Knowledge of facts and ability to reason are two different things. “Smart” is not necessarily knowledge of facts.
Here is a test of some find interesting. It contains both facts and reasoning:
1. A race car does one mile lap at 60 miles per hour and takes the second lap at 30 miles per hour. What was the average speed of the race car? HINT – it was not 45 MPH!
2. Who was the first president of the United States of America? HINT – USA was founded in 1776, Washington became president in 1789.
3. Spraying steam on an object in a hot desert will make it – A. hotter or B. Cooler?
4. Jack the Ripper killed how many women?
a. 4 or 5
b. 20
c. 50
d. 100
5. The most prolific serial killer in the USA (Dr. H. H. Holmes) is suspected of killing how many people?
a. 20
b. 50
c. 100
d. 200
6. Which of the following companies was founded by an immigrant?
a. Google
b. AT&T
c. Goldman Sachs
d. Ebay
e. Radio Shack
f. Khols
g. Comcast
h. Big Lots
i. Yahoo
j. Nordstrum
k. Sara Lee
l. Colgate
7. Seven employees work for a company. Their salaries are $1.00, $2.00, $2.50, $3.00, $5.00, $5.00 and $1,000,000.00. What is the AVERAGE salary?
a. $3.00
b. $5.00
c. $200,003.70
d. Any or all of the above
ANSWERS:
1. Speed = distance over time. 1st lap at 60 MPH does 1 mile in 1/60 of an hour or 1 minute. Similarly the second lap takes 2 minutes. Therefore we sent 2 miles in 3 minutes or (20 x 2) = 40 miles/(20 x 3) in 60 minutes for an average speed of 40 MPH
2. John Hanson – look it up,
3. Visible steam will cool. Steam that can be seen is actually liquid water. In a dry climate water will evaporate (change from liquid to gas) To do this it will absorb heat. Heat of Vaporization-the amount of heat required to convert unit mass of a liquid into the vapor without a change in temperature.For water at its normal boiling point of 100 ºC, the heat of vaporization is 2260 J g-1. This means that to convert 1 g of water at 100 ºC to 1 g of steam at 100 ºC,
4. Debated whether he killed 4 or 5.
5. Approximately 200.
6. All the above and a lot more Fortune 500 companies. Immigrant founded companies bring in about $1.7 trillion dollars.
7. Answer is d. “Average” has several ways of expression. Average (median) can be the middle (50% above it and 50% below) Therefore $3.00 is the median salary. Modal is the most frequent value. Therefore $5.00 is the “average” using the modal; value. Finally, the most commonly used average is the mean value. Mean (add up all the salaries and divide by the number of employees. = $1,000,018.50/7) = $2,000,003.70.