If you've taken a science class that had a lab, you should be able to do well at this quiz! This is a picture quiz. I'll show you a common piece of lab glassware and you identify it. The glassware is representative of what you would see in an introductory or general chemistry lab or in a general science lab. I'm working on a more challenging quiz for those of you who know all of your esoteric named glassware.

Here's an interesting news story... the gist of it is that people who drink a lot of coffee or tea are 3x more likely to hallucinate or see ghosts than people who don't use as much caffeine. Big deal, right? The scary part of the research is the control group. Apparently 3% of them already hear voices and see people who aren't really there, mainly dead people. Do you think that's a representative sample? Seems strange to me. If I started seeing dead relatives I'd be pretty sure I was losing it. You can read the abstract of the research paper if you want to learn more. Incidentally, you don't need to slam back 7 cups of instant coffee to gain the increased chance of hearing voices or seeing ghosts. Apparently that is the amount of caffeine found in 3 cups of brewed coffee.

Image: Structure of caffeine (Wikipedia Commons)

You can make a lava lamp with non-toxic household ingredients. I've also included a video of this project.

Do you know what the glassware in this photo is called or what it is used for? Could you identify a retort, Soxhlet extractor, or Shlenk flask? I've been adding to the chemistry glassware gallery so you can look up an unfamiliar piece of glassware and see how it's used. Once I get the glassware gallery fully stocked, so to speak, I'll make up a quiz so you can test your glassware knowledge.