Saturday, January 12, 2008

Chemical Elements - Random Trivia Questions

The elements are the building blocks of chemistry and the building blocks of this week's quiz. These dozen questions are effectively multiple choice with over a hundred choices, but to be nice each question restricts the possibilities for you. For fun, there's a bonus answer hidden somewhere, worth another twelve points if you can find it (mostly useless hint: it has nothing to do with science).

Chemical Elements Questions

  • Q1) What is the only nonmetal besides helium whose name ends in "-ium"?
  • Q2) What is the heaviest known halogen?
  • Q3) What metalloid was discovered by Franz-Joseph Mller von Reichenstein in 1782 in Transylvania?
  • Q4) What actinide was discovered by Albert Ghiorso at UC Berkeley in 1952 and named for a man who was asked to become Israel's second president in the same year?
  • Q5) What actinide is the heaviest naturally-occurring element?
  • Q6) What nonmetal has the longest name of any chemical element that doesn't end in "-um"?
  • Q7) In alphabetical order, what lanthanide is the first of the four chemical elements named for Ytterby, Sweden?
  • Q8) What nonmetal was once known as brimstone?
  • Q9) What nonmetal makes up most of the weight of the human body?
  • Q10) What nonmetal makes up most of the Earth's atmosphere?
  • Q11) What alkali metal was added to diets in 1924 to combat goiter?
  • Q12) What alkali metal is used to define the length of a second in the International System of Units?

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Thanks so much! I am in the planning stages for a chemistry class and wanted to give the students a question per week for 14weeks.

THETA Poker said...

Excellent. There are plenty of other chemistry questions in the blog if you poke around. It's always great when trivia is used in a non-trivial manner!