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NATIONAL SCIENCE DAY QUIZ

ANVESHA presents

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Write the question.Think very hard.Write the solution.

What is this called?

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Answer:Feynman algorithm.

The Feynman algorithm was facetiously suggested by Murray Gell-Mann, a colleague of Feynman, in a New York Times interview.

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FIND ME

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1. King Ptolemy I was, to put not too fine a point on it, a bit put out. When he was having difficulty studying "Geometry from the Elements", and had requested X for some easier way for a monarch to learn the subject, he received the answer, "Sire, there is no royal road to Geometry."

Who was X who delivered this royal rebuff, who has been called by ancient writers of history, "a gentle and kindly old man"?

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Answer:Euclid

On one occasion, a pupil of Euclid's complained because he saw no practical knowledge in having to know geometry. Euclid turned to one of his servants, and replied: "Give this pupil a piece of money, for he must have profit from what he learns." In his book, the Elements, which in reality contains 13 books, he set forth the geometry that is still taught to children all over the world, setting forth definitions and axioms that remain unchallenged even today.

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2.The beautiful velvet knee breeches, the glossy buckled shoes, and the gleaming sword were all laid out for him to wear. He was to be presented to King George IV in a traditional ceremony in which the King honoured his most distinguished subjects. But he was a Quaker, and his beliefs forbade him from wearing such garments or wearing a sword. The Lord Chamberlain was in a fury over his stubbornness, but he would not listen. At long length, a bright young groom saved the day. He was told that he could cover himself with a robe that he had recently been awarded when accepting an honourary degree from Oxford. The flaming red cloth was draped over his frail shoulders and he was ushered into the impatient King's presence. A number of Quakers in the audience gasped when they saw him bedecked in scarlet, a colour that no true Quaker would be permitted to wear. However he was colour-blind and was hence unaware of the faux pas he was commiting.

Who was he?

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Answer:John Dalton.

Subsequent to this, Dalton became the first person to conduct a number of experiments on colour-blindness, and to this day, the phenomenon is also known as Daltonism. He, unlike most other scientists of his day and age, lived to enjoy the plaudits of his countrymen. He was presented with the key to Paris and was given the Medal of the Royal Society of England. He was the first person to formulate the atomic theory of matter, and on his death, more than forty thousand people filed by his coffin as he lay in state. A fitting tribute to one of the greatest scientists that this world has known.

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3.On the sixth of April, 1846, an group of eminent scientists had just begun their regular meeting. It featured the reading of a scientific paper on the production of ovals and refraction.

The unique feature about this meeting was the fact that the original author of this noteworthy paper had been barred from appearing and publicly reporting on his work for "it was not thought proper for a boy in a round jacket to mount the rostrum there."

Who was this young genius who was fourteen years old at the time?

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CLUE !

When X entered Cambridge, he was a propounder of some strange theories, such as one on the economy of sleep. He would sleep from 5:00pm. to 9:30pm, study from 10:00pm to 2:00am, excercise by running up and down the stairs from 2:00am to 2:30am, and then sleep until 7:00am. However, he was soon forced to abandon this experiment as he was greeted with a barrage of shoes and other flying objects wherever he went.

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Answer:James Clerk Maxwell. In the paper maxwell generalised the definition of an ellipse by defining the locus of a point where the sum of m times the distance from one fixed point plus n times the distance from a second fixed point is constant. If m = n = 1 then the curve is an ellipse. Maxwell also defined curves where there were more than two foci. This became his first paper On the description of oval curves, and those having a plurality of foci which was read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 6 April 1846

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4.In a small town near Bologna in Italy, a young man sat reading Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". He was deeply touched by the story as it reflected his own life. His family had been for an age feuding with the Sbaragalias, a neighbouring family. After a lifetime of work in the field of medicine, for which he is now immortalised forever, when he returned home, he found his villa ransacked, his instruments burnt, and his life's work destroyed by those very same rivals whose touch he had not been able to escape even in far off Messina. He died at last in the Vatican, the personal physician of Pope Innocent XII, a man persecuted in life, but at last able to find peace in death.

Who is this man, who with his microscope forever changed the field of biology with his keen observations?

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Answer: Malpighi. Malpighi's name lives on even today. He has been immortalized in the Malpighian layer of the skin, the Malpighian corpuscles of the kidney and the spleen, and also, and most importantly in the annals of science, as a man who continued to fight on regardless of the odds.

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5. X was arrested , charges were trumped up against him and was executed by the guillotine in 1794. Marat had denounced that very same scientist as a "champion of tyrants and a pupil of scoundrels. Lagrange, the great French mathematician once said of X's tragic death: "It took but a moment to cut off his head, but it will take a century to produce another like it."

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Answer:Antoine Lavoisier

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6.Marja Sklodowska – Why is this name famous in the annals of science?

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Answer:Marie Curie !

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7.The crowd gathered at the dock openly ridiculed the young upstart who called himself a scientist. How could a mortal man lift a ship weighing thousands of pounds? King Hieron stepped towards the ship and the crowd fell silent. The King pulled on a rope. "Pull harder, Your Majesty", urged the young scientist standing by his side, who would in the future, change the world of physics for all time. The King grasped the rope and pulled. As if by magic the stern of the ship rose out of the sea. A roar of acclaim rose up, and the King turned to congratulate the young man standing by his side. "You have indeed triumphed again. It is true, the wonders of science are without limit."

Who was this young man?

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Answer:

Archimedes.

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NOT SO ORDINARY!

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Robert Chesebrough of Brooklyn, New York owned a failing kerosene business when he accidentally discovered a waxy residue that clung to oil rigs in Pennsylvania in 1879. What did he eventually unleash upon the world?

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Vaseline.

Chesebrough discovered that when applied to cuts and abrasions (many of which he inflicted on himself as a guinea pig), the petroleum jelly sped up the healing process. He reportedly gave the famous name from the German word 'vasser‘(water) and the Greek word 'elaion'(olive oil). When a massive fire destroyed a New York business in 1912, many of the victims had their burns treated with Vaseline, which then became a staple in hospitals everywhere.

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Easy one this time.

As early as 1820, a French metallurgist named L. Bertheier worked on a type of metal that would be the savior in kitchens world wide, but it wasn't until 1920 that the first type of this cutlery was commercially sold in Meridian, Connecticut. What was it?

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Answer:Stainless steel.

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X, derived from the bark of the willow tree, was first discovered at the University of Montpellier in 1853, then forgotten for the next 40 years. In 1893, German chemist Felix Hoffman discovered this product could relieve body aches and pains.Clue:A vital key to Baeyer’s riches.

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Answer:

Aspirin.

Hoffman had been looking for something to cure his father's rheumatoid arthritis when he hit upon the overlooked product. The Bayer pharmaceutical company of Dusseldorf, where Hoffman worked, knew he had hit on an important discovery. They came up with the name by taking the 'a 'from acetyl, 'spir 'from the Latin spiraea and 'in', which was a popular suffix for drugs at the time...aspirin.

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The first patent issued for this item, found in stores worldwide, was back in 1952, when this item looked more like a bull's eye with concentric circles than its present-day shape. Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver are credited with inventing what item?

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Answer:Bar codes. Bernard Silver was a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Pennsylvania back in 1948, when a local food chain store owner asked him about looking into a way to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver got together with fellow student Woodland to create the 'bar code'.

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The story of X begins with a hike in the Swiss woods in 1948. Inventor George de Mestral noticed that he and his dog were coated with cockleburr seed casings. Under a microscope, de Mestral discovered that the seed casings contained numerous tips with hook-shaped ends. It was these natural hooks which clung so stubbornly to the loose weave of his pants and the dog's fur. George de Mestral believed that a fastening device made from a similar hook and loop design could rival the metal zipper in popularity and versatility . What is X?

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Answer:

VELCRO

The name VELCRO was formed from the French words VELour(velvet) and CROchet(hook). De Mestral officially formed the Velcro™ company in Switzerland in the early 1950s and received patents from virtually every industrialized country in the world.

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MIXED BAG

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Connect

PETRONIA- ”I’ m not ready to die, I’ve only touched the surface” - Erwin Stresemann

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Answer:Salim Ali

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Connect

Chandrayaan-NASA-presence of water molecules on the lunar surface

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Answer:Moon Mineralogy Mapper(M3)

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Another connect this time.But a harder one!

Lou gehrig - Cambridge - “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

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Answer:Stephen hawking

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What is a crescograph and who invented it?

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Answer:A crescograph is a device for measuring growth in plants.It was invented in the early 20th century by Jagdish Chandra Bose.

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The setting was Manchester. It was late in the day, small girl went in search of her grandfather whom she saw working hard in the light of a table lamp. She asked, ”Grandpa , Why do you have to work so hard?” to which X replied “I am afraid, little girl that they will find out how little I know”. Profound words from a Nobel laureate and a founder of one of the most important tools to analyse crystals.Name X.

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Answer:William Henry Bragg

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MATHEMATICIANS

…..you can count on!

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After getting a fever on a trip that was supposed to restore his health, this man died. His last words were: "Men die but their works endure," which is an easy thing to say when you have written 789 full-length works. As a Catholic and a royalist he was often persecuted and disliked, and he was exiled for a number of years.

Clue:This guy gave one of the first good definitions of a limit.

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Answer:Augustin Cauchy.

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This man was both a philosopher and a mathematician. He was employed as a diplomat by the elector of Mainz, who once sent him to persuade King Louis XIV to attack Egypt. His philosophical work had a major impact on Kant. After his death, a dispute arose as to whether he or Sir Isaac Newton was the true creator of calculus. Give the full name of the person!

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Answer:Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.

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Shortly after accepting an invitation by Queen Christina of Sweden to visit her country, this man died there due to the rigorous climate. He is known for his contributions to the field of philosophy as well as mathematics. In algebra he added knowledge to the treatment of negative roots. Identify this mathematician who thought, and therefore he was!

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Answer:Rene Descartes.

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This Frenchman was not one of the most prolific mathematicians. Indeed, he published almost nothing during his lifetime. His amazing feats of genius were only discovered from his notes and on the margins of his pages. He came up with many theorems, but did not always leave rigorous proofs of those theorems. He also proposed many questions that left the vast majority of mathematicians baffled. Before his death he published a theorem by which he is known today.Name him.

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Answer:Pierre de Fermat.

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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a famous British mathematician who worked mainly in the field of logic. He is much better known by his pen name that he used to write children's books, of which many included logic puzzles. Name him.

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Answer:Lewis Carroll

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PICTURE ROUND

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What does this picture signify?

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Answer:

Page from Darwin's notebooks around July 1837 showing his first sketch of an evolutionary tree.

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Name the person.

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Answer:M.S.Swaminathan

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Name the group to which these men belonged.

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Answer:‘The RNA TIE CLUB’George Gamow, Physicist, ALAAlexander Rich, Biochemist, ARGRichard Feynman, Theoretical Physicist, GLYEdward Teller, Physicist, LEUErwin Chargaff, Biochemist, LYSJames Watson, Biologist, PROHarold Gordon, Biologist, SERLeslie Orgel, Theoretical Chemist, THRFrancis Crick, Biologist, TYR

In the photo(from left to right):Francis Crick, Alexander Rich, Leslie E. Orgel, James Watson

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Identify the mathematical prodigy who was considered among his peers to be the fastest mathematician they had known.

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Answer:John von Neumann.

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Identify this emblem of a famous centre of learning.

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Answer:Princeton University

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Name the person in the middle.

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Answer:Enrico Dalcanale

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X received the Nobel prize in a record time of two years after the prize- winning discovery. There was controversy regarding X’s reception of the Nobel prize because two Russian scientists ,Landsberg and Mandelstam had published similar results around the same time - to be exact X ‘s letter to Nature was published 31 March while the Russian scientists had published their results first on 13 July. The Russian scientists were not able to give a definite interpretation of the phenomenon in question while X was able to give a very clear explanation of the phenomenon. Name X

Last Question:

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Answer:C.V.Raman