Chemists & Their Discoveries

30 questions · Answers revealed below each question · Print this set

1.Which element did the Curies name in honor of Marie's homeland?
- A. Actinium
- B. Francium
- C. Radium
- D. Polonium
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Polonium
Did you know? Polonium carries the name of Poland.
2.Who proposed the modern atomic theory of matter in 1808?
- A. Lavoisier
- B. Bohr
- C. Avogadro
- D. John Dalton
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John Dalton
Did you know? Dalton's atoms weighed elements into ratios.
3.Which famous assistant succeeded Davy at the Royal Institution?
- A. James Joule
- B. Lord Kelvin
- C. Michael Faraday
- D. John Dalton
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Michael Faraday
Did you know? Faraday rose from Davy's assistant to his chair.
4.Which conservation law is Lavoisier's founding legacy?
- A. Conservation of energy
- B. Conservation of charge
- C. Conservation of mass
- D. Conservation of momentum
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Conservation of mass
Did you know? Lavoisier proved mass is neither lost nor gained in reactions.
5.Whose dot diagrams picture valence electrons?
- A. Linus Pauling
- B. Niels Bohr
- C. Erwin Schrödinger
- D. Gilbert N. Lewis
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Gilbert N. Lewis
Did you know? Lewis dots still draw every classroom bond.
6.In which year did Mendeleev publish his periodic table?
- A. 1869
- B. 1904
- C. 1896
- D. 1848
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1869
Did you know? Mendeleev's 1869 table left gaps for the future.
7.Which prize did Alfred Nobel establish in his 1895 will?
- A. The Nobel Prizes
- B. The Copley Medal
- C. The Fields Medal
- D. The Wolf Prize
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The Nobel Prizes
Did you know? Nobel's will endowed the five founding prizes.
8.Linus Pauling won Nobel Prizes in which two different categories?
- A. Medicine and Chemistry
- B. Chemistry and Peace
- C. Peace and Literature
- D. Physics and Chemistry
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Chemistry and Peace
Did you know? Pauling took chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962.
9.In which year did Marie Curie win her first Nobel Prize?
- A. 1921
- B. 1903
- C. 1898
- D. 1911
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1903
Did you know? Marie Curie shared the 1903 physics Nobel for radioactivity research.
10.Which law of gas mixtures carries Dalton's name?
- A. Law of partial pressures
- B. Graham's law
- C. Charles's law
- D. Boyle's law
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Law of partial pressures
Did you know? Dalton's law sums each gas's partial pressure.
11.Which explosive did Alfred Nobel patent in 1867?
- A. Dynamite
- B. Nitroglycerin alone
- C. TNT
- D. Gunpowder
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Dynamite
Did you know? Nobel's 1867 dynamite tamed nitroglycerin in kieselguhr.
12.Which vitamin did Pauling famously champion in megadoses?
- A. Vitamin D
- B. Vitamin A
- C. Vitamin C
- D. Vitamin B12
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Vitamin C
Did you know? Pauling's later years belonged to vitamin C advocacy.
13.What did Lavoisier name the element Priestley called "dephlogisticated air"?
- A. Nitrogen
- B. Oxygen
- C. Hydrogen
- D. Carbon
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Oxygen
Did you know? Lavoisier coined "oxygen" from Greek "acid-former".
14.Which equation of Arrhenius links temperature and reaction rate?
- A. The Arrhenius equation
- B. Henderson-Hasselbalch
- C. Raoult's law
- D. The Nernst equation
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The Arrhenius equation
Did you know? The Arrhenius equation rates reactions by temperature.
15.Which "inflammable air" did Henry Cavendish study in 1766, later named hydrogen?
- A. Carbon monoxide
- B. Acetylene
- C. Hydrogen
- D. Methane
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Hydrogen
Did you know? Cavendish's inflammable air became "water-former", hydrogen.
16.Which came first: Mendeleev's table or Avogadro's number?
- A. The number, 1909
- B. The table, 1848
- C. The table, 1869
- D. The number, 1869
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The table, 1869
Did you know? Mendeleev's 1869 table preceded the mole count by decades.
17.In which year did Pierre Curie die in a street accident?
- A. 1934
- B. 1906
- C. 1898
- D. 1911
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1906
Did you know? Pierre Curie died under a horse-drawn wagon in 1906.
18.Which colorblindness condition did Dalton first describe on himself?
- A. Nearsightedness
- B. Red-green colorblindness
- C. Tone deafness
- D. Night blindness
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Red-green colorblindness
Did you know? Dalton's color-vision study gave colorblindness his name.
19.Which alkali metals did Humphry Davy first isolate by electrolysis in 1807?
- A. Sodium and potassium
- B. Calcium and barium
- C. Lithium and cesium
- D. Magnesium and zinc
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Sodium and potassium
Did you know? Davy's battery pulled sodium and potassium from their compounds.
20.Which gases' liquefaction did Faraday first achieve in 1823?
- A. Nitrogen
- B. Chlorine
- C. Helium
- D. Oxygen
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Chlorine
Did you know? Faraday squeezed chlorine gas into its yellow liquid.
21.Which acid-base definition names electron-pair acceptors?
- A. Brønsted acids
- B. Lewis acids
- C. Arrhenius acids
- D. Litmus acids
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Lewis acids
Did you know? Lewis acids accept an electron pair from the base.
22.Which element did Mendeleev call "eka-silicon", found in 1886?
- A. Germanium
- B. Silicon
- C. Gallium
- D. Tin
Show answer
Germanium
Did you know? Winkler's germanium filled the eka-silicon slot on cue.
23.Which prize category was NOT in Alfred Nobel's 1895 will, added later by Sweden's central bank?
- A. Literature
- B. Peace
- C. Chemistry
- D. Economics
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Economics
Did you know? The economics prize came in 1968 from Sweden's Riksbank, not Nobel's will.
24.What did Pauling's 1954 chemistry Nobel honor?
- A. Protein sequencing
- B. Vitamin C megadoses
- C. Radioactivity research
- D. The chemical bond's nature
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The chemical bond's nature
Did you know? Pauling's bond theory mapped how atoms link.
25.Which fizzy drink did Priestley pioneer in 1767, for which he won the Copley Medal?
- A. Soda water
- B. Ginger beer
- C. Tonic water
- D. Kombucha
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Soda water
Did you know? Priestley's carbonated water opened the soft-drink era.
26.Which Scottish chemist won the 1904 chemistry Nobel for the noble gases?
- A. Graham Bell
- B. William Ramsay
- C. Lord Kelvin
- D. Joseph Black
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William Ramsay
Did you know? Ramsay filled the periodic table's rightmost column.
27.Which Swedish pharmacist discovered oxygen before Priestley but published later?
- A. Torbern Bergman
- B. Alfred Nobel
- C. Carl Wilhelm Scheele
- D. Anders Celsius
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Carl Wilhelm Scheele
Did you know? Scheele's "fire air" predated Priestley, stuck in press.
28.Which late-1800s concept did Arrhenius pioneer before CO2 warming calculations?
- A. Nuclear winter
- B. Acid rain
- C. The greenhouse effect
- D. The ozone hole
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The greenhouse effect
Did you know? Arrhenius first calculated CO2 warming in 1896.
29.Who gave hydrogen its modern name, meaning water-former?
- A. Priestley
- B. Lavoisier
- C. Cavendish
- D. Davy
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Lavoisier
Did you know? Lavoisier renamed inflammable air "hydrogen".
30.Which synthetic fiber hit the 1935 patent first: nylon or polyester?
- A. Polyester
- B. Rayon
- C. Both, same year
- D. Nylon
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Nylon
Did you know? Carothers' nylon led polyesters by about five years.

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