? I give the quiz writer a D. Besides the spelling errors and vagueness, it is far too brief and does not have one question on methodology. What’s anecdotal evidence? What’s a controlled study? What’s a hypothesis? What’s a p-value? What’s peer review? What’s accreditation?
July 28th, 2006 at 12:46 am
Ha ha!
Answer all the questions incorrectly and you get a different cartoon.
July 28th, 2006 at 12:51 am
…and the guy on the right is, almost as usual (Tarzan, Phantom etc. of our comics), a “white” super dude…;)
BTW, I am wondering, which one of them actually passed the 8th grade science test to level-up and connect with the other one…and since there is a glove involved, its doubtful they could “exchange” any “divine touch” as such…
July 28th, 2006 at 12:54 am
…and the guy on the right in the cartoon is, almost as usual (Tarzan, Phantom etc. of our comics), a “white” super dude…;)
BTW, I am wondering, which one of them actually passed the 8th grade science test to level-up and connect with the other one…and since there is a glove involved, its doubtful they could “exchange” any “divine touch” as such…
July 28th, 2006 at 3:31 am
It’s been almost a year since I checked this quiz the last time and they stillhavenät corrected the typos….
July 28th, 2006 at 4:36 am
I’d care to know how the author of this particular quiz gauges it as being represenative of 8th Grade science. Not tht I’m saying it isn’t; it’s been decades since I was in the 8th Grade. What worries me is that perhaps nowadays it *IS*.
July 28th, 2006 at 5:10 am
Nuclues? May they just spelled “no clues” wrong!
July 28th, 2006 at 5:35 am
I got 7 out of 8 right on the 8th grade science quiz. Although, it didn’t tell me which one I got wrong. Oh well.
For a lark, I took the “How Scorpio Are You?” quiz. The result… “***You are 47% Scorpio***” which is ironic. I was born November 20th. According to the calendar, I’m a Scorpio. So, even though that’s what I’m supposed to be, I’m less than half?
I always thought Astrology was a crock, but now I have proof. One of my “less than critical” friends once told me that I was the “quintessential Scorpio”. I’m going to send her the results of my “quiz”, and a link to BAs Astrology Debunking site.
July 28th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Don’t forget, the Sun also plays a role in the tides.
July 28th, 2006 at 6:14 am
Speaking of tides, I came across " onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/astroblogger.blogspot.com/2006/07/speaking-of-tides.html_br_/');">Ken Ring of PredictWeather. He’s a loooonnng range weather forcaster who uses the Moon to predict weather. On a radio interview he claimed that you get windier weather at times of perigee. Now a quick check of Adelaide weather records suggest that this isn’t true (at least for Adelaide), but could there be some connection with increased tidal force at perigee and wind?
July 28th, 2006 at 6:51 am
No, Berlie, you haven’t been paying attention! Astrology isn’t wrong, the person who made your astrology quiz is wrong! Obviously!
You see, this is how it works. Astrology is perfectly accurate, all the time. If you have the right style of astrology. Which is the right style? Uh… whichever one hasn’t actually been tested yet. And, uh… testing the astrology breaks it. ‘Cause of scientists sending out their unbeliever rays that cancel the effects of the planets and stuff.
July 28th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Ian,
I really doubt the moon’s distance has anything to do with winds on earth, but high onshore winds as well as extremely high or low barometric pressures CAN affect the hight of tides.
July 28th, 2006 at 9:06 am
I recall my eighth-grade science books to be uniformly awful. (We had a good teacher which partly made up for that.) It was a common sport among us brainy younguns to spot mistakes in them. We didn’t have to be terribly knowledgeable, even: all it took was a decent background in Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan books. So, horrifying as that may be, this quiz might not be a bad way of condensing the eighth grade into a website.
Recommended reading: Richard Feynman’s “Judging Books by Their Covers.
July 28th, 2006 at 9:12 am
Several times I have reviewed the content of the Florida Sunshine Stae Standards and the Curriculum Framework … the place where the materials to be taught are defined. There are a number of errors in them that have persisted for a decade or more and I am told they can not be changed without a full formal review and hearing. On example requires high school teachers to teach that “… the stages in the development of three categories of stars are based on mass: stars that have the approximate mass of our sun, stars that are two-to-three-stellar masses and develop into neutron stars, and stars that are five-to-six-stellar
masses and develop into black holes.”
July 28th, 2006 at 9:17 am
What does a naked black guy and a terrified Buzz Lightyear have to do with with the 8th grade??
July 28th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Question 1:
First, he “skis”, not “skies”.
Second, when he sks to the bottom, he has converted potential energy to kinetic energy (if he keeps going) and mechanical energy (ie heat).
2:
Both the “The nuclues” (is that related to nucular?) and “The chromosomes” are technically correct (though it was nice to see it say “mostly”…)
July 28th, 2006 at 10:33 am
My 8th grade science teacher told us that a halogen was any element that was a diatomic gas at room temperature. By this definition, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen are halogens, but bromine iodine and astatine are not! Sheesh!!
July 28th, 2006 at 10:54 am
I don’t think those images they use are unique. I think they googled up some pics based on keywords and attached them to the quizzes. I’m not sure what they searched to get a caveman and spaceman and correlated that to 8th grade science.
July 28th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Blake Stacey,
Thanks for that link. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! belongs on the Bad Astronomy Book of the Month Club list.
July 28th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
I would actually get Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character (W. W. Norton, 2005). It’s an omnibus edition which includes both Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? under one hard cover, plus some neat extra stuff by Ralph Leighton, Freeman Dyson and Alan Alda. It also includes a CD of Feynman giving his “Los Alamos from Below” talk.
July 28th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Joshua. That’ll give me an excuse for her to look up everything she can find. So, I can pick each of them apart. That should keep me busy for a few decades.
July 28th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Well, back to 8th grade for me… only 7 out of 8. After going back and doing it for a second time I was able to get the elusive 100%. I missed the bowling ball question. I am wondering if anyone has ever taken a bowling ball to the moon to do all of those measurements.
July 28th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
I also got 8/8.
Well, it’s comforting to know I haven’t lost my mind in six years of naval service.
July 28th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
OH! This just reminded me of an old episode of Quantum Leap, in which Sam talked about mixing his “neurons and mesons”.
July 28th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Well, I got 8 out of 8, so I was feeling pretty good (school was so long ago for me) until I realized I missed ALL of the typos mentioned in the comments.
I’m a bad editor.
Hey, wait a minute … “The Bad Editor.” Hmmmm…..
July 28th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
This is not science! This a collection of random facts to be regurgitated. I could get a score of 100% using Google without knowing any science at all. The only thing this tests is recall- absolutely nothing else. Is this actually representative of a real eighth grade science test?
July 29th, 2006 at 12:44 am
I never passed 8th grade. We have a different system here in the UK (in fact, we have a different system now from the system I went through back in the eighties). At the end of each school year (and I’m guessing eighth grade is for, what, 12-13-year-olds?, which would correspond roughly to our third year of secondary school), we would sit an exam in each subject (as in, sit for 2 hours in silence and write answers to questions). There was no pass or fail, but one’s performance determined which set you were in for that subject the following year.
Eddie, that’s a great idea. The Bad EDitor. It’s so bad it’s good.
Oh, and, if memory serves, the resting potential of a neuron is typically in the vicinity of -30mV. A nerve impulse represents an efflux of (gruddammit, is it Na+ or K+ ions? – curse this sieve-like memory of mine) with concomitant depolarisation of the membrane.
Which means that their question does not even include the right answer, or anything close to it (o’ course, when I were a lad, we never had any o’ this namby-pamby multiple-choice rubbish. We ‘ad to work for our marks. We ‘ad to do sums an that’, an’ show our workin’, an’ we ‘ad to string words together into sentences. Ee, kids today, they don’t know they’re born …. mutter … grumble … Yorkshire accent … grrr).
July 29th, 2006 at 1:37 am
Nigel,
The deed is done. I’ve scooped up the blog name “The Bad Editor,” but I’ll refrain from posting a link here because I have nothing to offer at 3 a.m. EST. I did give the good Dr. Plait a link in the initial post, but he’d hardly be proud.
All I could come up with was a picture of my cat tonight, and I don’t think she can help us with the resting potential of a neuron, and she certainly hasn’t offered an opinion concerning concomitant depolarisation of the membrane.
Not lately, anyway.
July 29th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Hmmm. The quiz is a collection of out of context facts that are memorized and contains simple errors and misspellings. It just might be a perfect microcosm of typical 8th grade science instruction. Sigh.
July 29th, 2006 at 8:14 am
So the author passed eighth-grade science, but not eighth-grade spelling?
And as people have said, several of the answers are incomplete or wrong:
1. A, B, and D are technically all correct, since the skis deflect during the run and he or she has to use biological energy to maintain an upright stance and control the descent
2. B and C are correct
6. The charge on a neuron is -65 mV (generally), not 0.
8. Technically D is correct, too. If the Earth didn’t rotate, or rotated at a different rate, the tides would be completely different. If Earth’s rotation was tidal locked with the Moon the tides would be much smaller, or if it was tidal locked with the Sun.
July 29th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Black Cat, you’re right about the membrane potential. Earlier, I said it was about -30mV, but this was wrong. Depending on who you ask, it does appear to be around -70 mV. The figure probably varies because either different neurons have different potentials, or because different methods give slightly different results. It has been many years since I was sitting in physiology lectures….
July 29th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
While the quiz maker obviously made several mistakes, 0 for the electrical charge of a neuron is actually the best answer because the precision of the responses are integers and -70 mV (which is -0.070 V) as an integer is best described as 0 in the precision given. (I’ll duck while you all throw food, test tubes, and bunsen burners at me!) This does illustrate the importance of significant figures and units doesn’t it?
July 29th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Sorry, Nigel, I missed your post somehow. -65 mV is considered “standard” for neuron resting membrane potential, but it can vary 20 or more mV above or below that depending on what type of cell it is and how healthy it is. The stellate cells I am currently measuring often rest in the -68 to -70 mV range, but that is considered pretty low. Pyramidals are more in the -60 to -65 mV range. The resting potential can get higher if the cell is less healthy, up to the about -50 mV firing threshold as the cell dies, causing the cell to fire a continuous stream of action potentials.
And don’t worry, Troy. I won’t throw test tubes at you. Small glass needles, perhaps, but not test tubes. All our test tubes are plastic, it would be a waste of time
(j/k)
July 30th, 2006 at 5:20 am
[...] As I told Bora, I was able to ace this test because my understanding of science is at the 8th grade level. This is where not being as smart as Phil of Bad Astronomy is an advantage. [...]
July 31st, 2006 at 6:09 am
Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?…
I did. The first time was a long time ago. And I just passed again. You Passed 8th Grade Science Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct! Could You Pass 8th Grade Science? But, along with Steve at Modulator and Phil at…
April 26th, 2007 at 9:49 am
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April 26th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
hey it feels good