Keith Law
Bonus Quiz: Name the Non-Metals
by Keith Law - October 5, 2009 - 12:00 PM

quiz_head_nonmetals

Editor’s Note: Baseball expert/food critic/bookworm Keith Law of ESPN is back with another week of quizzes. Make him feel welcome!

I was fascinated by chemistry when I was young, although AP Chemistry woke me up to the fact that studying chemistry involved a significant amount of work. Since I’ve always been obsessed with lists, rankings, and tables, the Periodic Table was a pretty obvious draw. Can you name the 22 named elements usually classified as “non-metals,” all located on the right-hand side of the periodic table?

Take the Quiz: Name all the Non-Metals

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Comments (7)

  1. Technically, they’re not all on the right side of the table. There’s one that “should” be on the right with the rest of the non-metals, but is always placed on the far left.

    posted by Harry on 10-5-2009 at 12:17 pm

  2. klaw on Mental Floss?! Nice!

    posted by Paul on 10-5-2009 at 12:23 pm

  3. ARGH! stupid toothpaste-related one. I kept spelling it wrong!

    reCaptcha: Wine lyrics. karaoke anyone?

    posted by Steven on 10-5-2009 at 2:33 pm

  4. I’m a chemistry professor and I have a couple complaints with this. First, H is a metal. It’s a weird metal, but it is a metal. B, Si, As, Te, and At are metalloids. So your list should be shorter than it is. I teach this stuff and I also had problems with the spelling. I only ever use the symbols:)

    posted by Nick on 10-5-2009 at 2:58 pm

  5. H is a metal? This is the first I’ve ever heard of that claim, Nick.

    posted by Steven on 10-5-2009 at 4:18 pm

  6. I liked the quiz- it’s been a long time since I had to know the periodic table…and I bombed… but it was good brain exercise!

    posted by ann on 10-5-2009 at 5:02 pm

  7. Yeah, Hydrogen is on the left side of the table!

    posted by Katy on 10-5-2009 at 7:34 pm

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