Chemists & Their Discoveries

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

1.From which ore did the Curies extract radium, tons at a time?
- A. Pitchblende
- B. Hematite
- C. Bauxite
- D. Galena
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Pitchblende
Did you know? Pitchblende's stubborn tonnage gave up its glowing grain.
2.Which safety lamp did Humphry Davy invent for miners in 1815?
- A. The Edison bulb
- B. The Bunsen burner
- C. The argand burner
- D. The Davy lamp
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The Davy lamp
Did you know? Davy's wire-gauze lamp kept mine flames from gas.
3.Which then-unknown metal did Mendeleev predict as "eka-aluminium", later gallium?
- A. Gallium
- B. Indium
- C. Germanium
- D. Scandium
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Gallium
Did you know? Eka-aluminium's predicted density matched gallium's 1875 discovery.
4.Which gas, later famous as laughing gas, did Joseph Priestley prepare in 1772?
- A. Hydrogen
- B. Oxygen
- C. Ammonia
- D. Nitrous oxide
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Nitrous oxide
Did you know? Priestley's 1772 nitrous oxide became dentistry's laughing gas.
5.Which Swedish chemist won the 1903 chemistry Nobel for ion theory?
- A. Alfred Nobel
- B. Theodor Svedberg
- C. Jöns Berzelius
- D. Svante Arrhenius
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Svante Arrhenius
Did you know? Arrhenius's ions in solution earned the 1903 prize.
6.Which came first: radium's discovery or penicillin's?
- A. Radium, 1898
- B. Penicillin, 1896
- C. Penicillin, 1928
- D. Radium, 1928
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Radium, 1898
Did you know? The Curies' 1898 radium beat Fleming's 1928 penicillin by 30 years.
7.Marie Curie's second Nobel, in 1911, was in which field?
- A. Chemistry
- B. Medicine
- C. Peace
- D. Physics
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Chemistry
Did you know? Her 1911 chemistry Nobel honored discovering radium and polonium.
8.Which law of gases did Jacques Charles formulate for volume and temperature?
- A. Graham's law
- B. Charles's law
- C. Dalton's law
- D. Boyle's law
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Charles's law
Did you know? Charles's law: gas volume grows with absolute temperature.
9.Mendeleev organized his table chiefly by which two properties?
- A. Atomic weight and chemical behavior
- B. Color and luster
- C. Melting point and abundance
- D. Density and hardness
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Atomic weight and chemical behavior
Did you know? Weight plus behavior let him leave confident gaps.
10.Marie Curie is the only person with Nobels in which two sciences?
- A. Physics and chemistry
- B. Chemistry and medicine
- C. Physics and medicine
- D. Chemistry and peace
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Physics and chemistry
Did you know? She remains the only Nobelist in both physics and chemistry.
11.Which element, formally named in 2003, honors the German city hosting the GSI lab?
- A. Darmstadtium
- B. Dubnium
- C. Flerovium
- D. Copernicium
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Darmstadtium
Did you know? Element 110 took Darmstadt's name in 2003, city of the GSI lab.
12.Which Curie daughter also won a chemistry Nobel, in 1935?
- A. Bronisława Skłodowska
- B. Ève Curie
- C. Irène Joliot-Curie
- D. Marie Curie
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Irène Joliot-Curie
Did you know? Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie made artificial radioactivity in 1934.
13.Which organic compound did Faraday isolate in 1825, later the base of dyes and plastics?
- A. Phenol
- B. Naphthalene
- C. Benzene
- D. Aniline
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Benzene
Did you know? Faraday isolated benzene in 1825 from the oily liquid of whale-oil gas.
14.Who was Lavoisier's indispensable scientific collaborator and wife?
- A. Marie Curie
- B. Sophie Germain
- C. Marie-Anne
- D. Émilie du Châtelet
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Marie-Anne
Did you know? Marie-Anne Lavoisier translated and illustrated his chemistry.
15.Which professor famously never won a Nobel despite 35 nominations?
- A. Walther Nernst
- B. Fritz Haber
- C. Gilbert N. Lewis
- D. Linus Pauling
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Gilbert N. Lewis
Did you know? Lewis's heavy-ion work at Berkeley never took the prize.
16.Did Mendeleev ever win a Nobel Prize?
- A. Yes, physics 1906
- B. Yes, chemistry 1906
- C. No, he narrowly missed it in 1906
- D. Yes, posthumously in 1907
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No, he narrowly missed it in 1906
Did you know? Mendeleev lost the 1906 chemistry Nobel by a single vote, then died in 1907.
17.Which three-stranded DNA model did Pauling famously get wrong in 1953?
- A. Single strand
- B. Z-DNA
- C. Triple helix
- D. Double helix
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Triple helix
Did you know? Pauling's triple helix lost to Watson and Crick's pairing logic.
18.Which earth-helium scientist shared Ramsay's 1904 Nobel year in physics?
- A. Ernest Rutherford
- B. Philipp Lenard
- C. Henri Becquerel
- D. Lord Rayleigh
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Lord Rayleigh
Did you know? Rayleigh's argon density work took the 1904 physics Nobel.
19.Which elements did Scheele discover or first identify, chlorine among them?
- A. Fluorine and arsenic
- B. Oxygen, chlorine, and barium
- C. Chlorine, molybdenum, and tungsten
- D. Cobalt and nickel
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Chlorine, molybdenum, and tungsten
Did you know? Scheele isolated chlorine and found Scheelite, the tungsten ore.
20.Which discovery came first: the electron or the proton?
- A. The proton, 1897
- B. The electron, 1897
- C. The proton, 1919
- D. The electron, 1919
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The electron, 1897
Did you know? Thomson's 1897 electron preceded Rutherford's 1919 proton.
21.Which controversial tax office sent Lavoisier to the guillotine in 1794?
- A. The Ferme générale
- B. The customs of Marseille
- C. The East India Company
- D. The Royal Mint
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The Ferme générale
Did you know? The Ferme générale's tax farming cost Lavoisier his head in the Terror.
22.Which came first: oxygen's discovery or hydrogen's?
- A. Hydrogen, in 1783
- B. Oxygen, in 1766
- C. Hydrogen, in 1766
- D. Oxygen, in 1774
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Hydrogen, in 1766
Did you know? Cavendish described hydrogen in 1766, years before Priestley's 1774 oxygen.
23.Which French chemist discovered the element beryllium and silicon's nature, alongside Lavoisier's school?
- A. Joseph Gay-Lussac
- B. Jöns Berzelius
- C. Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin
- D. Humphry Davy
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Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin
Did you know? Vauquelin found chromium and beryllium in Lavoisier's era.
24.Which year saw Perkin's mauveine, the first synthetic dye?
- A. 1859
- B. 1846
- C. 1856
- D. 1869
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1856
Did you know? Perkin made mauveine, the first synthetic dye, in 1856.
25.Which classic saying did Lagrange utter about Lavoisier's execution?
- A. "France has lost its greatest soldier"
- B. "The king is dead, long live chemistry"
- C. "It took them only a moment to cut off that head"
- D. "Science weeps in every language"
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"It took them only a moment to cut off that head"
Did you know? Lagrange: a century could not reproduce that head.
26.Who proved atoms exist by observing Brownian motion, in 1905 papers?
- A. Robert Brown
- B. Albert Einstein
- C. Max Planck
- D. Jean Perrin
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Albert Einstein
Did you know? Einstein's 1905 theory of Brownian motion quantified atoms.
27.Which French physicist's 1908 experiments clinched the atom's reality with a Nobel in 1926?
- A. Louis de Broglie
- B. Henri Becquerel
- C. Marie Curie
- D. Jean Perrin
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Jean Perrin
Did you know? Perrin's colloids counted molecules once and for all.
28.Which scientist first fired electrons at nickel crystals, proving wave behavior, Nobel 1937?
- A. Owen Willans Richardson
- B. J. J. Thomson
- C. George Thomson
- D. Clinton Davisson
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Clinton Davisson
Did you know? Davisson shared the 1937 prize for electron diffraction.
29.Which concept did Stanislao Cannizzaro settle at the 1860 Karlsruhe Congress, clearing Mendeleev's table?
- A. Electron shells
- B. Atomic weights
- C. Valence bonds
- D. Radioactivity
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Atomic weights
Did you know? Cannizzaro's atomic weights made the periodic table possible.

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