It’s quiz time again, and, with today seeing the official opening of the London Olympics, what better way to celebrate than with an Olympic-themed science quiz? Unfortunately, we couldn’t persuade Danny Boyle to direct a spectacular opening paragraph for us, so let’s instead get right down to the questions…
Round 1 – Athletics
First up is athletics. Can you just as easily rattle off stats about Olympics athletic events as you can about the natural world? Then this round is for you.
1. Which is the greater distance – the circumference of the Large Hadron Collider or the length of a marathon?
2. Which of these lengths of time is greatest: the amount of time it takes light from the sun to reach the earth or the world record time for the men’s 3000m steeplechase?
3. Which is heavier – an average ostrich egg or a women’s discus?
Round 2 – Boxing
Seconds out, Round 2 for boxing, as we look at some of the more infamous scientific punch-ups from down the ages:
1. In an acrimonious encounter often known as the Huxley–Wilberforce debate, the two eponymous protagonists and several others met at Oxford University Museum in 1860 to discuss what subject?
2. Isaac Newton quarrelled with which German mathematician over the issue of which of them was the first to invent calculus?
3. In the so called “War of Currents”, which was about whether AC or DC was the best method of electrical power distribution, which famed inventor and advocate of DC electrocuted a circus elephant called Topsy in a publicity stunt to demonstrate that AC (advocated by Nikolai Tesla, among others) was too dangerous to be used?
Round 3 – Cycling
This week’s picture round is all about cycles. There’s no place for Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins etc, however – instead, can you identify these rather more scientifically-themed cycles from the diagrams below?
1.
2.
3.
Round 4 – Equestrian and Swimming
Two Olympic events for the price of one in this round. For each of the creatures named below, simply identify whether they are equestrian, ie a type of horse, or a swimmer, ie an aquatic animal of some description:
1. Onager
2. Tetra
3. Tarpon
4. Kiang
5. Yapok
Round 5 – Scientists at the Olympics
We finish off with a look at the (admittedly fairly small) crossover between famous scientists and top Olympic athletes:
1. Which pioneering chemist and physicist, famed for discovering hydrogen and for his experiment to weigh the Earth (among many other accomplishments), shares his family name with one of the top British gold medal hopes for the 2012 Olympics?
2. Harald Bohr, mathematician and brother of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr, represented Denmark in the 1908 Olympic Games (winning a silver medal in the process) in which sport?
3. Which metalloid element, atomic number 5, is also the name of a German four-time Olympic gold medallist in sculling?
Good luck, answers as usual will appear on Monday. And as tempting as it may be, please do not use performance-enhancing drugs to boost your score – we WILL be carrying out random testing.
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Were you a medal contender, or one of the stragglers at the back? Now’s the time to find out, as we reveal the answers:
Round 1 – Athletics
1. The Large Hadron Collider has a circumference of approximately 27km/17 miles, while a marathon is approximately 42km/26 miles, so the marathon is the greater by a fairly decent margin.
2. It takes around 8 minutes 20 seconds for light from the sun to reach us, while the men’s 3000m steeplechase world record is a bit less at 7 minutes 53.63 seconds – to be fair to the sun, it has slightly further to travel.
3. Ostrich eggs, on average, weigh about 1.4 kg, while an official women’s discus weighs exactly 1 kg, so the ostrich wins this one.
Round 2 – Boxing
1. The subject of this infamous debate was of course Darwin’s all-new Theory of Evolution.
2. Isaac Newton traded intellectual fisticuffs with Gottfried Leibniz.
3. And finally in this round, the elephant electrocuter was none other than invention whizz Thomas Edison.
Round 3 – Cycling
This one was one for the more specialist readers, I fancy. Answers as follows:
1. Krebs Cycle / The Citric Acid Cycle – a key component of the metabolic pathway by which all aerobic organisms (that means you) generate energy.
2. The Calvin Cycle – a part of the process of photosynthesis by which carbon dioxide and water are converted into various useful compounds
3. The Carnot Cycle – a thermodynamic cycle for converting thermal energy into work. This is used, for instance, in refrigeration.
Round 4 – Equestrian and Swimming
1. An Onager is a type of wild horse
2. A Tetra is a small fish, often found in home aquariums
3. A Tarpon is also a type of fish – not to be confused with a Tarpan, an extinct species of horse
4, A Kiang is also a type of wild horse
5. A Yapok is a small semi-aquatic marsupial, also known as the water possum, that hunts for fish and crustaceans in the rivers of South America, so this is another swimmer
Round 5 – Scientists at the Olympics
1. Henry Cavendish is the man who weighed the earth and discovered Hydrogen, and Mark Cavendish was the man who, at the time of compiling the quiz, was one of the top British gold medal hopes. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way in the end.
2. Professor Harald Bohr played in the Danish football team who finished runners up to Great Britain at the 1908 London Olympics, scoring two goals along the way.
3. And the metalloid element which shares its name with a German four time gold medallist is Boron (the athlete in question being Kathrin Boron, who won her last gold medal in Athens in 2004)
17 marks up for grabs – how did you do?
0-2 marks – disqualification
3-5 marks – straggling along at the back of the field
4-6 marks – couldn’t get past the heats
7-9 marks – reached the final
10-12 marks – bronze medal winner
13-15 marks – silver medal winner
16-17 marks – gold medal winner