Table 1.
Questions posed to a group of undergraduate Year 2 medical students*
|
Questions in an area of students’ high expertise (undergraduate Year 1 medical curriculum) | |
| 1. How many valence electrons does carbon have? |
(4) |
| 2. How many pairs of cranial nerves are there? |
(12) |
| 3. How many bones in the adult human body? |
(206) |
| 4. In which year did Freud publish “The interpretation of dreams”? |
(1900) |
| 5. How many genes does a human have? |
(23 000) |
| 6. What is an average salary of a GP in the UK? |
(104 000) |
| 7. How many erythrocytes in 1 mL of blood? |
(5 000 000) |
| 8. How many refugees are there in the world? |
(15 400 000) |
| 9. How many people in the world have diabetes? |
(347 000 000) |
| 10. How many bases (A, T, C or G letters) are in the haploid human genome? |
(3 000 000 000) |
|
Questions in an area of students’ moderate expertise (general knowledge) | |
| 1. How many marriages did Elizabeth Taylor have? |
(8) |
| 2. How old was Mozart when he died? |
(35) |
| 3. How many minutes does the movie “Casablanca” last? |
(102) |
| 4. In which year was Hamlet first published? |
(1603) |
| 5. How many diseases in ICD–10? |
(14 400) |
| 6. What is the average house price in the UK (in GBP)? |
(238 976) |
| 7. How many people live in Cape Town? |
(3 740 000) |
| 8. How much was Van Gogh’s “sunflowers” painting sold for (in US$)? |
(39 700 000) |
| 9. What is the population size of Indonesia? |
(246 900 000) |
| 10. How many views did Psy’s “Gangham Style” video have to date? |
(1 764 039 000) |
|
Questions in an area of student’s low expertise (astronomy) | |
| 1. How many light years from our Sun is Sirius? |
(9) |
| 2. How many moons does Saturn have? |
(62) |
| 3. How many times is Jupiter heavier than Earth? |
(318) |
| 4. In which year was Uranus first discovered? |
(1781) |
| 5. Distance between our Sun and the centre of Milky Way galaxy (in light–years)? |
(27 000) |
| 6. How many times is the Sun heavier than Earth? |
(332 900) |
| 7. What is the speed of the solar wind (in Km/h)? |
(1 440 000) |
| 8. How many years ago did the comet impact killed off dinosaurs? |
(65 000 000) |
| 9. Distance between the Sun and the Jupiter (in kilometres)? |
(780 000 000) |
| 10. How many years ago was our Solar System formed? | (4 568 000 000) |
*The group was about 170 (range: 167–175) undergraduate Year 2 medical students from: (i) an area of their high expertise (ie, undergraduate Year 1 medical curriculum); (ii) an area where they have some expertise (general knowledge); and (iii) an area where they should have no expertise (astronomy). Correct answers are shown in brackets.