Science Trivia Questions and Answers

What oil was first used as a laxative by Egyptians in 1600 B.C.?
A: Castor oil.

Who was amazed to see the moons of Jupiter through a telescope on January 7, 1610?
A: Galileo.

What geographic term describes a hill with sharply sloping sides and a flat top?
A: Butte.

What serious underwater ailment was named after a Victorian notion of chic posture?
A: The bends.

What Mercury astronaut had a pulse rate of 170 at lift-off--John Glenn, Alan Shepard, or Gus Grissom?
A :Gus Grissom.

What U.S. coin weighs five grams?
A: A nickel.

Who spent more time in space than any woman or any U.S. astronaut, after NASA delayed her ride home by six weeks in 1996?
A: Shannon Lucid.

How many Russian cosmonauts have walked on the moon?
A: Zero.

What staple of Sigmund's profession lies in state at the Freud Museum in London?
A: His couch.

What wattage of incandescent light bulb typically produces 1,700 lumens?
A: 100 watts.

What 20th-century decade saw the introduction of the felt-tip pen?
A: The 1960s.

What needle-stickers use the word "Qi" to describe the energy that flows through the body's pathways?
A: Acupuncturists.

What continent has yielded the largest trove of meteorites?
A: Antarctica.

What letter did NASA decide to preface "Okay" with, due to radio stati problems?
A : A.

What L-word is the proprietary name of the tranquilizer chlordiazepoxide?
A: Librium.

What are "newbies," who tend to attract scorn from Internet flamers?
A: Newcomers.

What's the smallest time interval -- a microsecond, a nanosecond or a picosecond?
A: A picosecond.

What sterilization process can kill 99.9 percent of salmonella organisms in poultry?
A :Irradiation.

Which Smithsonian museum attracted a record 118,437 people on April 14,1984?
A: The National Air and Space Museum.

Who saw the dies used to stamp out bodies of his stainless-steel cars end up as anchors for salmon traps?
A: John DeLorean.

What's the largest and densest of the four rocky planets?
A: Earth.

What branch of biology deals with the nature of aging?
A: Gerontology.

What tropical disease were mental patients intentionally infected with in the early 1900s as a treatment for insanity?
A: Malaria.

What's a detective studying if he's staring at arches loops, whorls, islands and dots?
A: Fingerprints.

What unit of measurement has a fluid volume of three teaspoons?
A: A tablespoon.

What creature's heart kept Baby Fae alive for 21 of her 33 days in 1984?
A: A baboon's.

What country was home of 153 of the first 400 Nobel Prize-winning scientists?
A: The U.S.

What chemical compound comes from the Greek word for "primary"?
A: Protein.

What number, a one followed by 100 zeroes, was first used by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta in 1940?
A: Googol.

What's the most common computer acronym for a "Picture element"?
A: Pixel.

What's the most common cause of cirrhosis?
A: Alcohol abuse.