CHEM CHO THE CHEMISTRY (AND OTHER ALLIED SCIENCES) QUIZ

PRELIMS

20 Questions

16-20 Star marked.

All the best!

#1

One of the first people Harry, Ron and Hermoine encounter on their Chocolate Cards is the wizard Nicolas Flamel. Nicolas Flamel would be Albus Dumbledore’s best friend and lab partner, sort of.

According to harrypotterwikia, Flamel and his wife were aged 665 and 658 respectively, at their time of deaths. How could this have been possible?

#2 IDENTIFY THE ARCHITECT.

#3

In the olden days of spectroscopy, spectral lines, on the basis of their observed fine structure, were classified as “fundamental”, “principal”, “diffuse” and “sharp”.

This terminology is now obsolete but it survives in modern chemistry in a different form.

How?

#4

Thiols are sulfur containing organic compoundsknown, among other things for their horriblesmells. To give an example, a laboratoryexperiment attempting to make thioacetone led tosuch a strong and repulsive odour that an entirecity had to be evacuated.

Which mammal, infamous for its odour (obviously),is known for producing as many as three differentthiol compounds and using it as a defense strategy?

#5 (SORRY, NOT EXACTLY CHEMISTRY QUESTION)

Identify this voice.

Clue: Think which instrument is being played.

#6

Human blood is red because our blood cells are made up of Hemoglobin, a protein which contains iron. These iron molecules bind oxygen and the light which is reflected off them appears red in colour.

Other animals like the Octopus or the Tarantula bleed blue. This is because they have Hemocyanin instead of Hemoglobin as the oxygen transporting protein. What metal atom combines with oxygen molecules to make up Hemocyanin?

#7

In stereochemistry, one comes across the R-S nomenclature - enantiomers are labelled either R or S, depending on their “handedness”.

If R stands for Rectus, latin for “Right”, what does S stand for?

#8

What word, coined by polish biochemistKazimierz Funk, has its origins because it wasthought that the nitrogen containing functionalgroup was a vital constituent in themacronutrients that prevented beriberi andother dietary deficiencies?

#9

Winston Churchill labeled this drug a “miraculous”discovery in 1945. TIME magazine called it “abenefactor of all humanity”. 60 years later, this hasbeen directly linked to cancer, diabetes, has beenshown to trigger some eerie hormonal responsesand is been banned in the US, UK and 12 othercountries.

India is the only country still manufacturing thisproduct and also, not surprisingly, its largestconsumer.

What?

#10 (SORRY AGAIN, NOT CHEMISTRY)From Dan Falk’s Science of Shakespeare: A NewLook at the Playwright’s Universe:

Jupiter, so often invoked by characters in so many ofthe plays, never actually makes a personalappearance — until this point in Cymbeline. And ofcourse Jupiter is not alone in the scene: Just belowhim, we see four ghosts moving in a circle…

The four ghosts are supposed to be areference/result of the discoveries of which famouscontemporary (of Shakespeare)?

#11Antoine Lavosier believed that these substances got their properties because of the presence/absence of Oxygen.

Svante Arrhenius categorized them in terms of the ions they produce on dissociating in water.

The pair of Thomas Lowry and Johannes Bronsted defined them in terms of protons.

G N Lewis preferred to think of them in terms of electron pair movements.

The Russian chemist Mikahil Usanovich further generalized this theory into its current more accepted form.

What am I talking about?

#12We’ve all seen geckos climbing upand down trees/walls with ease, headup or head down.

The reason they’re able to this is notbecause their legs secrete some stickyfluid but that they’re actually coveredwith half a million tiny hairs,exponentially increasing their surfacearea and bringing into play a forcewhich our according to our textbooksis supposed to be very weak.

What is this force responsible forholding geckos from falling?

#13

Eating too many carrots can make you turnorange. Any teenager who watches Ninja Hattorior House MD would know that. There’s also aparticular bird which is born white but turnspink/red as it grows up due to high amounts ofthat orange pigment in their food supply.

What bird? What is the pigment called?

#14 WHAT IS BEING DESCRIBED IN THIS PICTURE?

#15

It is sometimes incorrectly said that thatWallace Carothers’s invention’s name is acombination of the names of the two cities ofLondon and New York.

Another (incorrect) theory says that it comesfrom WWII era slogan by the allies to theirenemy:

“Now you lazy old Nippon”. (Nippon = Japan)

What name?

#16

The leaves and bark of the willow tree have been mentioned in ancient texts from Assyria, Sumer and Egypt as a remedy for aches and fever. The great Greek physician Hippocrates wrote about its medicinal properties in the fifth century BC. Native Americans across the Americas relied on it as a staple of their medical treatments.

What chemical made the willow bark so effective a painkiller?

#17Expand the periodic table.

Advise 10 presidents.

Have an element named after you in your lifetime.

Win a Nobel Prize.

Turn a tiny bit of lead into gold.

Marry a brilliant lady and have six kids.

If this were a to-do list, whose completely checked to-do list would it be?

#18

In New Scientist magazine’s list of 20 greatestscientists of all time, he is the only other 20th

century figure, apart from Einstein.

He is considered the father of molecular biology andwell known for his work on the protein structure. Heis also the only person to have received twounshared Nobel Prizes – Chemistry in 1964 andPeace in 1962.

Most of us will know him from his work on thenature of chemical bond (hybridization,electronegativity etc.)

Who?

#19

German Alchemist Hennig Brand was convinced thatwith sufficiently complicated chemical reactions, onecould extract gold from the Human body itself. The factthat a certain substance was gold colored seemed togive his theory further vindication.

So he put fifty buckets of this ‘gold colored substance’into a huge vat and boiled it till all the waterevaporated, distilled it down to a paste and heated it ata phenomenal temperature for several days. Eventuallywisps of smoke revealed tiny fragments thatcombusted in air.

What element had Brand discovered this way?

#20

Robert Boyle was supposedly experimenting with Brand’s invention in his home when he discovered that half a grain of this substance, when rubbed with powdered sulfur on a piece of paper gave rise to a brilliant yellow flame.

What had Robert Boyle thus invented, which gave rise to a whole industry?

ANSWERS

#1

One of the first people Harry, Ron and Hermoine encounter on their Chocolate Cards is the wizard Nicolas Flamel. Nicolas Flamel would be Albus Dumbledore’s best friend and lab partner, sort of.

According to harrypotterwikia, Flamel and his wife were aged 665 and 658 respectively, at their time of deaths. How could this have been possible?

FLAMEL WOULD HAVE CREATED THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE.

The philosopher’s stone is used to make the elixir of life and among other things can convert any metal into gold.

Our fest is called Alchemy, remember?

#2 IDENTIFY THE ARCHITECT.

ANSWER: BUCKMINISTER FULLER

#3

In the olden days of spectroscopy, spectral lines, on the basis of their observed fine structure, were classified as “sharp", "principal", "diffuse" and "fundamental“.

This terminology is now obsolete but it survives in modern chemistry in a different form.

How?

ANSWER: S,P,D AND F BLOCKS.

#4

Thiols are sulfur containing organic compoundsknown, among other things for their horriblesmells. To give an example, a laboratoryexperiment attempting to make thioacetone led tosuch a strong and repulsive odour that an entirecity had to be evacuated.

Which mammal, infamous for its odour (obviously),is known for producing as many as three differentthiol compounds and using it as a defense strategy?

ANSWER: THE SKUNK

#5

Identify this voice.

Clue: Think which instrument is being played.

ANSWER: RICHARD FEYNMAN (PLAYING BONGOS)

#6

Human blood is red because our blood cells are made up of Hemoglobin, a protein which contains iron. These iron molecules bind oxygen and the light which is reflected off them appears red in colour.

Other animals like the Octopus or the Tarantula bleed blue. This is because they have Hemocyanin instead of Hemoglobin as the oxygen transporting protein. What metal atom combines with oxygen molecules to make up Hemocyanin?

ANSWER: COPPER

#7

In stereochemistry, one comes across the R-S nomenclature - enantiomers are labelled either R or S, depending on their “handedness”.

If R stands for Rectus, latin for “Right”, what does S stand for?

ANSWER: SINISTER

#8

What word, coined by polish biochemistKazimierz Funk, has its origins because it wasthought that the nitrogen containing functionalgroup was a vital constituent in themacronutrients that prevented beriberi andother dietary deficiencies?

ANSWER: VITAMINES (FROM VITAL AMINES)

#9

Winston Churchill labeled this drug a“miraculous” discovery in 1945. TIME magazinecalled it “a benefactor of all humanity”. 60 yearslater, this has been directly linked to cancer,diabetes and has been shown to trigger somereally eerie hormonal responses and has beenbanned in the US, UK and about two dozen othercountries.

India is the only country still manufacturing thisproduct and also, not surprisingly, its largestconsumer.

ANSWER: DDT

#10

From Dan Falk’s Science of Shakespeare: A New Look atthe Playwright’s Universe -

Jupiter, so often invoked by characters in so many ofthe plays, never actually makes a personal appearance— until this point in Cymbeline. And of course Jupiteris not alone in the scene: Just below him, we see fourghosts moving in a circle…

The four ghosts are supposed to be a reference/resultof the discoveries of which famous contemporary (ofShakespeare)?

ANSWER: GALILEO

The four ghosts represent the four moons ofShakespeare – Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto.They are even today known as Galiean moons.

#11Antoine Lavosier believed that these substances got their properties because of the presence/absence of Oxygen.

Svante Arrhenius categorized them in terms of the ions they produce on dissociating in water.

The pair of Thomas Lowry and Johannes Bronsted defined them in terms of protons.

G N Lewis preferred to think of them in terms of electron pair movements.

The Russian chemist Mikahil Usanovich further generalized this theory into its current more accepted form.

What am I talking about?

ACID-BASE THEORY

#12

We’ve all seen geckos climbing up anddown trees/walls with ease, head up orhead down.

The reason they’re able to this is notbecause their legs secrete some stickyfluid but that they’re actually coveredwith half a million tiny hairs,exponentially increasing their surfacearea and bringing into play a forcewhich our according to our textbooks issupposed to be very weak.

What is this force responsible forholding geckos from falling?

THE VAN DER WAALS FORCE

(increases with surface area, remember?)

#13

Eating too many carrots can make you turnorange. Any teenager who watches Ninja Hattorior House MD would know that. There’s also aparticular bird (image in next slide) which isborn white but turns pink/red as it grows updue to high amounts of that orange pigment intheir food supply.

What bird? What is the pigment called?

FLAMINGOES

#14 WHAT IS BEING DESCRIBED IN THIS PICTURE?

#15

It is sometimes incorrectly said that that WallaceCarothers’s invention’s name is a combinationof the names of the two cities of London andNew York.

Another (incorrect) theory says that it is anacronym from WWII, a challenging slogan by theallies to their enemy at that time:

“Now you lazy old Nippon”. (Nippon = Japan)

What name?

ANSWER: NYLON (NEW YORK + LONDON)

#16

The leaves and bark of the willow tree have beenmentioned in ancient texts from Assyria, Sumer andEgypt as a remedy for aches and fever. The greatGreek physician Hippocrates wrote about its medicinalproperties in the fifth century BC. Native Americansacross the Americas relied on it as a staple of theirmedical treatments.

What chemical made the willow bark so effective?

ANSWER: SALICYLIC ACID

#17

Expand the periodic table.

Advise 10 presidents.

Have an element named after you in your lifetime.

Win a Nobel Prize.

Turn a tiny bit of lead into gold.

Marry a brilliant lady and have six kids.

If this were a to-do list, whose completely checked to-do list would it be?

GLENN SEABORG

#18

In New Scientist magazine’s list of 20 greatestscientists of all time, he is the only other 20th centuryfigure, apart from Einstein.

He is considered the father of molecular biology andwell known for his work on the protein structure. He isalso the only person to have received two unsharedNobel Prizes – Chemistry in 1964 and Peace in 1962.

Most of us will know him from his work on the natureof chemical bond (hybridization, electronegativity etc.)

Who?

ANSWER: LINUS PAULING

#19

German Alchemist Hennig Brand was convinced thatwith sufficiently complicated chemical reactions, onecould extract gold from the Human body itself. The factthat a certain substance was gold colored seemed togive his theory further vindication.

So he put fifty buckets of this ‘gold colored substance’into a huge vat and boiled it till all the waterevaporated, distilled it down to a paste and heated it ata phenomenal temperature for several days. Eventuallywisps of smoke revealed tiny fragments thatcombusted in air.

What element had Brand discovered this way?

ANSWER: PHOSPHOROUS

The yellow coloured substance was urine.

#20

Robert Boyle was supposedly experimenting with Brand’s invention in his home when he discovered that half a grain of this substance, when rubbed with powdered sulfur on a piece of paper gave rise to a brilliant yellow flame.

What had Robert Boyle thus invented, which gave rise to a whole industry?

ANSWER: A MATCHSTICK

ELEMENTARY STUFF

Written.

Questions on etymology of element names.

7 elements in all.

5 points for each element. (35 points at stake)

1. The latin name for this element comes fromthe fact that the Romans used it to build theirplumbing lines.

2. It is often mistaken that this element is namedafter the country when it was actually namedafter the bright blue colour seen in itsspectrum.

3. Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchoff discoveredthis element in 1861 and like the one before,named it after the red lines in the emissionspectrum, red as this little thing over here

#4, #5, #6, #7

A stone quarry located in the Swedish town ofYtterby is considered to be the single richestsource of elemental discoveries in the world. Asmany as ten elements have been isolated from asingle sample of this mine.

Four of them are named after the town itself.Name all four.

ANSWERS

1. Lead (Pb – Plumbum)

2. Indium (Indigo)

3. Rubidium (from Latin Rubidus for Red)

4. Yttrium, Ytterbium, Terbium, Erbium

ROUND 2

13 Questions

Infinte Bounce

Infinte Pounce (+10/-5)

A maximum of 130 points at

#1

Shown in the picture is WilliamHenry Perkin, an English chemistbest known for the accidentaldiscovery of the dye mauvine (atthe age of 18, btw).

It is said that his substantial beardmay have been a secret weapon inhis success as a chemist.

How?

ANSWER

ANSWER

Apparently, hair follicles kept falling down into the reaction mixture and helped in crystallization.

To the left are Gerty and Carl Cori, American biochemists known for discovering the mechanism of catalytic conversion of glycogen.

Below are May-Britt and Edward Moser, Norwegian pschologists/neuroscientists who identified grid cells, those nerve cells in the brain that allow it to sense and navigate locations.

Together, they make up two in an elite list of four. Who are the other two?

ANSWER

THE CURIES

Marie and Pierre Curie

Irene and Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie

Only couples to have won Nobel Prizes jointly.

#3According to the story, this Italian biologist was performing an experiment involving frogs when his scalpel accidentally touched an exposed nerve (of a dead frog) and the leg twitched.

This, he concluded was because of animal electricity, the life force within the muscles of the frog.

His colleague repeated the experiment and found the same results but had his doubts about the explanation given. He believed that the twitching occurred because of a potential difference, which came into being because different metals were used (and one accidentally picked up a charge) and that the movement was just an indicator of electricity.

Name the two people involved.

ANSWER

LUIGI GALVANI; ALLESANDROVOLTA

#4

As early as 340 BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle,in his book On The Heavens two good argumentsfor believing the Earth was round rather than flat.

One was that the North Star appeared lower in thesky when viewed from South than it did in thenortherly regions.

The other was a more powerful argument. It saidgiven certain conditions, one could indirectly seethe shape of the Earth.

What was this method?

ANSWER

LUNAR ECLIPSES

Earth’s shadow on the moon was always circular.

#5

X is a concept proposed by a great FrenchEngineer in 1824.

Y is a method used to simplify equations ofBoolean algebra, discovered by an Americanphysicist in 1953.

Both X and Y are named after their respectiveinventors and belong to entirely different fields.However, their Wikipedia pages advise you to notconfuse either with the other.)

Id X and Y.

ANSWER

X- CARNOT CYCLE Y – KARNAUGHMAPS

#6

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collateOne thing at least is certain, light has weightOne thing is certain and the rest debateLight rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.

This was how a great physicist once summed up his adventures and presented it at a Royal Astronomical Society dinner. Who? What was he talking about?

ANSWER

ARTHUR EDDINGTON

#7

“The New”

“The Lazy”

“The Secretive”

“The Strange”

These are roughly the translations of four entities in a list of six (so far). Name the other two.

ANSWER

HELIUM AND RADON

New – Neon

Lazy – Argon

Secretive – Krypton

Strange – Xenon

#8

What is the difference between a Noble gas and an inert gas?

ANSWER

Noble gases are the ones on the 18th group on the periodic table.

They don’t react and are elemental in nature.

An inert gas is simply a gas which does not undergo chemical reactions under a set of given set of conditions.

E.g. Nitrogen is used as an inert gas in SCUBA equipment.

#9

2 Sn2+ → Sn4+ + Sn

This particular type of reaction was first noticed by aFinnish chemist called John Gadolin in 1788.

Another example would be chlorine gas reacting withdilute NaOH.

3 Cl2 + 6 OH− → 5 Cl− + ClO3− + 3 H2O

What exactly is happening in these reactions?

ANSWER

These are called disproportionation reactions. Elements are being oxidized and reduced simultaneously to form two different products.

#10In 1848, this 26 year old from France was workingon a problem concerning with two acids commonlyfound in the sediments of fermenting wine. The onlyproblem was that these two acids were chemicallycompletely identical!

He finally solved the problem when he studied thecrystals of each acid under his microscope andnoticed they were slightly different. In the process,he had pioneered a whole new field of chemistry.

What would be the case with those two acids? Whowould the young man be?

ANSWER

The man would be Louis Pasteur.

The two acids are today known as tartaric andpara-tartaric acid. This was the first time chiralmolecules were observed. Pasteur was the firstStereochemist.

#11

It is the world's most widelyconsumed psychoactive drug, butunlike others, it is legal andunregulated in nearly all parts ofthe world. Part of the reason isthat toxic doses are over 10grams per day for an adult, whichis about twenty times higher thanwhat is typically consumed.

Which drug?

ANSWER

CAFFEINE

#12

According to the story, while washing a miner’s overalls, a washerwoman noticed that sand and similar dirt fell to the bottom of the washtub but the copper bearing compounds that had come to the clothes from the mines, were caught in the soapsuds and so they came to the top. She told her story to a client of hers who she knew was a chemist.

The chemist instantly realized its significance and thus was born what?

ANSWER

FROTH FLOTATION PROCESS

#13In 1824, a certain German chemist was trying to synthesize ammoniumcyanate by mixing ammonium chloride with silver cyanate.

AgNCO + NH4Cl → NH4NCO + AgCl

But when he examined the resulting crystals closely, he found somethingmarvelous. Ammonium cyanate had decomposed to form Ammonia andcynic acid, which in turn react to form something else.

He wrote to his friend, the famous chemist Berzelius –

"I cannot, so to say, hold my chemical water and must tell you that I canmake ____ without thereby needing to have kidneys, or anyhow, ananimal, be it human or dog.”

What crystals did our chemist discover under his microscope? Why wasthis result so significant?

ANSWER

WOHLER SYNTHESIS

The chemist was Friedrich Wohler. He hadsynthesized Urea. Urea was found in humanurine and therefore was considered to be anorganic compound, organic here meaning acompound having the vital life force.

This was the first time Urea was synthesizedusing inorganic compounds.

LONG VISUAL CONNECT

There are seven pictures here in all.

All of them connect to a very specific theme.

You can try to guess the theme at any point.

The points you get on getting it right/wrong are mentioned on the corresponding slide.

+40/-15 (WARNING: THIS IS AN INDIRECT CLUE)

+35/-15

+30/-10

+20/-10

+25/-5

+15/-5

+10/-0

ANSWER

ELEMENTS IN THE ACTINIDE SERIES

Americium (Christopher Columbus)

Einsteinium

Uranium, Neptunium, Plutonium

Curium

Nobelium

Thorium

Medelevium

THANK YOU!