Deck 1: A Guide to the Natural World

Question 1

If a sperm carrying a Y chromosome fertilizes a mother's egg, which of the following will be true?

A) A baby girl will develop.
B) A sperm can't carry a Y chromosome; only the egg can.
C) Nothing will happen.
D) A baby boy will develop.

Answer 1

A baby boy will develop.

Question 2

The physicist Freeman Dyson made which of the following predictions?

A) Within 50 years, the human species would become extinct.
B) Within 50 years, global warming would make the Earth unlivable.
C) Within 50 years, the energy crisis would be solved.
D) Within 50 years, gardeners would be able to design their own roses and orchids.

Answer 2

Within 50 years, gardeners would be able to design their own roses and orchids.

Question 3

Which of the following is evidence that global warming is occurring?

A) The intensity of hurricanes has been decreasing in recent years.
B) The intensity of hurricanes has been increasing in recent years.
C) The number of hurricanes has been decreasing in recent years.
D) The number of hurricanes has been increasing in recent years.

Answer 3

The intensity of hurricanes has been increasing in recent years.

Question 4

Which animals have had human genes inserted into their makeup to produce milk with human proteins?

A) camels
B) horses
C) goats
D) cattle

Question 5

Scientific observations:

A) are limited to available equipment used to record a natural phenomenon.
B) can be made by instrumentation.
C) can be made directly by humans.
D) all of the above

Question 6

Which of the following could be considered a scientific principle?

A) Leaves bend toward the light because they sense light is needed to grow.
B) The height of Americans has been steadily increasing over the past 30 years.
C) Radioactive isotopes can be used as tracers in medicine because radioactive isotopes behave the same as other isotopes.
D) Biology is a more exact science than chemistry.

Question 7

Currently there is a controversy over whether which of the following organisms is a direct descendant of the dinosaurs?

A) snakes
B) lizards
C) birds
D) frogs
E) crocodiles

Question 8

Which one of the following is true about scientific knowledge?

A) Scientific knowledge is derived from careful thinking about the way things must work based on application of a few fundamental principles.
B) When based on many experiments, scientific knowledge is absolutely true.
C) Scientific knowledge is acquired though teachings passed on by great scientists.
D) Scientific knowledge is not absolute, because the possibility is always held open that new experiments may one day prove it wrong.
E) Scientific knowledge is derived from the strongest arguments made by the brightest scientists.

Question 9

When Pasteur tested the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, he compared the ability of a sterilized growth medium (meat broth) to produce a population of bacteria in two different types of flasks. One had a simple neck open to the outside, and the other had a "goose neck bend that also was open to the environment. Pasteur expected that bacteria would appear in the flask with the standard neck. In this experiment, the standard neck flask served as:

A) an observation.
B) a variable.
C) a control.
D) a statistic.
E) a hypothesis.

Question 10

The students in a classroom could be considered which of the following?

A) a biosphere
B) an organism
C) a population
D) a community
E) a niche

Question 11

Which of the following is an example of homeostasis? An organism that can:

A) assimilate and use energy.
B) reproduce.
C) evolve from other living things.
D) maintain a relatively constant internal environment.
E) respond to the environment.

Question 12

Tissues are:

A) a group of cells that serve a common function.
B) compartments within cells.
C) proteins.
D) organisms.
E) cells.

Question 13

The development of the physical sciences differed from development of biological sciences in that:

A) physical sciences offer the potential to find underlying principles, but such a goal is virtually impossible in biological sciences.
B) physical sciences developed much more slowly than biological sciences.
C) physical sciences aimed to find underlying principles after this approach was taken in biological sciences.
D) physical sciences developed more slowly than biological sciences because physical sciences are more difficult than biological science.
E) physical sciences aimed to find underlying principles before this approach was taken in biological sciences.

Question 14

Imagine you're a biology instructor lecturing to a group of students interested in ecology, the branch of biology that studies interactions between organisms and their environments. They complain bitterly that they're not interested in atoms and molecules because these are irrelevant to their interests. As a responsible instructor aiming to provide a complete and meaningful education, you would state:

A) "You need to study atoms and molecules because the organization of life is hierarchical; this implies that to understand the complex (ecology), you first need to understand the simpler underlying levels."
B) "Ok, have it your way."
C) "You to need to study atoms and molecules because they're important for many things."
D) "You need to study atoms and molecules because all biologists, regardless of their specific interests, should know about them."
E) "You need to study atoms and molecules because it's in the book."

Question 15

Which of the following is true of smoking?

A) Lung cancer rates have been shown to rise and fall with smoking rates.
B) Before smoking became popular in the 1920s, lung cancer was common.
C) Scientists knew in 1940 that smoking causes lung cancer.

Question 16

Which of the following is an example of statistics that were used to demonstrate that smoking causes lung cancer?

A) A doctor notices that most of her lung cancer patients smoked.
B) A mathematical analysis of a large number of people with lung cancer demonstrated that far more people who smoked developed lung cancer.
C) A woman who smoked developed lung cancer.

Question 17

If a sperm carrying an X chromosome fertilizes a mother's egg, which of the following will be true?

A) A baby girl will develop.
B) A sperm can't carry an X chromosome; only the egg can.
C) Nothing will happen.
D) A baby boy will develop.

Question 18

If you flip the light switch in your living room and nothing happens, what might be a good hypothesis to explain the absence of light?

A) Electricity sometimes flows backward in a wire, preventing the light from shining.
B) The circuit breaker for the living room might be the "off" position.
C) You might have made too many telephone calls this month, thereby reducing the amount of electricity in your lines.
D) The air conditioner is also running upstairs, and it might be using all of the electricity available in your house at the moment.

Question 19

Kittens are among the animals that scientists have cloned.

Question 20

Genetically altered salmon are grown to eating weight in half the normal time.

Question 21

The study of the physical functioning of plants and animals is called ________.

Question 22

Match column 1 with the items in column 2.

-Physiology

A) ecology
B) molecular biology
C) the functioning of plants and animals

Question 23

Match column 1 with the items in column 2.

-Studying how molecules affect living beings

A) ecology
B) molecular biology
C) the functioning of plants and animals

Question 24

Match column 1 with the items in column 2.

-How living organisms relate to each other and to their physical environment

A) ecology
B) molecular biology
C) the functioning of plants and animals

Question 25

Discuss some of the possible ways that genetic engineering might benefit you or people in your community, and give possible examples.

Question 26

You are a part of the first scientific team to land on Saturn. How would you begin to discover whether there is any life there?