this kind of quiz doesn't work so well on a website, because the user clearly has access to the internet
it's not that i'm trying to figure out people's knowledge, it's that i'm trying to figure out what the split on the votes is because different people have different opinions
there's no factual answer, but there is one that's the most useful and the most logically consistent (and it's six - eurasia, africa, north america, south america, australia, and antarctica)
let me hit you all with some LOGIC
There are 6 continents, by process of elimination. Let's go through each region.
There isn't really much dispute about Australia and Antarctica. Most people consider them continents, because the gap between Australia (at 7.6 million km²) and Greenland (2.1 million km²) is pretty huge. As long as you place the line somewhere in there, like 5 million km², that's easy to settle.
There are 3 possible setups for Africa, Europe, and Asia. They are either 3 separate continents, two (Africa and Eurasia), or all one. The logic behind all one continent is that Africa is technically connected to Eurasia by a tiny strip of land. However, having a continent as huge as Afro-Eurasia is obviously unhelpful, and the Suez Cbrown town is an excellent place to cut the continents because it's so small. That means Africa is definitely a separate continent.
Now, what about Eurasia? Is it one or two continents? Well, the dividing line traditionally given is the Ural Mountains. But that's pretty arbitrary, and extremely inconsistent! If we allow mountain ranges to divide continents, then what's stopping us at dividing Eurasia? The US would span 4 continents! From the Pacific to the Cascades and Sierra Nevada, from the Sierra Nevada to the Rockies, from the Rockies to the Appalachians, and the Appalachians to the Atlantic. Europe is even worse! The Pyrenees would make Iberia a continent of its own, the Alps would make Italy its own continent, the Carpathians would tear out half of Hungary and Serbia, and Greece and Constantinople would find themselves on a new continent. It should be obvious by now that there is simply no way to justify the Urals as a dividing line. Eurasia is one continent.
And now to the topic of [the original debate I wrote this for] - the Americas. Is it one continent or two? Well, in the first part, we decided that Africa is not in a giant megacontinent with Eurasia, because then "continent" stops being a useful term. However, if we allow the Suez to divide continents, then we must also allow Panama to divide continents if we are to stay logically consistent! This means that to keep both common sense and logical consistency, North America and South America are separate continents.
So then it is decided. We agree that Australia and Antarctica are continents, and we just deduced that Africa is a separate continent from Eurasia, which is one continent, and the two Americas are separate. Any other configuration would be either logically inconsistent or break down the usefulness of the term "continent."
Poll