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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 3, Chapter 11.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. While he worked at General Motors Research Corporation in 1921, engineer Thomas Midgley, Jr. developed what dangerous gasoline additive?
(a) Hydrochloric acid.
(b) Isopropyl alcohol.
(c) Tetraethyl lead.
(d) Combustion catalyst.

2. Atoms are made up of smaller particles, including:
(a) Cells.
(b) Molecules.
(c) Bytes.
(d) Quarks.

3. How far away is Proxima Centauri from Earth?
(a) 100 million times farther than our moon.
(b) 390 million times farther than Venus.
(c) 120 million times farther than our sun.
(d) 700 million times farther than Mars.

4. What components were central to the apparatus that Henry Cavendish used to determine the density of Earth?
(a) Boiling water, a tub, and a barrel.
(b) A burner, gases, and switches.
(c) Chutes and slides.
(d) Weights, counter-weights, and pendulums.

5. With scientists having found so many dinosaur bones by the dawn of the twentieth century, what did they conclude about the age of Earth?
(a) Nobody will ever figure out its age.
(b) It has to be much older than 20 million years.
(c) It is no older than 5 million years.
(d) It is hundreds of billions of years old.

Short Answer Questions

1. When French physicist Henri Becquerel accidentally left a packet of uranium salts on a photographic plate, what happened?

2. Quarks are held together by gluons and make up what?

3. In 2003, NASA came up with an estimated age of the universe. What was it?

4. According to the Caltech physicist Richard Feynman, the most important discovery ever made is what?

5. Astronomer Edmond Halley approached mathematician Sir Isaac Newton to get his help figuring out why planets:

(see the answer key)

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