Science Quiz:
Test Your Knowledge of Modern Scientific Achievement
NewsUSA
(NUI) - Russian scientists played major roles in many inventions and theories important in today's world. Take the following quiz to test your knowledge of Russian scientific achievement:
Q: The Big Bang is widely believed by scientists to explain the beginning of the universe. How did it develop?
A: Alexander Friedmann (1888-1925), a Russian mathematician, concluded that it was possible for the average density and radius of the universe to change over time. The Big Bang
theory developed from his theory of an ever-expanding universe.
Q: Who invented the radio, Marconi or Popov?
A: In 1895, Russia's Alexander Popov demonstrated his radio-wave receiver. The same year, Italy's Guglielmo Marconi began laboratory experiments on wireless telegraphy and sent signals over a distance of 1.5 miles. In 1896, Popov published a description and design of the world's first radio receiver. Later that year, Marconi was granted the first patent on a system of wireless telegraphy. It is said that he replicated the design and construction of Popov's device. While Popov was motivated by scientific inquiry, Marconi was striving for practical application. In 1900, Popov's work was honored at the Fourth World Electro-Technical Congress in Paris. Marconi received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 and devoted his career to the commercialization of telegraphy.
Q: When was television invented?
A: It was in 1929 that Russian inventor Vladimir Zworykin (1889-1982), at a convention of radio engineers, demonstrated a TV receiver containing his kinescope cathode ray tube. His storage principle is the basis for modern television. In the 1920s, he came to the United States to join the staff of the Westinghouse laboratories in Pittsburgh, where he spent the rest of his career working on his concepts.
Q: Who developed the valence table you studied in high school chemistry?
A: Dmitry Mendeleev (1834-1907) was the Russian chemist who arranged the 63 known elements into a periodic table based on atomic mass. He published this in "Principles of Chemistry" in 1869. He left space for new elements and even predicted three of them, although the number has now gone well beyond his predictions.
Q: What was Yablockkov's Candle?
A: Peter Yablockkov (1847-94), a Russian engineer, designed the arc lamp used in street lighting in Paris and other European cities from 1878. He put the arc lamp principle, developed by Britain's Sir Humphry Davy early in the 19th century, to practical use when electric generators became available. His electric-arc street lights became known as Yablockkov's Candle.
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Last modified: 10/27/03
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