Allison Parshall

@parshallison.bsky.social

1772 Followers 73 Following

Mind and brain news editor at Scientific American. Follow for weekly science quizzes! Views are my own.

Multiple choice question reading "A famous sculpture containing a cryptography puzzle called Kryptos has fascinated the public since 1990, when it was installed in what notable location?" Answer options are "The Statue of Liberty's torch, Area 51, the CIA's headquarters, the North Pole."
Quiz question reading "'Earth wind' can blow particles of oxygen to the moon, where they can do what?" Answer options are "Erupt lunar volcanoes, feed lunar microbes, rust lunar minerals, and create lunar auroras"
Quiz question reading "What global treasure-hunting game uses GPS to lead players to spots that are hidden in plain sight?"; Answer options are MapQuest, Grandlining, Geocaching, and Skytagging
Multiple choice question reading "What is the hallucinogenic compound found in 'magic mushrooms'?" Answer options are psilocybin, mescaline, dimethyltryptamine, and omeprazole.
Screenshot of a quiz question, "In grapheme-color synesthesia, people see letters or numbers as having particular colors. What color do English-speaking people with this form of synesthesia most often associate with the letter “A”?" Answer options are blue, red, chartreuse, and sad beige.
A quiz question that reads "The mathematical constant pi is an irrational number, so it can’t be represented as a fraction of two integers. But what fraction is often used to get close?"
Multiple choice quiz question. Question reads, "What exoplanet-hunting telescope in Chile goes by an acronym that is also the name of a recent Grammy Award–winning song?" Answer possibilities are: ESPRESSO (Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations)", "BRAT (Barometric Radiation Astronomical Telescope)", "APT (Aerial Prism Telescope)" and "NOTLIKEUS (National Observatory for Transiting-like Exoplanets in the Ultraviolet Spectrum)"
Quiz question reading "The oldest two people to fly in space are astronaut Ed Dwight and what famous science-fiction actor?" Answer options are: Mark Hamill, William Shatner, Dick van Dyke and Christopher Lloyd