The Summer Quiz - Round 5

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011:07:16:10:15:14 by St Marlowe.

4 farting at a guess

5 Archimedes ?

1 Wer'e all descended from Hobbits

5 burping

5 - Archimedes. The screw is a water lifting device, and the claw is a weapon used to lift boats out of the water.

6 - a sneeze.

8 - the Goldilocks zone is the region of the Solar System which is "just right" for life to exist.

9 - dung and urine were used to make saltpetre, the main component of gunpowder.

10 - Alfred Nobel invneted dynamite and the Nobel prizes.

Photo Gallery

1. A pygmy species discovered in Indonesia was nicknamed a hobbit
2 The Stannary was the Cornish court and Sn in the symbol for tin ( from the latin stannum)

Q7 All false (alligators, asian lions, Roman rabbits & the jaguar)

Q10 More specifically refers o the Nobel prize for the discovery of DNA, presumably.

Q3 - Edison? I think he was engaged in a debate with Tesla regarding the safety of electricity and electrocuted an elephant to prove his point. Not sure why he chose an elephant though - a mouse wouldve been easier and proved his theory.

Goodness me - quick off the mark and a lot of good answers - but some are not complete and dont make all the connections or give the reasons etc.

So - Q1 - yes it is to do with Hobbits - the nic -name given to the recent discovery in Java ( I think ) of Homo Floriensis - Wee Jim was on traget here.

Q2 - only a chemist on holdiday would get this one - SN is the chemical symbol for tin which is linked to the courts of Stannery which settled disputes in the Cornish Tin mining industry . well done Wee Jim.

Q4 - Mr Gleadell got it - " farting "

Smurf then launches a salvo of answers

Q 5 - archemedes - is right - his screw is used for pumping water upwards - and the claw - could be an ancient urban myt -but he did design a swinging crane like thingy with a great grab on the end - it was intended to overturn the Roman boats attacking Syracuse ( Scicilly )

Q6 - is indeed a Sneeze

Q8 The goldilocks zone is as smurf says - a region of space at the right distance from a star / sun where it aint toohot or too cold for life to develop.

Q9 - saltpeter - produced in times gone by ( when there were no other deposits available ) either byfermenting dung heaps or urine soaked straw - saltpeter is of course the oxidising agent in gunpoweder.

Q 10 - yes the explosive inventor was Alfred Nobel whose legacy was the Nobel prizes - so over to Clegthorpe - who zeros in on the Nobelprice for the discoverey of / work on DNA - I was thinking opf Crick and Watson and the discovery of the double Helix - " a twisted insight "

Q7 - clegthorpe - correct they are all false. although the crocs bit is not well enough worded so a friend tells me - as there are apparently members of the order Crocodillia in the Americas.


By my reckoning that just leaves Q3 the answer is quite shocking.


will check in again on Monday -but must start thinking about the next round - Trouble with a " science " round is trying to find questions that are accessible to non scientists.


time to up the ante methinks -you are all getting too good at it.

Pete.

Q3 Edison (who for some reason I don't think of as a scientist) trying to prove that Westinghouse's AC electricity was more dangerous than his preferred DC.

Clegthorpe - Q 3 - absolutely correct Sir.


exits left muttering

Give us some more history ones oh learned one

Can i make a suggestion, after all questions have been answered correctly, (and only when they have to the Questionmaster Petes approval) can others add supplementary questions on any subject till the next set are posted the following week, then the cycle starts again? Could keep the ball rolling for the next few days each week.

This may be too nerdy, but here goes:

Supplemental to Q3: Of the people who made distributed electrical power a reality, Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla are probably the best known. There was another, less well known, British inventor and engineer who contributed one of the most important elements to large scale electrical distribution; who was he, and what did he have to do with mustard and warships?

Supplement to Q10 - Who was the researcher who helped Watson & Crick discover DNA, but missed out on the Nobel prize as she died before it was awarded?

Photo Gallery

Rosalind Franklin Smurf.
OP - was my Q3 answer not ok?

Sorry didnt read OPs answers properly!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011:07:08:10:23:10 by Wee Jim.

Apologies, Wee Jim, I had not noticed that you had already answered Q3 when I posted mine.

No worries just wasnt sure about it - its a bizzarre story and Ive often wondered how accurate it is.
Does that open a supplementary question for Q3
Why did he choose an elephant, or indeed, what was so special about the elephant he chose?

perhaps he just didnt like elephants.

He didn't like AC electricity, because his commercial interests were vested in DC, and he staged several demonstrations attempting to prove that AC was inherently more dangerous. He also funded the development of the electric chair, using AC and reputedly tried to have execution by electrocution branded as "Westinghousing".

Apparently the elephant was sentenced to death for killing it's trainer (who had offered it a cigarette). At least that's according to the QI episode "electricity"...

I heard he was up on a charge of trunk and disorderly

Found it... according to Stephen Fry:

Quote:

He believed that his direct current was safe, and wouldn't hurt people, and didn't electrocute. He wanted to destroy the reputation of alternating current, which was owned by Westinghouse, so he used the word "westinghoused" to mean "electrocuted". And this elephant, Topsy, was sentenced to death on Coney Island, because Topsy had killed three human beings and was going to be hanged, or was going to be poisoned; was going to happen to Topsy--
So, Edison won the right to electrocute him in public to show how dangerous it was. [American accent] "This thing you're letting into your homes will kill an elephant!" And he filmed it, as . . . as a PR film

He gave it 460 grams of cyanide and potassium, in carrots; he had wooden sandals lined with copper put on her feet--it's a she elephant, I should say--and then a current of 6,600 volts sent through her body. "She died without a trumpet or a groan," apparently. And he filmed the event; tried to persuade people to refer to electrocution as being "westinghoused".

The first murder on Topsy's hands was killing a trainer who, frankly, deserved to die, because this trainer gave her a lit cigarette to eat.

Edison's video on Wiki

Not very pleasant and the use of cyanide and potassium weakens Edison's experimental method.