IIT OPEN SCI-TECH QUIZ

QUIZZINGAIIT (BHU) VARANASI

MAHENDRA MOHAN DASS. SUJANA

Sincere thanks to Google, Wikipedia and Slideshare.

Personal thanks to Goswami brothers, Sandipan and Sudarshan.

Pounce: +10/-10

Infinite bounce.

In 1931, the American physical chemist Harold Urey demonstrated the existence of what type of liquid that proved important in the development of the atomic bomb?

It helped him win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934.

What liquid ?

Heavy water.

It is a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. While it had long been known that the Earth rotated, the introduction of it in 1851 was the first simple proof of the rotation in an easy-to-see experiment. Today, these are popular displays in science museums and universities. What is this device?

(picture on the next slide)

Foucault pendulum.

Joseph Jacobson and Barrett Comiskey are listed as inventors on the original patent filed in 1996. It is currently available commercially in grayscale and colour.

To a lesser extent, it is used in mobile phones and watches.

E-ink.

They are fictional creatures found in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift describes them as vile and savage creatures, filthy and with unpleasant habits, obsessed with "pretty stones" they find by digging in mud. Hence the term has come to mean "a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person". The same shares the name with a Famous IT Giant.

Identify.

Yahoo.

Who/what is he?

Ward Cunningham,Developer of wiki.

“…How long have you been here? She seems to be trying to remember. Three weeks. What is this? I show her a pencil. A pen. A purse, key, diary and cigar are identified correctly. At lunch she eats cauliflower and pork. Asked what she is eating she answers spinach. When she was chewing meat and asked what she was doing, she answered potatoes and horseradish. When objects are shown to her, she does not remember after a short time which objects have been shown…”

Part of whose diary/ put funda.

About Auguste D., the first recorded Alzheimer patient by Dr. Alzheimer.

Dr. Alzheimer.

What is a ‘Throbber’?

Which place?

Since April 2009, Android versions have been developed under a codename and released in alphabetical order: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), and Jelly Bean.

Android lawn.

Significance of the book? Several prominent

figures, including Steve Wozniak and Isaac Asimov, have cited "Tom Swift" as an inspiration. Several inventions, including X, have been directly inspired by the fictional inventions.

Acronym for Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.

TASER.

Audience question:

The main problem for students to accept this fact is that they are often "mentally committed to the notion that a number can be represented in one and only one way by a decimal." Seeing two different decimals representing the same number appears to be a paradox. This problem proved such a popular topic in the first seven years of Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net forums that the company issued a "press release" on April Fools' Day 2004 that went:

We are very excited to close the book on this subject once and for all. .....and that the following proof finally and conclusively addresses the issue of our customer. Which ?

The fact that 0.9999999………= 1

Pounce: +10/-10.

And the bounce reverses.

This is a description from HowStuffWorks.com:

A piston fires. The next piston fires at 315°. There is a 405° gap. A piston fires. The next piston fires at 315°. There is a 405° gap. And the cycle continues.

What is being described?

The Harley Davidson – Potato Potato sound

a X, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the X. There is a supposed 50% chance of this happening. The Y implies that after a while, the X is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the X either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.

Schrodinger’s cat.

Cat.

FITB.

During World War I, Aeroplanes were used as fighter and bomber aircraft by both sides. Air Force pilots in World War I unfortunately had to face a very unpleasant side effect caused by inhaling fumes from the lubricant commonly used for the newly developed internal combustion rotary engines that powered the aircraft.

What was the lubricant used for these engines (and a common brand of lubricant gets its name from the lube that was used for this).

Castor oil, Castrol.

After being issued U.S. patent #6,281 on April 10, 1849, Hunt sold the patent to W. R. Grace and Company for $400 (roughly $10,000 in 2008 dollars). Using that money, Hunt then paid the $15 owed to a friend and kept the remaining amount of $385 for himself. What Hunt failed to realize is that in the years to follow, W.R. Grace and Company would make millions of dollars in profits from his invention.

What?

Safety pin.

Which award is awarded for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”?

Ig Nobel.

It consists of a keyboard; a set of rotating disks called rotors arranged adjacently along a spindle; and one of various stepping components to turn one or more of the rotors with each key press.

The keyboard and lampboard contained 29 letters—A-Z, Ä, Ö and Ü—which were arranged alphabetically, as opposed to the QWERTZU ordering. The rotors had 28 contacts, with the letter X wired to bypass the rotors unencrypted.

Three rotors were chosen from a set of five and the reflector could be inserted in one of four different positions, denoted α, β, γ and δ.

What is being described?

Enigma.

Charles H. Duell resigned from his post as the commissioner for US patents in 1899. Although most of us may not remember him, we know the reason he gave for his resignation. The reason was dependant on the job that he did before resigning. What was the reason he gave (which is now quoted widely)?

State the reason.

Everything That Can Be Invented Has Been Invented.

According to the parent company producing this browser, the name stands for the idea that a thread of a particular material “is an invisible yet incredibly strong connection between two different things”.

What browser and which company?

Name the browser.

Amazon Silk.

Invention Everyday science Medicine/Biology Defence Popular culture/ literary adaptation Mathematics

Your choice matters!

Eugene Polley worked for Zenith Electronics for years where he gained patents for several inventions. Best known among these was called the "Flash-Matic", a revolutionary new product that eventually became an (now almost) indispensable household product. "Flash" because it focused visible light (from a device like a flashlight) to a set of photo-cells.

So what product thus came about?

What famous product?

back

Remote control.

Because the light of the flash occurs too fast for the pupil to close, much of the very bright light from the flash passes into the eye through the pupil, reflects off the fundus at the back of the eyeball and out through the pupil. The camera records this reflected light. The main cause of the red color is the ample amount of blood in the choroid which nourishes the back of the eye and is located behind the retina. The blood in the retinal circulation is far less than in the choroid, and plays virtually no role. The eye contains several photostable pigments that all absorb in the short wavelength region, and hence contribute somewhat to the ____.

back

Red eye effect.

The medical terms related to the ______ often start in hepato or hepatic from the Greek word for this organ.

These words also serve as the root of one of the most dangerous but common diseases to affect humans that is caused by acute inflammation of this organ.

This organ has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion.

What organ are we talking about?

back

Liver.

India’s first armoured capsule based light bullet proof vehicle to provide protection to Defence, Para Military and Police forces against small arms fire and under belly grenade attacks.

Manufactured by a company known more for allied products, this represents the first indigenous development of the APC.

Identify Company and Product

back

Mahindra’s rakshak.

Inspiration for which character? Auguste Piccard

was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer.

Prof. Calculus.back

Which mathematician has published more maths papers than any other mathematicians?

back

Paul Erdos.

Written round. +10/0. For mega connect, marks are as shown on

each slide. Non-exhaustive.

Big bang: The mega connect!

This asteroid, now classified as a dwarf planet, was named after the goddess of fertility in mythology.

This is the only dwarf planet in the inner Solar System, and the largest asteroid.

Name the asteroid. +60/-30

When X's brother Y died, a French newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary for X which called him the "merchant of death." Not wanting to go down in history with such a horrible epitaph, X did something. Who is he and what did he do?

What did X do? +60/-30

Apple Inc., Google, Yahoo, Adobe systems, Intel, NVidia, SanDisk and many other technology giants are headquartered in which U.S. state?

A generic answer/area name might fetch you 5 points, if the quizmaster is in a good mood.

+50/-25

On 2nd December 1942 he initiated the atomic age with the first self-sustaining chain reaction. After that, Along with J. Robert Oppenheimer, he is frequently referred to as "the father of the atomic bomb". Since the 1950s, the United States Atomic Energy Commission has named its highest honor, the X Award, after him. Recipients of the award include well-known scientists including J. Robert Oppenheimer himself.

Who is he? +40/-20

At a quarry and mine near the village, the rare earth mineral yttria was discovered and named after the village. This crude mineral eventually proved to be the source of four new elements.

Name the village. +30/-15

Who is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences?

Name the person. +20/-10

On his 72nd birthday, UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to persuade this famous scientist to smile for the camera, but having smiled for photographers many times that day, he did something else.

What?

(The scientist goes to the connect, not the complete answer.)

What resulted? +10/0

Answers

This asteroid, now classified as a dwarf planet, was named after the goddess of fertility in mythology.

This is the only dwarf planet in the inner Solar System, and the largest asteroid.

Name the asteroid. +60/-30

Ceres.

When X's brother Y died, a French newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary for X which called him the "merchant of death." Not wanting to go down in history with such a horrible epitaph, X did something. Who is he and what did he do?

What did X do? +60/-30

Alfred Nobel.

Apple Inc., Google, Yahoo, Adobe systems, Intel, NVidia, SanDisk and many other technology giants are headquartered in which U.S. state?

+50/-25

Silicon valley.

California.

On 2nd December 1942 he initiated the atomic age with the first self-sustaining chain reaction. After that, Along with J. Robert Oppenheimer, he is frequently referred to as "the father of the atomic bomb". Since the 1950s, the United States Atomic Energy Commission has named its highest honor, the X Award, after him. Recipients of the award include well-known scientists including J. Robert Oppenheimer himself.

Who is he? +40/-20

Enrico Fermi.

At a quarry and mine near the village, the rare earth mineral yttria was discovered and named after the village. This crude mineral eventually proved to be the source of four new elements.

Name the village. +30/-15

Ytterby.

Who is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences?

Name the person. +20/-10

Marie Curie.

On his 72nd birthday, UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to persuade this famous scientist to smile for the camera, but having smiled for photographers many times that day, he did something else.

What?

(The scientist goes to the connect, not the complete answer.)

What resulted? +10/0

Einstein tongue out.

Cerium. Nobelium. Californium. Fermium. Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium, Ytterbium. Curium. Einsteinium.

Elements named after them.

Connect