This science quiz pulls from chemistry, biology, physics and astronomy, so you'll go from element symbols and chromosomes to the speed of light and the planets next door. Most questions cover what you learned in school, with a few to keep the experts honest. Every answer comes with a quick, fascinating explanation, and no lab coat or safety goggles are required.
Science is full of facts that sound simple but took centuries to pin down. Even the word scientist is fairly new. The English scholar William Whewell coined it in 1833, at a time when people who studied nature were usually called natural philosophers. Before then, chemistry, physics and biology often blurred together.
One of the best stories in science is the periodic table. When the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev presented his version in 1869, he left gaps for elements nobody had found yet and predicted what they would be like. Gallium turned up in 1875 and germanium in 1886, both closely matching his forecasts. It's a great example of how a good pattern can reveal what's still missing.
Science questions reward reasoning as much as memory. If you're stuck, think about what makes physical sense: which answer fits the scale of the thing being described, and which one would break the laws you already know? Breaking words into their roots helps, since many scientific terms are built from Greek and Latin pieces that describe exactly what something does. Biology, chemistry, space and everyday physics all show up here, so a broad curiosity pays off more than deep knowledge of one field.