General Science Knowledge Quiz
Questions: 16 · 10 minutes
1. What primarily causes the Moon’s phases as seen from Earth?
Earth’s shadow regularly covers different portions of the Moon
We see changing portions of the Moon’s sunlit half as it orbits Earth
The Moon produces different amounts of light during its orbit
Clouds in Earth’s atmosphere conceal predictable parts of the Moon
2. A metal spoon is left in a bowl of hot soup, and its handle becomes warm. Which process transfers most of the heat through the spoon?
Conduction
Radiation
Convection
Evaporation
3. Which feature determines the identity of a chemical element?
The number of neutrons in its nucleus
The total number of protons and neutrons
The number of protons in its nucleus
The number of electron shells it has
4. What is the main reason Earth experiences seasons?
Earth moves much closer to and farther from the Sun during each orbit
The Sun produces substantially different amounts of heat through the year
Earth rotates at different speeds in summer and winter
Earth’s tilted axis changes the angle and duration of sunlight by hemisphere
5. The same net force is applied separately to two objects. Which object will have the greater acceleration?
The object with more mass
The object with less mass
Both will accelerate equally regardless of mass
The object with the greater volume, regardless of mass
6. The oxygen gas released during photosynthesis comes directly from the splitting of which substance?
Glucose
Carbon dioxide
Water
Chlorophyll
7. Why do antibiotics not treat infections caused by viruses?
Viruses are always too small for medicine to reach
Viruses neutralize every antibiotic before it can act
Antibiotics work only outside the human body
Viruses lack the bacterial structures or processes targeted by antibiotics
8. Which tectonic setting most directly produces a large mountain range when two continental landmasses meet?
A divergent boundary where continental plates move apart
A convergent boundary where two continental plates collide
A hot spot beneath the middle of an oceanic plate
A transform boundary where plates slide horizontally past each other
9. A researcher wants to test whether a new fertilizer increases plant growth. Which group is the best control?
Identical plants grown under the same conditions without the fertilizer
A different plant species given the fertilizer
Identical plants given both the fertilizer and extra light
Larger plants grown without monitoring their water supply
10. Why is less usable energy generally available at each higher trophic level in a food chain?
Organisms at higher levels stop carrying out cellular respiration
Producers absorb all energy again after consumers feed
Organisms use energy for life processes, and much of it dissipates as heat
Energy is destroyed whenever one organism eats another
11. Two bulbs are connected in parallel to an ideal battery. If one bulb is removed while the other branch remains complete, what happens to the other bulb?
It remains lit because its branch still forms a complete circuit
It becomes dimmer because current can no longer reach the battery
It flashes briefly and then goes out
It goes out because the circuit has been opened everywhere
12. A sealed syringe containing air is compressed while its temperature remains approximately constant. Why does the air pressure increase?
The gas particles become larger as the volume decreases
New gas particles form inside the sealed syringe
The particles stop moving and press against one side
The particles collide with the syringe walls more frequently
13. For a gene with alleles A and a, an Aa parent and an aa parent have offspring. Assuming ordinary Mendelian inheritance, what is the probability that an offspring will be aa?
75%
25%
50%
100%
14. Why can ordinary sound not travel from one spacecraft to another through a perfect vacuum?
Sound is blocked by the absence of gravity
Sound requires particles in a medium to transmit vibrations
Sound can travel only through gases, not other materials
Sound waves are absorbed by darkness
15. A solid object has an average density of 0.8 grams per cubic centimetre and is placed in water, whose density is about 1.0 gram per cubic centimetre. What should happen?
It floats with roughly four-fifths of its volume submerged
It remains completely submerged at any depth without support
It sinks because every solid is denser than a liquid
It floats entirely above the surface without displacing water
16. Compared with a solution at pH 5, a solution at pH 3 has approximately how much greater hydrogen ion concentration?
2 times greater
10 times greater
1,000 times greater
100 times greater