99 Famous Scientific Experiments Trivia Questions with Answers

99 public questions with answers, drawn from the well. How many can you answer?

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Luigi Galvani’s frog-leg experiments, what did the twitching muscles seem to reveal?

Answer

Animal electricity

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Francesco Redi’s 1668 meat-jar experiment, what emerged from meat left exposed to flies?

Answer

Maggots

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1995 JILA experiment, what state of matter was created from ultracold rubidium atoms?

Answer

Bose–Einstein condensate

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1971 Hafele–Keating experiment, what changed between atomic clocks flown eastward and westward?

Answer

Elapsed time

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1965 Penzias–Wilson experiment, what background radiation filled the universe?

Answer

Cosmic microwave background

Hard Hard difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1958 Mossbauer experiment, what unusual property of gamma rays was observed?

Answer

Recoil-free emission

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1954 Salk field trial, which disease did the experimental vaccine aim to prevent?

Answer

Polio

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1919 Eddington eclipse experiment, what astronomical effect was measured near the Sun?

Answer

Starlight deflection

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In James Chadwick’s 1932 nuclear experiment, what neutral particle did he discover?

Answer

Neutron

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Albert Bandura’s 1961 Bobo doll experiment, who led the study of children’s imitation of aggressive behavior?

Answer

Albert Bandura

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Harry Harlow’s rhesus-monkey attachment experiment, what surrogate did infant monkeys prefer for comfort?

Answer

Cloth mother

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1920s Little Albert experiment, which animal was used to condition an infant’s fear?

Answer

White rat

Hard Hard difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Luria–Delbrück fluctuation experiment of 1943, what did bacterial resistance mutations appear to occur before?

Answer

Exposure to the virus

Hard Hard difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1900 Planck black-body-radiation experiment, what did Max Planck propose was emitted in discrete packets?

Answer

Energy

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1923 Compton X-ray scattering experiment, what changed when X-rays collided with electrons?

Answer

Their wavelength

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1909 Geiger–Marsden experiment, what did the small number of sharply deflected alpha particles reveal?

Answer

A small atomic nucleus

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1928 Griffith experiment with pneumococci, what process changed harmless bacteria into a virulent form?

Answer

Transformation

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty’s 1944 experiment, which molecule was identified as the bacterial transforming principle?

Answer

DNA

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1913 Bohr hydrogen-spectrum experiment, what did the observed spectral lines reveal about electron energies?

Answer

They are quantized

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Stern–Gerlach experiment of 1922, what property of silver atoms was shown to have discrete values?

Answer

Angular momentum

Hard Hard difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment, what result did the apparatus find for the expected change in light’s travel time?

Answer

No significant change

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1927 Davisson–Germer experiment, what behavior of electrons was demonstrated when they scattered from a nickel crystal?

Answer

Diffraction

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Thomas Young’s double-slit experiment with light, which wave phenomenon produced alternating bright and dark bands?

Answer

Interference

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1881 Louis Pasteur vaccination experiment with sheep, which disease did his vaccine successfully prevent?

Answer

Anthrax

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1928 experiment that led to penicillin, what mold contaminated Alexander Fleming’s bacterial culture plate?

Answer

Penicillium notatum

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In John Snow’s 1854 Broad Street investigation, which suspected source did he identify as linked to London’s cholera outbreak?

Answer

The Broad Street pump

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Gregor Mendel’s pea-plant experiments, which type of inheritance did his results establish as a mathematical pattern?

Answer

Particulate inheritance

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Isaac Newton’s prism experiment, what did sunlight split into when it passed through the glass prism?

Answer

Colors

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Galileo Galilei’s inclined-plane experiment, which quantity did he show increases uniformly with time during a falling object’s motion?

Answer

Speed

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Franck–Hertz experiment, what property of atoms did the results demonstrate?

Answer

Quantized energy levels

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Robert Millikan’s oil-drop experiment, what fundamental electrical quantity did he measure?

Answer

Elementary electric charge

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Hans Christian Ørsted’s 1820 experiment, what did a nearby compass needle do when an electric current flowed through a wire?

Answer

It deflected

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1958 Meselson–Stahl experiment, what model of DNA replication did the results support?

Answer

Semiconservative replication

Hard Hard difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1982 Aspect experiment testing Bell’s theorem, what kind of correlation was observed between entangled photons?

Answer

Quantum correlations

Hard Hard difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1957 Wu experiment with cobalt-60, which symmetry principle was shown to fail in weak nuclear decay?

Answer

Parity conservation

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Arthur Eddington’s 1919 solar-eclipse expedition, which theory did the starlight measurements support?

Answer

General relativity

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Ivan Pavlov’s conditioning experiments with dogs, what response became associated with the sound of a bell?

Answer

Salivation

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Benjamin Franklin’s 1752 kite experiment, what did Franklin’s apparatus show lightning to be?

Answer

Electricity

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Léon Foucault’s 1851 pendulum experiment, what motion of Earth did the pendulum demonstrate?

Answer

Earth’s rotation

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In Louis Pasteur’s swan-neck flask experiment, what entered the broth when the flask neck was broken?

Answer

Airborne microorganisms

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the famous Hershey–Chase experiment of 1952, which molecule entered bacteria and carried genetic instructions?

Answer

DNA

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the 1796 smallpox experiment, which disease did Edward Jenner use to protect a boy from smallpox?

Answer

Cowpox

Hard Hard difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the famous double-slit experiment with electrons, what quantum behavior appears when individual electrons build up on a screen?

Answer

An interference pattern

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Cavendish experiment, what fundamental property of Earth did Henry Cavendish calculate?

Answer

Earth's density

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the famous 1953 Miller–Urey experiment, which simple organic molecule was produced from gases and electrical sparks?

Answer

Amino acids

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Rutherford gold foil experiment, what subatomic structure did the results reveal inside atoms?

Answer

A tiny atomic nucleus

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Milgram obedience experiment, what percentage of participants reached the maximum shock level in the original condition?

Answer

65 percent

Easy Easy difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Stanford prison experiment, who served as the principal investigator?

Answer

Philip Zimbardo

Intermediate Intermediate difficulty.
Famous Scientific Experiments

In the Michelson–Morley experiment of 1887, what hypothetical medium were scientists trying to detect?

Answer

Luminiferous aether