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Scientists are going all out to measure both the miniscule and the immense! This quiz is inspired by the massive scientific equipment built around the globe. Go BIG or go home!

#1. The Large Hadron Collider is made up of 27 kilometres of tunnel. Inside the tunnel the tiniest bits of matter are accelerated and rammed into each other. What shape is the Large Hadron Collider?

The Large Hadron Collider is a circular ring where tiny bits of matter, like protons, are accelerated to near the speed of light. Since it’s a circle, the particle beams can keep going around and around, getting faster and faster each loop!

#2. What is the maximum number of astronauts aboard the International Space Station?

The International Space Station normally has a crew of 7, but sometimes it holds more. When the Space Shuttle was operating, the ISS sometimes had up to 13 astronauts inside at the same time.

#3. True or false? There’s a radio telescope in China with a dish that’s 500 metres across.

True. This gigantic telescope is called FAST, and the F stands for Five-hundred-meter. It’s built into a big, naturally occurring hole in the ground, and it steers by moving a cabin around above the dish (and by waiting for Earth to rotate!).

#4. RV Investigator is CSIRO’s 94-metre research ship that can patrol the ocean for 60 days at a time. Which of the following can it do while at sea?

CSIRO’s RV Investigator is equipped with high-tech sensors that can collect data both above and below the ship. This includes weather radar, water sampling equipment, and several sensors that use sound to detect the ocean floor or even schools of fish.

#5. The Global Seismographic Network has 152 sensors located across the globe and is sensitive enough to pinpoint nuclear explosions. What does this network usually measure?

The word “seismographic” comes from the Greek word “seismos” meaning earthquake. The sensors detect vibrations in the Earth’s crust, which is why they can also detect explosions. By listening to echoes throughout the Earth, the network can tell exactly where an earthquake happened, only minutes after it happened!

Was I right?

Results

Congratulations! You are a real science whiz!

Oh dear! Better brush up before the next quiz!

2 responses

  1. Harry Avatar
    Harry

    I LOVE IT THANK YOU VEREY MUCH YAY ME

  2. Alan Melbourne Avatar
    Alan Melbourne

    I think you folk are wonderful to keep on fostering science and adding interest and enthusiasm at a timer when so many science classes are done from books or video in this risk averse time (many chemicals withdrawn, many ‘experiments’ outlawed) and with teachers who have grown up without the experience that older staff had. Science at many secondary schools is seen as boring and hard, and is shunned as a senior course set. I point my grandchildren to Double Helix, and at home we make our own potassium nitrate, potassium chlorate etc. by laborious (but fun) methods, and we bore magnesium turnings out of boat anodes, and so on. We are just now building a little blacksmiths smithy out of rocks and mortar so that the kids can mahe swords and other implements and smelt metals. Keep it going!!!!

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