Are you technologically useful?

Technologically useful, 8/10 too.

I suspect if my education wasn't in 'aerospace' engineering, I would score better... :-)

Only 7 out of 10, but still useful, too. not sure which ones I missed, though. Didn't keep track of my answers.

Ten out of ten.

I'd smirk, but for a goodly percentage I know nothing about the process, but could recognize irrelevant or incorrect options, leaving only one choice.

Eight of ten as well.

10/10

Though I doubt I could create an Aluminum production plant from an Iron age technology base.

I got 10/10, but I had read an article about the use of Cryolite in aluminum manufacture just a few weeks ago, otherwise I would have got that question wrong.

Some of the knowledge struck me as not being very useful in a primitive situation - kids in high school would know about the existence of neutrons, but what could they do with that knowledge? Knowing how to refine oil, build a clock, or reinforce concrete would be a lot more useful than a subatomic idea that wasn't even discovered until 1930.

Again 8/10, but I go beyond generalities on some of them. I could probably get from iron ore, coal (to make the coke from) and limestone flux to a steam engine, presuming that people in the scenario were actually inclined to play along.

10 out of 10. Now, if there were a question about inertial electrostatic fusion ... :-)

8 out of 10, but I had to think about it a minute to grok that evaporation is the endothermic part of the air conditioner's heat cycle--I'm so used to thinking of the condenser being the important part of a heat pump.

However, I don't think I could name the leaders of 20 nations for a pop political quiz...

9/10, but I have an unfair advantage -- I'm an engineering professor.

But I think the real boost a time-traveler could give mankind is to clear up misconceptions that took us millennia to overcome, e.g. about momentum, force, gravity, energy. The technological stuff comes relatively rapidly once you learn, e.g., that heat transfer can be turned into useful work, as both are forms of energy. With just Newton's laws and the Maxwell equations, a lot of progress could be made.

But recall the words of Herodotus:

"Of all men's miseries
the bitterest is this:
to know so much
and to have control over nothing."

BBB

0 for 0, my computer wouldn't follow the link. Not being in control of my own machine puts me way down on the list.

10 out of 10 - not that the knowledge really does much good if you haven't got the skills to feed and shelter yourself. Got to have somebody ensuring a food supply before you can dedicate people to mining iron ore all day...

Just amazing! I didn't know they gave multiple choice tests two thousand years ago. Did they have scantrons back then?

9 out of 10 - Good to see my aluminum foundry experience comming to some use.

10/10. Maybe that useless information filling my brain isn't quite so useless after all.

Same here; 8/10. Got the refrigeration and cement ones wrong.

Ten, and no cheating.;-)

Let me take back a copy of The Way Things Work and I'll rule the world.

11/10....That's right, I hacked the test, stole the answers and added an extra point to my score. However, In the 0 century I'm pretty sure I'd be useless without my mouse, keyboard, and coffee machine.

I think Ashley is right, this quiz is amusing but I don't think it says much about one's utility to the distant past. The main reason medieval monks didn't come up with the concept of protons and electrons is that there was no experimental evidence on the subject -- which means there were no practical implications of the knowledge. Also, there's no point in knowing how aluminum is made unless you have gigawatts of electricity available to do the electrolysis.

It's an interesting question to think about what would be useful knowledge if you wanted to play Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Here's my list:

(1) The idea that germs (invisible living organisms) cause disease. Without this idea, you're doomed to futile and sometimes tragically wrong-headed methods of stopping the spread of infectious disease, which was the major scourge of pre-industrial post-agriculture society. With germ theory, you can take such simple and effective steps as washing your hands after crapping or shaking the hands of strangers, digging the latrine far from the well, and washing out wounds with soap and water so they don't get infected.

(2) How to make soap from animal fat and wood ash. Soap is amazingly useful stuff, especially in the fight against infectious disease, vide supra.

(3) How to rotate crops appropriately, so you get the most from your soil, and how to fertilize safely using animal wastes.

(4) Basic nutritional needs of infants and adults, and good sources of them, including portable and easily-preserved sources. No need for endemic scurvy among sailors, or gout among the knights. (They wouldn't be drinking so much wine anyway, because I'd have taught them how to make their water safe by boiling it.) Reduction in child mortality, leading to less investment necessary in child-bearing and rearing.

(5) Knowledge of the human fertility cycle, so people could plan when to have babies and when not to. Also so that women clearly unfitted for childbearing could avoid it. (Worth remembering that the principle cause of premature female death in pre-industrial times was childbirth. For males it would probably be infectious diseases, or accident followed by infection.)

(6) Mendelian genetics, so they could breed better crops and domestic animals. Maybe humans, too.

(7) Basic parasitology, including knowledge of the life cycles of fleas, mosquitoes, flies, ticks, potato bugs, intestinal parasites and the like, and how to interfere with those life cycles (drain the standing water, diatomaceous earth around the tomato plants, etc.)

(8) Some basic materials chemistry, including how to get lime from limestone, how to vulcanize rubber, how to reduce ores to metals, how to make charcoal, and how to make glass from sand.

(9) Algebra, including trigonometry, for the purpose of navigation, surveying, and making sure big buildings are neither overbuilt nor fall down.

(10) How to make and use a hot-air balloon. Seeing the surroundings from a high point can be useful in many ways.

This list isn't the same as personal survival skills, inasmuch as I'm assuming I'm there as a teacher. I've also left out stuff men have known for ages, like how to build a bridge or distill liquor from fermented grapes, as well as stuff that isn't useful until you've built up a massive industrial base, like anything to do with electricity, atomic physics, long-distance communication, or advanced materials (e.g. aluminum, which is not very useful stuff compared to steel unless you want to build aircraft).

7/10, without really working at it, although the AC one made me pause for a moment.

I like Carl's list, but of course I think youd have to remember to add one more very important skill:

Managing not be be captured and killed as a witch/Evil sorcerer/heretic, etc, etc, etc while trying to introduce any of your advances.

I honestly suspect that would be harder than creating a nuke plant in 5AD Judea.

only 7... and probably don't have the practical knowedge for it to be of any advantage should I happen to snag a time machine.

Wow. Except for the cryolite electrolysis that was taught in first year chem, this is all stuff that we learned in primary school. It must be stated though that cryolite and the hall-heroult process won't get you very far without knowing about the bayer and leblanc processes as well, which the quiz fails to mention.

Who ever would have thought my publicly funded education would have been useful for something?

10/10.

Also, there's no point in knowing how aluminum is made unless you have gigawatts of electricity available to do the electrolysis.

Hydroelectric dams could have been built using the metallurgy that was beginning to be developed by the Nok around ~500BC, if they had only known that it was possible.

Hydroelectric dams could have been built using the metallurgy that was beginning to be developed by the Nok around ~500BC, if they had only known that it was possible.

And if they had had any use for electricity.

Hydropower itself -- not hydroelectricity -- has been used since antiquity, of course.