If you were to travel 2000 years into the past, how useful would you be in jumpstarting technological advancements? This 10 question quiz will help you figure out your technological usefulness. If you do poorly on the quiz, as most people likely will, then just let that inspire you to study up more on how things work and where raw materials come from.
I got 8/10. I don’t know engines and I didn’t know how to vulcanize rubber.
I also managed 8/10, but I think that vastly overestimates my ability to singlehandedly rebuild the modern industrial base.
Life would be much easier if it came in multiple-choice format.
I got 8 as well, but just because I could guess “cryolite” was used to cool something doesn’t mean I have any idea what cryolite is!
What we really need is this t-shirt: http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QW-CHEATSHEET&Category_Code=QW
The single most important technology is the lathe. Given a lathe you can make engines and generators. Given a lathe you can make rifled gun and cannon barrels to keep possession of them. Hard materials are high on the list – for cutting metals with a lathe. All the world is cylinders, pistons, and shafts (including hydraulics).
10/10, piddles quiz. Cryolite, Na3AlF6, is a comparatively low-melting molten salt solvent for alumina by forming mixed oxyfluoride species. The Hall process was discovered on a stove, as was Goodyear’s vulcanization. Both were accomplished by folks who didn’t quite know what they were doing… and were way out of OSHA and EPA compliance. Leo Bakeland knew it should work, but it didn’t. Horrible stinks and crap out the end. He then did the managerially unthinkable thing – he made the reaction conditions vastly more aggressive with autoclave pressure and high temperature, obtaining Bakelite. A proper society would confiscate all three inventions for having been obtained in the Officially wrong way.
I also got 8 out of 10!