Scientific Theories Quiz
Darwin catches a lot of heat due to his theory about evolution. But, the modern idea of evolution draws on a lot more than Darwin. What is Darwin's theory?
- Darwin's theory was that competition for food meant that organisms with helpful adaptations were more likely to pass down their genes, leading to the creation of species. Evolution caught on quick, but natural selection took decades to become mainstream.
What proved that Isaac Newton's Law of Gravity was flawed?
- Einstein's theory of relativity corrected the flaw in Mercury's orbit. But, a lot of people still use Newton's formulae because they're easier and "close enough".
How many dimensions are there in modern "superstring theory"?
- The 11 dimensions was proposed at a conference in the 90s as a way of reconciling five competing string theories.
Einstein's most famous theory of General Relativity was proposed in 1915. When was his most famous equation, E=mc2, proposed?
- Einstein's famous equation is a formula for mass-energy equivalence. It was one of four major innovations Einstein made in his Miracle Year, 1905.
Which Classical author proposed that the world was full of disease-causing "seeds" long before Germ Theory became mainstream?
How did Pasteur prove that germs came from the environment?
- His process of heating liquid without germ exposure is what we do today with dairy. That's why we call liquids treated this way "Pasteurized".
According to the Big Bang theory, how old is the universe?
- The age of the universe is calculated by seeing how fast the farthest galaxies are moving, then plotting their course backwards.
Set Theory is one of the biggest theories in mathematics. Who invented it?
- Set Theory studies sets, or collections of things. Simple as that sounds, it is one of the underpinnings of all modern math.
Medieval doctors believed that human health and personality were determined by the balance of their humors. What are humors?
- The four humors were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. We still use those terms to describe people's personalities-sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric.
Aristotle's theory of Spontaneous Generation wasn't firmly disproven until the 1860s. What was this theory?
- Aristotle believed that "vital heat" (pneuma) mixed with nonliving matter to create living things. An example would be that, per his theory, maggots were spontaneously born inside rotting meat, rather than being born from eggs laid on the meat.
