Trivia

I used to be involved in College Bowl competitions. I really like trivia. I've gone so far as to design and build my own lockout circuit, kind of like they use on Jeopardy (although I'm not sure that the Jeopardy system has 1/100,000 second discrimination). Anyway, the following questions are taken from my eclectic store of semi-useful information. Don't worry if it seems like a mixed bag; I'm a mixed bag.

Found an error in a question or answer? Mail me at welsberr@inia.cls.org and join the stumpers list.

There's no witchcraft in the term from astronomy that describes an event where the view of one astronomical body is suddenly obstructed by another. What's the term?

Return for answer... Occultation. 

"Oscar had a heap of apples." What bit of information is this mnemonic supposed to help you remember?

Return for answer... sin=O/H; cos=A/H; tan=O/A The relationship of sides and angles in a right triangle. 

The condition of an orbiting body having one aspect always facing the primary is known as ...?

Return for answer... Being tidally locked. 

Everyone knows that diamonds are crystals of carbon. What molecule is the crystal structure of sand based upon?

Return for answer... Silicon dioxide. 

There is a name for the energy escaping a planetary body. What is it?

Return for answer... Albedo. 

Name the 1977 movie based loosely upon work of Charles Lutwidge Dodson, starring Michael Palin and directed by Terry Gilliam.

Return for answer... Jabberwocky. 

Thomas J. Watson, former CEO of IBM Corporation, once gave an estimate for the world market for computers. How many did Watson think the world wanted?

Return for answer... Five. 

About what percentage of juvenile red-tailed hawks survive to see their second year in the wild?

Return for answer... Somewhere between 20 and 30%. 

Birds of prey used to be apportioned to various classes of society. Which raptor was known as "the cook's bird"?

Return for answer... The goshawk 

For the logical proposition "A implies B", what is the truth value of the proposition if B is true, but A is false?

Return for answer... True. 

Incus, malleus, and ... What's the third bone of the set?

Return for answer... Stapes. 

Dorothy Parker's famous review, "Her performance spanned the range of emotions from A to B," was of which actress?

Return for answer... Katharine Hepburn 

When asked, "What is the worst circumstance you can think of when sailors are trapped in a sunken submarine?", an expert on underwater rescue once replied, "That I was not there." Who was this person?

Return for answer... Momsen, inventor of the Momsen Lung. 

A rare visual phenomenon is sometimes seen just as the sun sinks beneath the horizon. Seeing this is supposed to be an omen of good luck. What is the name of the phenomenon?

Return for answer... The green flash. 

When Grace Murray Hopper met Hyman G. Rickover, Rickover told her, "I have more honorary doctorates than you do." What was Hopper's reply?

Return for answer... "You should; you're older than I am." 

Robert Fulton didn't just build steamships. He also showed off another kind of vessel to Napoleon in hopes of making a sale. What kind of watercraft was it?

Return for answer... A submarine, the "Nautilus". 

This bird, hard hit by effects of DDT use and habitat loss, was saved from threat of extinction by breeding programs largely launched by falconers. What's its name?

Return for answer... The peregrine falcon. 

Albert Einstein got a Nobel Prize for a seminal paper on what phenomenon?

Return for answer... The photoelectric effect. 

In 1947, Arthur McBride thought that dolphins might be using biosonar. In 1773, another researcher thought that hearing helped bats navigate. Who was he?

Return for answer... Lazzarro Spallanzani. 

This is the principle that makes baseballs curve and golf balls loft. What's the name?

Return for answer... The Bernoulli principle. 

This famous Russian physiologist got mugged when he visited New York in the 1920's. Who was he?

Return for answer... Pavlov. 

Spaghetti originated in China. Where was ice cream invented?

Return for answer... Italy. 

In Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", this entity was called something like, 'Of elf-banes, second only to the dark lord.' What was it? Bonus: where did the Fellowship of the Ring encounter it?

Return for answer... Balrog. In Moria. 

What is the name that Mayr gives the theory of speciation that underlies Eldredge and Gould's "punctuated equilibria"?

Return for answer... Peripatric speciation 

Poisonous harpooning mollusks! Name that genus of gastropods...

Return for answer... Conus 

Poly-Chlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) refers to a family of congeners, not just one molecule. How many PCBs are there?

Return for answer... 209 

The name for the longest side of a right triangle is...

Return for answer... Hypotenuse 

The now-extinct genus of snails on the island of Moorea written about by Stephen Jay Gould in "Unenchanted Evening" was...

Return for answer... Partula 

Everyone knows that FORTRAN was the first high-level computer language. What was the second high-level computer language?

Return for answer... LISP (List Processing) 

The Harris' Hawk was named for a friend of a famous birder. Who was the birder?

Return for answer... John James Audubon 

Two years before the American Civil War, Charles Darwin published the influential "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection". What year was that?

Return for answer... 1859 

In what orientation are a dolphin's flukes?

Return for answer... Horizontal 

How much louder is a 96dB noise source than a 90dB noise source?

Return for answer... Approximately 4 times louder. 

If Alexander Graham Bell had postponed going to the patent office by one day, what would we have called the Bell System?

Return for answer... The Gray System 

The Stumpers List

• Michelle Reddy, PCB guru.