It’s that time of the week again, when the working week winds down and thoughts turn towards the weekend. And what better way to kick things off than with the Friday quiz? Puzzles, anagrams and the usual trivia teasers await…

Round 1 – Identical triplets

The answers to each half of these questions begin with the same first three letters (as in Herschel and herpetology):

1. Cell organelle, named after an Italian physician, and involved in the processing and packaging of proteins; Element with atomic number 79.
2. The biological order that owls belong to; The only element to be named after a place in the British Isles.
3. The SI unit of electrical conductance, named after a German industrialist; The SI unit of radiation dosage, named after a Swedish physicist. Continue reading →

Welcome to the return of the Friday quiz! It has been, to say the least, an extended break since the last one so hopefully that means your quizzing brain is well rested and you’re raring to go.

Round 1 – News

1. How did the ‘Olinguito’  make the news recently?
2. Journals published in which country have been implicated in a citation scandal this week, whereby a group of journals referenced each other hundreds of times over purely to boost their impact factors?
3. It has been reported recently that progress has been made toward the publishing of the genetic data of the HeLa cell line, which has been instrumental in a huge number of significant advances in medicine over the past 60 years – what is the name of the woman after whom HeLa cells are named? Continue reading →

Is it Friday? Then it must be quiz time. This week, fictional scientists from novels, film and TV, along with all the usual favourites. If you get full marks today, then consider yourself a well-rounded and urbane scientific sophisticate.

Round 1 – News

1. As reported last week by Nature, cave paintings at El Castillo cave in Spain could turn out to be the first known example of cave art by which group of people?
2. A study at Oxford University has found that doing what to the brain can dramatically improve one’s speed at performing mental calculations?
3. Scientists working 2.4 km below the surface of the Earth in Ontario, Canada have found a source of what substance, which they believe has remained hitherto isolated for at least a billion years? Continue reading →

It’s time for another Friday quiz, so close down that spreadsheet, forget about that email that needs sending, and get stuck in. (And then do your work – that’s probably important too.)

Round 1 – News

A look at some of the more eye-catching morsels of science news over the last couple of weeks.

1. Which scientist has made headlines recently by refusing to travel to Israel for a conference in order to uphold an academic boycott of the country?
2. In which Italian city did animal rights activists destroy years of research work in the process of occupying a lab and releasing many of the animals they found there?
3. In research reported by Nature this week, it is suggested that Earth and the Moon share a common source for what substance? Continue reading →

It’s high time for another Friday quiz – and have your passports at the ready as we go globetrotting this week, with each round based on a different country’s science and scientists. We start off with a trip to France. Bon voyage, quizzers.

Round 1 – France

1. Which French microbiologist, most famous for another of his achievements, created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax?
2. Which French chemist, discoverer of boron and iodine, is perhaps best known for his eponymous law, which states that if the mass and pressure of a gas are held constant then gas volume increases linearly as the temperature rises?
3. Can you name the three chemical elements named after either France itself or a place in France? Continue reading →

Welcome to another Friday quiz, and apologies for the somewhat intermittent service of late.  If your brow has been stubbornly unfurrowed for longer than you’d wish, then today’s selection of testers ought to rectify that. We begin with the cheery subject of death.

Round 1 – In Passing

1. After his death, Isaac Newton’s hair was found to contain high quantities of what substance, the presence of which could have explained not only his death, but also the increasingly eccentric behaviour he displayed towards the end of his life?
2. Which scientist and philosopher died of pneumonia in 1626 after trying to stuff a dead chicken with snow?
3. Who was the German-Swedish chemist, known for identifying numerous elements, who died of cumulative poisoning aged 43 in 1786 following years of tasting (for research purposes) the likes of lead, hydrogen cyanide and various other substances now known to be dangerous?

Round 2 – Molecular Structures

How much do you know about the chemical make-up of some fairly everyday substances?

1. Which aromatic hydrocarbon, whose structure caused scientists headaches for many years, has the formula C₆H₆?
2. In order to relieve these headaches, scientists could have had some C₉H₈O₄ (apart from the fact that it hadn’t been isolated and identified by that point) – by what name do we commonly know this?
3. An essential part of our diets, and associated with good health, how is the acid with the chemical formula C₆H₈O₆ more commonly known?

Round 3 – The Picture Round

As per usual, three charade-type clues, all linked by a common theme. Work out what each charade depicts, and thus also work out the theme that links them.

1.

{credit}HM Government / E.T. Studhalter / Sun Ladder{/credit}

2.

{credit}Christopher Bruno / Edcolins / Jiyang Chen{/credit}

3.

{credit}PD / Evan-Amos / PD{/credit}

Round 4 – Mimicry

Imitation, it is said, is the sincerest form of flattery – in which case the animal world is awash with heartfelt compliments.

1. Named after an English naturalist of the Victorian era, what is the name of the type of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to resemble a poisonous, or otherwise dangerous, species, in order to ward off predators?
2. To be contrasted with the mimicry described in the question above, what is distinctive about “aggressive mimicry”?
3. Cuckoos are famous for laying eggs that mimic the appearance of those of the species of the host nest. Perhaps less well known is that any individual female cuckoo only lays eggs in the nest of one specific species, leading to various sub-groupings of cuckoos based on the species that they parasitise. What is the name of these sub-groupings?

Round 5 – Anagrams

For this week’s anagram round, the theme is “things you could find in a lab”:

1. COBALT A
2. TUTS BEET
3. COMIC PROSE
4. DERIVING A POTASH
5. DECLARED A DRUG ‘TINY’

Good luck! Look out for the answers early next week.

Welcome to another Friday quiz! It’s something a little bit different today, with each round devoted to a ground-breaking scientist, finishing off with a picture round that brings them all together…

Round 1 – Charles Darwin

1. In which English town was Darwin born in 1809?
2. A large chunk of the first chapter of On The Origin of Species is devoted entirely to the breeding of which domesticated animal?
3. Between 1846 and 1854, Darwin carried out a mammoth study of what type of creatures (work that is often thought to have severely delayed the publication of his work on evolution)?

Round 2 – Marie Curie

1. What was Marie Curie’s maiden name?
2. Curie was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – but with which two people did she share the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics?
3. Which two elements did Curie discover, the first of which she named after her native country?

Round 3 – Albert Einstein

1. When Einstein wrote his ground-breaking papers describing relativity, he was working in the patent office in which Swiss city?
2. What specific discovery of Einstein’s was cited as the reason for his winning of the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics?
3. Shortly before his death, Einstein jointly produced an eponymous “manifesto” with which British philosopher, warning the world of the dangers posed by nuclear warfare? Continue reading →

It’s that time of week once again so prepare to be both frustrated and, hopefully, entertained. This week, we cover the very big, the very small, and lots of things in between.

Round 1 – The largest…

1. What is the largest organ of the human body?
2. With the largest recorded specimen weighing in at 190 tonnes and 30 metres long, what is thought to be the largest animal ever to have lived?
3. The 1960 Valdivia earthquake is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, with a reading of 9.5 on the magnitude scale – in which country did it occur?

Round 2 – The smallest…

1. Quarks, the most elementary unit of matter, come in how many different flavours?
2. What is the world’s smallest ocean by area?
3. The smallest bird in the world, the bee hummingbird, is found exclusively on which Caribbean island? Continue reading →

Welcome to another Friday quiz! More of the usual trivia this week, including an Oscars/science crossover round and a return to the perennial favourite of the periodic table.

Round 1 – The Oscars

If you know nothing at all about movies you can still have a go at this round – but a little cinematic knowledge would certainly help.

1. Which double winner of the Oscar for Best Actress has a surname that can be defined in physics as “a physical quantity that has a value for each point in space and time”?
2. Who is the British physicist, subject of the recent biography ‘Maverick Genius’, past Templeton Prize winner, and best known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, whose surname-like first name is the actual surname of the 2005 Best Supporting Actor winner (and multiple nominee on other occasions)?
3. What bird family name, also the name of the 1976 Best Actor Oscar winner, can be preceded by rose, green, gold and bull (among many others) to give the names of various species of bird? Continue reading →