It’s that time of week again, so why not usher in the weekend with some testing trivia? And this week sees the return of the popular anagram round. We start things off, however, with a trip to the cinema…
Round 1 – Science at the Movies
1. An article in Nature Geoscience last year reported that an outbreak of Pseudo-nitzschia, a toxin-producing algae, was responsible for the curious events of 1961 in North Monterey Bay, California. These events were read about by a famous film director, and subsequently inspired which classic thriller of 1963?
2. Which Hollywood star co-authored (under her real name) a scientific paper on memory called ‘Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: data from near-infrared spectroscopy’, making her one of the few people to have a defined Erdos-Bacon number?
3. Which 1997 film, described in Nature as “a dystopian look at genetics”, has a title that is made up of the initial letters of the nucleobases that make up DNA?
Round 2 – Great Women of Science
A look at some of the women who broke down historical barriers to become trailblazers in their field…
1. Which British chemist won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the structure of Vitamin B12, pioneered X-Ray crystallography, and was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Copley Medal from the Royal Society?
2. Having provided much of the raw data that led Watson and Crick to discover the double helix structure, which British biophysicist – who died before she could share in the subsequent Nobel Prize – has been dubbed the “First Lady of DNA”?
3. What is the name of the primatologist and ethologist best known for her 45-year study of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania?
Round 3 – The Picture Round
In this week’s picture round, you’ll see the skeletons of three animals that all became extinct within the last 400 years. Can you name them?
1.
{credit}Marcus Sümnick{/credit}
2.
{credit}Monnier{/credit}
3.
{credit}Antti Leppänen{/credit}
Round 4 – Scientists of Antiquity
A round for those who are equally comfortable discussing Plato or plutonium.
1. Which astronomer (not to mention geographer and astrologer) of antiquity wrote ‘The Almagest’ (c. 150 AD) and devised a geocentric model of the universe that was almost universally accepted up until the Copernican revolution?
2. What is the name of the Roman naturalist who wrote what is often considered to be the first encyclopaedia, Naturalis Historia, and who died while attempting to rescue a friend from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD?
3. Perhaps the most accomplished medical researcher in antiquity, which Roman physician, philosopher and surgeon (AD 129–c. 200) wrote the treatise “That The Best Physician is also a Philosopher”?
Round 5 – Anagrams
The names of three famous scientists are scrambled below. Can you unscramble them?
1. Radial Cup
2. My Fern Arachnid
3. Nuclear Snail
Have fun, feel free to let us know how you got on in the comments section below, and the answers will be published on Tuesday.
This week’s answers as follows:
Round 1 – Science at the Movies
1. The “curious events” in question were related to frenzied gulls coughing up anchovies – and the film they inspired was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The full story is here: https://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n1/full/ngeo1360.html
2. The Hollywood star moonlighting as a neuroscientist is Natalie Portman, who appeared as Natalie Hershlag on the paper. You can see more details on it here: https://1.usa.gov/NzWeER
3. The film whose name is a string of nucleobases is GATTACA. Lucky they chose that particular string rather than, say, UCTTGGCT.
Round 2 – Great Women of Science
1. This impressive list of achievements belonged to Dorothy Hodgkin.
2. Rosalind Franklin is the woman who did much of the work that led to the Nobel Prize won by Watson, Crick and Wilkins.
3. The 45-year study of chimpanzees in Tanzania has been conducted by Jane Goodall (famously immortalised in a Far Side cartoon).
Round 3 – The Picture Round
1. This is the imposing bovine frame of the Aurochs.
2. If you said Moa then you deserve credit for a very good guess. This, however, is the Elephant Bird.
3. Another large cow, but of the aquatic kind this time – this is a Steller’s Sea Cow
Round 4 – Scientists of Antiquity
1. There were many astronomers of Ancient Greece, but perhaps the most famous was Ptolemy.
2. Pliny the Elder perished in the eruption of Vesuvius.
3. This great Roman medical researcher was Galen.
Round 5 – Anagrams
1. Paul Dirac
2. Richard Feynman
3. Carl Linnaeus
More quizzing as usual at the same time this Friday…