After figuring out that Dot Physics used to live next door to the “new” blog, I spent lunchtime looking through the old posts. And I found a link to a physics quiz at Intuitor.
At Intuitor we have decided to fight back against the dark forces of ignorance and shine the bright light of truth on the wickedness of physics misconceptions through the lens of the Intuitor Physics Savvy Quiz. We have already taken a stand against the insultingly stupid movie physics foisted upon young and unsuspecting minds by the American Babylon called Hollywood. Yet, we find that bad physics thinking has already infected the minds of millions.
We urge you to take the Physics Savvy Quiz and find out if you have been infected by the heinous virus of physics misconceptions. The quiz is painless and consists entirely of true-false questions. These can be answered without making calculations and are taken from concepts taught in introductory-level high school or middle school physical science classes. In other words, if you have never taken high school physics and can barely do algebra, you should still be able to answer the questions
(If you want to skip all the introduction and explanation, the actual quiz is here)
It’s pretty good, generally free of ambiguity, using the scientific definitions of terms and testing concepts rather than memorization of facts. One possibly vague question: “negative acceleration” is used as “acceleration in the negative direction” of some arbitrarily defined coordinate system. Have at it. (Disclosure: I scored 100%. No, really. I was karving my initials on the moose I’m a professional. But please, try this at home. I was not on a closed course.)