I am miffed, only 14 correct answers in a quiz with 19 questions. Personally, I think there’s something wrong with Discovery Channel’s Can you tell fact from fiction? Take the molecular nanotechnology quiz. I just don’t understand how someone (moi) who regularly writes on the subject couldn’t score better. Take for example the first question,

The U.S. National Nanotechnology Institute has a budget of more than $1.5 billion a year.

There are three possible responses which I did not realize due to a pale blue font that makes the text disappear and my assumption that this was true/false quiz. No. The choices were

• fact,
• fiction, or
• almost fact:  it’s more like $1.5 billion.

Personally (and I’m not bitter), the third choice seems a little disingenuous. It seems they don’t have a hard and fast number for the budget so agreeing that it’s more than $1.5 billion is essentially the same as saying “it’s more like $1.5 billion,”  another way of saying ‘approximately $1.5 billion’ (maybe a little more or maybe a little less).

Despite my less than serious quibbles (there was at least one other question where I think the ‘correct’ answer could be debated), this is an interesting, fun, and informative quiz which takes about five to 10 minutes.