Space Quiz Ã¢â‚¬â€œ It's a quiz about space!

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

Inspired by the "What's the stupidest space-related thing you've heard someone say?" thread, I present the Space Quiz!

What is Space Quiz? It's a quiz about space. Intended to be a short (between five to ten minutes) quiz containing a mix of basic, intermediate, and hard questions about space related topics, Space Quiz is meant to gather data on just how much the average person knows about space. Space Quiz is currently still in its rough draft stages, so comments and constructive criticism on how to improve it are requested. The eventual goal is to have something I can give to a bunch of test subjects volunteers and ask them to fill out, so that I can make statistically significant conclusions somewhat educated guesses about what people know about space. And shiny graphs.

Here is the current version of Space Quiz.

Space History

1. What was the first man made object in space?
A. Sputnik 1
B. A V2 missile
C. The X-15
D. Explorer 1

2. What was the name of the first animal in orbit?
A. Fido
B. Laika
C. Joe
D. Max

3. Who was the first human to go to space?
A. Yuri Gagarin
B. John Glenn
C. Neil Armstrong
D. Alan Shepard

4. Which of these was the name of the program to land a human on the Moon?
A. Gemini
B. Sputnik
C. Vostok
D. Apollo

5. What year did humans first land on the Moon?
A. 1969
B. 1961
C. 1955
D. 1972

6. During the first Moon landing, which astronaut stayed behind in Lunar orbit in the Command/Service Module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon?
A. James Lovell
B. Michael Collins
C. Gus Grissom
D. Nobody

7. What does NASA stand for?
A. National Aerospace Association
B. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
C. North American Space Agency
D. National American Spaceflight Agency

8. What are Russian spaceflight personnel called?
A. Astronauts
B. Taikonauts
C. Cosmonauts
D. Spationauts

9. What is the name of the large, multinational, modular space station currently in orbit?
A. Mir
B. Skylab
C. The International Space Station
D. Freedom

10. What is the name of the Russian spacecraft used to transport astronauts and cosmonauts to orbit?
A. Soyuz
B. The Space Shuttle
C. Orion
D. Dragon

Astronomy

11. Which is larger?
A. The Moon
B. The Sun
C. The Earth
D. Jupiter

12. What is the name of the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt?
A. Asteroid Prime
B. Ceres
C. Mars
D. Asteroids don't have names

13. How many moons does Mars have?
A. None
B. One
C. Two
D. Three or more

14. Which of these stars is closest to Earth?
A. Alpha Centauri
B. Sirius
C. Vega
D. Tau Ceti

15. What is the name of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy?
A. X1
B. S2
C. Sagittarius A*
D. There is no such thing

16. Which of these planets has a retrograde (clockwise when viewed from above the plane of the ecliptic) rotation?
A. Earth
B. Mars
C. Jupiter
D. Venus

17. What comes next in this sequence: Io, Europa, Ganymede, _____?
A. Jupiter
B. Titan
C. Callisto
D. Mars

18. What is the name of the massive anticyclonic storm that is Jupiter's most prominent feature?
A. The Large Jovian Cyclone
B. The Great Red Spot
C. Jupiter's Southern Vortex
D. Oval AB

19. A solar eclipse happens when ____?
A. The Moon is between the Earth and the Sun
B. The Earth is between the Moon and the Sun
C. The Sun is between the Earth and the Moon
D. The Sun temporarily turns off

20. Who was the Italian astronomer who discovered Jupiter's four largest moons?
A. Simon Marius
B. Galileo Galilei
C. Johannes Kepler
D. Nicolaus Copernicus

Physics

21. Is there gravity in space?
A. Yes
B. No

22. What is the altitude of the KÃƒÂ rmÃƒÂ n line, the internationally accepted boundary between the upper atmosphere and outer space?
A. 50 kilometers (31 miles)
B. 100 kilometers (62 miles)
C. 500 kilometers (311 miles)
D. 1000 kilometers (621 miles)

23. What is the primary cause of heating during reentry?
A. Friction
B. Compression
C. Radiation
D. Magnetism

24. How do (main sequence) stars produce heat and light?
A. Fusion of hydrogen
B. Fission of uranium
C. Combustion of coal
D. No one knows

25. Why do astronauts in orbit float?
A. There's no gravity
B. They're in freefall
C. It's an optical illusion
D. Magnets

26. What is the lowest point in an orbit called?
A. Apoapsis
B. Periapsis
C. Ascending node
D. Descending node

27. A spaceship is in a stable orbit. If it performs a short prograde burn at periapsis, what will happen to its orbit?
A. The apoapsis will increase
B. The apoapsis will decrease
C. The periapsis will increase
D. The periapsis will decrease

28. What is a Hohmann transfer?
A. The fastest method of travelling to Mars
B. An elliptical orbit used to transfer between two circular orbits in the same plane
C. The most efficient means of changing orbital inclination
D. A procedure for moving cargo between spacecraft

29. What physical law do rocket engines use to produce thrust?
A. Kepler's First Law of Planetary Motion
B. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation
C. Newton's Third Law of Motion
D. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity

30. Approximately how fast must you travel to maintain a low orbit around the Earth?
A. 8000 m/s (18000 mph)
B. The speed of sound
C. The speed of light
D. 0 m/s (0 mph)

Changelog


Version 0.2 (current)
*Sorted questions into categories (Space History, Astronomy, Physics)
*Added more questions
*Fixed typos
*Changed wording of question about how stars produce heat/light
*Changed question about nearest star to avoid confusion between Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri
*Removed silly answers
*Added clarification of metric units for questions that needed them
*Added a changelog to OP
*Made a sandwich

Version 0.1.1
*Changed question about first animal in space to first animal in orbit
*Fixed typos

Version 0.1 (initial release)
*Made a Space Quiz

Edited March 26, 2015 by GreenWolf
Version 0.2 - Now with 50% more space!

Bill Phil · March 26, 2015

Perhaps you should do binary questions? I don't know.

Will there be bell curves?

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

There will probably be more binary questions. As for a curve, the point of the quiz is to see how much people know about space. Bell curving is meant to yield a pre-determined distribution of grades, which is basically the opposite of what I want.

Bill Phil · March 26, 2015

I'm asking about bell curves because they're cool...

Most people will get a certain score, right? Others will get less. So, if graphed, it would be a line, right?

Aren't bell curves there to display an average? Like, score of quiz on x-axis and number of people on the y axis. It SHOULD give you a curve (hopefully a bell curve)... Then you can say that y% of people know x% of space facts (except, we would need much more people and space facts to be super accurate...)

How many people will be questioned?

Tex · March 26, 2015

Ooh, ooh! I love quizzes! Can I submit answers to you via PM, see how high I score?

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

I'm asking about bell curves because they're cool...
Most people will get a certain score, right? Others will get less. So, if graphed, it would be a line, right?
Aren't bell curves there to display an average? Like, score of quiz on x-axis and number of people on the y axis. It SHOULD give you a curve (hopefully a bell curve)... Then you can say that y% of people know x% of space facts (except, we would need much more people and space facts to be super accurate...)
How many people will be questioned?

Yes, the eventual results will be graphed onto a line. But that's not a bell curve. Bell curving is a method of manipulating the graph in such a way as to give you a pre-determined line, i.e. 50% of the scores are Cs, 20% are Bs, etc... Wikipedia has some more info on it here. This isn't a test, so I don't want to manipulate the line into a pre-defined shape. In fact, one of the points of the entire quiz is to find out what shape that line would actually be. As you said, to do this accurately, we need lots of questions, and lots of people.

My plan is to eventually distribute this to various people within my college and workplace. Probably at least 100 people. Hopefully more. If other forum members want to distribute the final quiz and report the results, we could probably gather even more data points.

Edit:

Ooh, ooh! I love quizzes! Can I submit answers to you via PM, see how high I score?

Sure, but keep in mind that the quiz isn't finished yet. Also, I would expect (and hope) that members of this forum would score rather high.

Bill Phil · March 26, 2015

Bell curves, well, curves in general, are useful for statistics. Displaying data representing the average, say... percent of something. Curves are good for knowing the distribution of particular things, such as knowledge of space. Personally, I would like to know the percentages that of people who know certain amounts of facts.

Wouldn't doing this at a university be a selection bias? Or are they college kids, or what?

Maybe it should be more general space facts... Specific names of things always get me. (IE, I knew the Sagitarius A* question, but what if it was some random star I didn't know about? )

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

Bell curves, well, curves in general, are useful for statistics. Displaying data representing the average, say... percent of something. Curves are good for knowing the distribution of particular things, such as knowledge of space. Personally, I would like to know the percentages that of people who know certain amounts of facts.

Duly noted.

Wouldn't doing this at a university be a selection bias? Or are they college kids, or what?

I don't believe any selection bias seen would be significant, although if it is a concern I could try and find more "average" people. This is one of those things where having forum members help would make a huge difference.

Maybe it should be more general space facts... Specific names of things always get me. (IE, I knew the Sagitarius A* question, but what if it was some random star I didn't know about? )

Also noted. There are some specific names that I feel should be common knowledge (like knowing that Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, or knowing that the Alpha Centauri system is the closest star system). Future versions will try to be more general.

razark · March 26, 2015

13. What was the name of the first animal in space?
A. Fido
B. Laika
C. Joe
D. Max

None of the above?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space#1940s

Tex · March 26, 2015

None of the above?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space#1940s

Ooh. Perhaps change the question to first in orbit?

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

None of the above?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space#1940s

Nice catch! I forgot about the V2 launches. Question will be changed accordingly.

Deutherius · March 26, 2015

Regarding question #16 - technically, it can have two correct answers. (and some more)

Along the obvious right answer A, stars can and do fuse heavier elements in their cores. Red supergiants go through a carbon fusing (or "carbon burning") phase - coal being primarily made out of carbon makes answer C right as well - some stars actually release energy from burning coal (not exactly, but I find it funny. Also, answer C for Carbon - am I seeing meta jokes where there are none? I probably need some sleep)

Also, there are other burning phases with net energy release: helium, neon, oxygen, silicon and iron.

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

Regarding question #16 - technically, it can have two correct answers. (and some more)
Along the obvious right answer A, stars can and do fuse heavier elements in their cores. Red supergiants go through a carbon fusing (or "carbon burning") phase - coal being primarily made out of carbon makes answer C right as well - some stars actually release energy from burning coal (not exactly, but I find it funny. Also, answer C for Carbon - am I seeing meta jokes where there are none? I probably need some sleep)
Also, there are other burning phases with net energy release: helium, neon, oxygen, silicon and iron.

I did actually know this one. I figured it wouldn't be an issue though. Perhaps if I changed it to "Fusion of atomic nuclei" it would work better?

Deutherius · March 26, 2015

I did actually know this one. I figured it wouldn't be an issue though. Perhaps if I changed it to "Fusion of atomic nuclei" it would work better?

Probably better. Do you intent to leave the C in? It might be interesting to see if anyone gets it. It might also skew the results, though.

I wonder how many people will get #4 right. I know I wouldn't have before I started playing KSP.

OhioBob · March 26, 2015

I did actually know this one. I figured it wouldn't be an issue though. Perhaps if I changed it to "Fusion of atomic nuclei" it would work better?

Or you could ask,

"How do main sequence stars produce heat and light?"

LostElement · March 26, 2015

OOH! I love space quizzes!!

1.) B. This one is tricky, But I'll say no. Gravity is only generated by objects with a high enough mass.

2.) B. Well... to reach Low Earth orbit you must achieve about 150 KM or 99miles

3.) B. The sun of course (I was pretty adamant on whale though...)

4.) A. There are several causes, but the primary one is friction

5.) D. Apollo

6.) A. Yuri Gagarin, "I see Earth, it is so beautiful"

7.) B. The shuttle was launched from a giant rocket, but it needed a way to glide its way to landing.

8.) C. Cosmonauts

9.) C. The International Space Station!

10.) A. 1969!

11.) B. Ceres! (Dawn has arrive at Ceres, cannot wait for the Sci Orbits next month)

12.) C. Two, Phobos and Deimos

13.) B. Laika!

14.) B. Alpha Centauri, which I believe it is a binary system

15.) C. Sagittarius A

16.) A. Fusion of Hydrogen to make Helium

17.) A. technically there is gravity, but their orbital velocity and the lack of air and friction makes them float.

18.) B. National Aeronautics and Space Administration

19.) B. Michael Collins

How'd I do?

Mr_Brain · March 26, 2015

Seems pretty interesting! I'll try to help to get more test participants once enough questions have been collected.

Also, I've found two spelling mistakes: You typed "Fussion" instead of "Fusion" and "Proximi Centauri" instead of "Proxima Centauri".

RainDreamer · March 26, 2015

7. Why did the Space Shuttle have wings?
A. To takeoff
B. To land
C. Because it was actually a bird
D. To look cool

Why am I so tempted to choose C....

Thomas988 · March 26, 2015

1. Is there gravity in space?

A. Yes

2. How high do you have to fly to reach space?

B. 100 kilometers

3. Which is larger?

B. The Sun

4. What is the primary cause of heating during reentry?

B. Compression

5. Which of these was the name of the program to land a human on the Moon?

D. Apollo

6. Who was the first human to go to space?

A. Yuri Gagarin

7. Why did the Space Shuttle have wings?

B. To land

8. What are Russian spaceflight personnel called?

C. Cosmonauts

9. What is the name of the large, multinational, modular space station currently in orbit?

C. The International Space Station

10. What year did humans first land on the Moon?

A. 1969

11. What is the name of the largest object in the asteroid belt

B. Ceres

12. How many moons does Mars have?

C. Two

13. What was the name of the first animal to be sent into orbit?

B. Laika

14. What is the closest star to Earth (not counting the Sun)?

B. Alpha Centauri

15. What is the name of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy?

C. Sagittarius A*

16. How do stars produce heat and light?

A. Fussion of hydrogen

17. Why do astronauts in orbit float?

B. They're in freefall

18. What does NASA stand for?

B. National Aeronautics and Space Administration

19. During Apollo 11, which astronaut stayed behind in Lunar orbit in the Command/Service Module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon?

B. Michael Collins

Yukon0009 · March 26, 2015

Maybe some questions on sounding rockets?

FishInferno · March 26, 2015

Add this: What was the first man-made object to reach space? (v2 rocket)

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

Or you could ask,
"How do main sequence stars produce heat and light?"

Yeah, I was thinking about this last night and thought it would be better to phrase it this way.

Probably better. Do you intent to leave the C in? It might be interesting to see if anyone gets it. It might also skew the results, though.
I wonder how many people will get #4 right. I know I wouldn't have before I started playing KSP.

I expect 4 to be one of the harder questions, especially since it's a pretty wide misconception.

OOH! I love space quizzes!!
1.) B. This one is tricky, But I'll say no. Gravity is only generated by objects with a high enough mass.
2.) B. Well... to reach Low Earth orbit you must achieve about 150 KM or 99miles
3.) B. The sun of course (I was pretty adamant on whale though...)
4.) A. There are several causes, but the primary one is friction
5.) D. Apollo
6.) A. Yuri Gagarin, "I see Earth, it is so beautiful"
7.) B. The shuttle was launched from a giant rocket, but it needed a way to glide its way to landing.
8.) C. Cosmonauts
9.) C. The International Space Station!
10.) A. 1969!
11.) B. Ceres! (Dawn has arrive at Ceres, cannot wait for the Sci Orbits next month)
12.) C. Two, Phobos and Deimos
13.) B. Laika!
14.) B. Alpha Centauri, which I believe it is a binary system
15.) C. Sagittarius A
16.) A. Fusion of Hydrogen to make Helium
17.) A. technically there is gravity, but their orbital velocity and the lack of air and friction makes them float.
18.) B. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
19.) B. Michael Collins
How'd I do?

1. There is gravity in space (which you actually pointed out in your answer to 17)

2. Correct, but the Karman line is actually at 100 km

3. Correct

4. The heating is mostly due to compression

5. Correct

6. Correct

7. Correct

9. Correct

10. Correct

11. Correct

12. Correct

13. Correct

14. Alpha Centauri is actually a trinary system, which includes Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri is also closer (although I will probably change this to "Which star system is closest to our Solar System?")

15. Correct

16. Correct

17. Correct

18. Correct

19. Correct

Seems pretty interesting! I'll try to help to get more test participants once enough questions have been collected.
Also, I've found two spelling mistakes: You typed "Fussion" instead of "Fusion" and "Proximi Centauri" instead of "Proxima Centauri".

Thanks for catching that.

1. Is there gravity in space?
A. Yes
2. How high do you have to fly to reach space?
B. 100 kilometers
3. Which is larger?
B. The Sun
4. What is the primary cause of heating during reentry?
B. Compression
5. Which of these was the name of the program to land a human on the Moon?
D. Apollo
6. Who was the first human to go to space?
A. Yuri Gagarin
7. Why did the Space Shuttle have wings?
B. To land
8. What are Russian spaceflight personnel called?
C. Cosmonauts
9. What is the name of the large, multinational, modular space station currently in orbit?
C. The International Space Station
10. What year did humans first land on the Moon?
A. 1969
11. What is the name of the largest object in the asteroid belt
B. Ceres
12. How many moons does Mars have?
C. Two
13. What was the name of the first animal to be sent into orbit?
B. Laika
14. What is the closest star to Earth (not counting the Sun)?
B. Alpha Centauri
15. What is the name of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy?
C. Sagittarius A*
16. How do stars produce heat and light?
A. Fussion of hydrogen
17. Why do astronauts in orbit float?
B. They're in freefall
18. What does NASA stand for?
B. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
19. During Apollo 11, which astronaut stayed behind in Lunar orbit in the Command/Service Module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon?
B. Michael Collins

Got all of them except 14 (which is kind of a trick question)

Maybe some questions on sounding rockets?

Probably, yeah.

Add this: What was the first man-made object to reach space? (v2 rocket)

This will probably be one of the harder questions, since most people probably think it would be Sputnik 1.

Kibble · March 26, 2015

Might I suggest that you add some more challenging questions? The ones here were half basic physics, and half things that any casual fan of spaceflight should immediately know.

GreenWolf · March 26, 2015

Might I suggest that you add some more challenging questions? The ones here were half basic physics, and half things that any casual fan of spaceflight should immediately know.

This is on the agenda. Version 0.2 will have more questions and questions of increased difficulty.

xXIndestructibleEVAXx · March 26, 2015

Suggestion: "What happens if you go into space without a spacesuit"

A.) your head explodes

B.) you freeze to death

C.) you suffocate, that's all

D.) your blood boils

(answer is C)

Space Quiz Ã¢â‚¬â€œ It's a quiz about space!

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