THE PRIMORDIUM – QUIZ

FINALS

ROUND 1

1. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission finally landed on this celestial body on 12th November 2014, making it the first spacecraft to land on this type of small Solar System body. It was discovered on photographic plates in 1969 by Soviet astronomers. Originating from the Kuiper belt, it is part of the Jupiter Family of these bodies. Name this celestial body.

67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO comet

2. This hydrous mineral is found in a variety of forms, mostly translucent in colour, in metamorphic rocks. It is used in a range of materials from plastics to cosmetics and even insecticides. ‘Soapstone’ also shows the property of fluorescence, and its crystal structure can be described as ‘monoclinic- prismatic’. Name this substance.

Talc

3. The name of this class of hormones is derived from a Greek word meaning "to grow". Its existence was first proposed by experiments by Charles Darwin and his son, Francis. It participates in phototropism, geotropism, hydrotropism and other developmental changes in plants. Name this group.

Auxins

4. In the 19th century most physicists accepted the idea that all of space is filled with this elusive substance. Following the outcome of failed experiments like the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, the concept of this substance being a mechanical medium lost adherents. Isaac Newton (particle theory) and Augustin Fresnel (wave theory) each separately proposed the existence of this substance as a medium for the propagation for light. Name this substance.

Luminiferous aether

5. This compound was the first to be created in its group by Constanin Fahlberg in 1878. With a slightly bitter after taste, it is 300 times sweeter than sucrose, heat stable and does not promote dental caries.However,30 years ago a link was found between said compound and stomach cancer in rodents. This substance is banned in Canada. Large amounts of it have been shown to lead to significantly increased glucose intolerance in mice and in some humans. Name this substance.

Saccharin

6. The European Standard 197-1 defines it as a “hydraulic material which shall consist of at least two-thirds by mass of calcium silicates, the remainder consisting of aluminum and iron-containing clinker phases and other compounds”. Named after an isle in England, where a similar type of stone is quarried, this substance is the most commonly used of its kind in the world. It is used as a basic ingredient for mortar and concrete. Name this substance.

Portland cement

7. Though not a mineral itself, it’s a collective term given to a group of six minerals which come from two distinct groups of minerals, serpentines and amphiboles. Chrysotile is the most common form used. Products of this class include cement building materials, friction materials, gaskets and certain plastics. Throughout the late 1920s and 30s, artificial snow was made from this substance. Name this compound.

Asbestos

8. This gradient dependent process is vital in biological systems. Jean-Antoine Nollet first documented it in 1748 in an experiment using a container of alcohol and pig’s bladder. It has many applications, ranging from using syrup/brine to preserve food to sprinkling salt on slugs to kill them. The cholera toxin reverses this process in the gut. Name this process.

Osmosis

9. This phenomenon is the scattering of a beam of light by a medium containing small suspended particles. It is a special instance of diffraction. Similar to Rayleigh scattering, the intensity of the scattered light depends on the fourth power of the frequency. An example in everyday life is the blue colour sometimes seen in the smoke emitted by motorcycles, in particular two-stroke machines where the burnt engine oil provides the particles. if the colloid particles are spheroid, It is mathematically analysable in terms of Mie theory, which admits particle sizes in the rough vicinity of the wavelength of light. Name this phenomenon.

Tyndall Effect

10. One of the major gustatory senses, this sense was recognized as the scientific term to describe the taste of glutamate, inosine monophosphate and guanosine monophosphate. Naturally occurring glutamate can be found in meats and vegetables, whereas inosinate comes primarily from meats and guanylate from vegetables. Like other basic tastes, with the exception of sucrose, this taste is pleasant only within a narrow concentration range. The optimum feeling of this taste depends also on the amount of salt. Some population groups, such as the elderly, may benefit from this taste because their taste and smell sensitivity is impaired by age and medicine. Name this sense/taste.

Umami

ROUND 2

1. An American mathematical engineer, he’s considered as the founding father of the electronic communications age. He applied Boolean algebra to electrical systems at M.I.T. in 1940.In the same year, he was the recipient of the Alfred Nobel Prize of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers for his work in switching theory. He had a passion for building amusing machines and devices, including the Theseus Maze which is regarded as an example of telephone switching technology. Name this person.

Claude Shannon

2. He developed the first approach with biocompatible polymers for the controlled release of macromolecules, isolated the first angiogenesis inhibitor, and pioneered the field of tissue engineering. He currently runs the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world at M.I.T. He has served as the chair of the FDA's Science Board, the agency's highest advisory board. He also received the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers. Name this person.

Robert S. Langer

3. This American geologist is actually more well-known for his role in the founding of planetary science. Along with his wife and colleague, he is credited with the discovery of a certain solar system body that crashed into Jupiter in 1994 and left a massive “scar” on the planet’s surface. His alma mater includes Princeton and CalTech. To date, he is the only person whose ashes have been buried on the moon. Name this person.

Eugene Shoemaker

4. Winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission, this German chemist is known as the “father of nuclear chemistry”. He conducted his first experiments in the Laundry room of his house as a child. The element dubnium was initially named after him. He was first nominated for the 1914 Nobel Prize in Chemistry by Adolf von Baeyer for his discovery of mesothorium 1 (now known as radium-228). In 1921, he discovered the first example of nuclear isomerism. Name this person.

Otto Hahn

5. This scientist is best known for her scientific theory of “symbiogenesis” regarding the origin and evolution of complex cells. .A believer of the five kingdom classification of life and in the idea of autopoesis (a system is capable of reproducing and maintaining itself), she was the principle defender of the Gaea hypothesis (that Earth is a living entity). She was also the first wife of renowned astronomer Carl Sagan. Name this person.

Lynn Margulis

6. This scientist won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Willard S.Boyle and George E.Smith " for ground breaking achievements concerning the transmission of fibers for optical communication". His work has led to fiber optic communication networks that zip voice, video and high-speed Internet worldwide in split-second. He also showed an early fascination with the properties of sand and silica. Name this person.

Charles K. Kao

7. This man was the pioneer of antiseptic surgery. His father, a wine merchant and an amateur scientist, is famous for improving optical aberrations in the microscope and discovering the law of aplanatic foci. A surgeon by profession, he was the first to introduce carbolic acid to sterilise equipment and clean wounds. A popular modern day antiseptic oral product has been named in his honour. Name this man.

Joseph Lister

8. He is a co-recipient (along with Paul J. Crutzen and F. Sherwood Rowland) of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in elucidating the threat to the Earth's ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases (or CFCs), becoming the first Mexican-born citizen to ever receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. One of the most prominent discoverers of the Antarctic ozone hole, Rowland and he proposed the CFC ozone depletion theory after their initial research into “hot-atom” chemistry, which is the study of chemical properties of atoms with excess translational energy owing to radioactive processes. Name this person.

Mario J. Molina

9. Born on the 1st of November, 1880, this German man would go on to revolutionize the fields of geology and meteorology. He is best known for his theory of continental drift in 1912, which hypothesised that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth, but it wasn't widely accepted until the 1950s. He also undertook expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation. Although his theory was widely rejected by the 1930, it came back as a principal component of the theory of plate tectonics. Name this person.

Alfred Wegener

10. Recognised as one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries, this German mathematician was one of the founders of proof theory and mathematical logic. He compiled a list of the most successful and deeply considered compilation of open problems ever to be produced by an individual mathematician. The program founded by him was initially advanced, then refuted by Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theorems. Name this person.

David Hilbert

ROUND 3

Louis Daguerre (224th Birthday)(created the daguerreotype)

Discovery of water on the Moon

Nicolas Steno(father of modern geology)

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (296th birthday)(wrote the first book discussing both

differential and integral calculus)

13th Anniversary of the 4 unit Very Large Telescope, Chile

Percy Julian(115th Birthday)(pioneer in the chemical synthesis of

medicinal drugs from plants)

50th Anniversary of first man in space(Yuri Gagarin)

Charles Darwin (200th Birthday)(theory of natural selection)

Mary Anning (215th Birthday)(famous 18th century fossil hunter, found

proof of Darwin’s theory)

Dorothy Hodgkin (104th Birthday)(developed protein crystallography)

ROUND 4

1. A tried proving theory B in 1745. C tried proving theory D in 1765 therefore disproving B and thus showed why the experiment A conducted was erroneous. The experiment A and C did were similar with only one difference. The experiment conducted by A involved heating then sealing and that conducted by C involved the reverse. But the debate continued until E finally put it to rest. E also contributed to the field of stereochemistry, where he worked on F. Handedness in people and animals is an example of F.

A-John Needham B-Spontaneous Generation

C-Lazzaro SpallanzaniD-Biogenesis

E-Louis PasteurF-Asymmetry

2. A was a notable student of B. He met B at the same place where he first learnt about the mechanics of bonding in C. C is the only neutral species for which B’s formula can be applied analytically. C is usually made in the lab using D’s apparatus. D made the apparatus in 1842 when he researched about arsenic in E. An alcoholic overconsumption disease in E can be mediated by using F, an antioxidant. A’s work on the benefits of F in treating cancer generated much controversy.

A-Linus PaulingB-Erwin Schrödinger

C-HydrogenD-KippE-Liver

F-Vitamin C

ROUND 5

1. This syndrome is characterized by the presence of primary vascular dysregulation together with a cluster of symptoms and signs. A medical eponym named after a Swiss physician for his contribution, its medical relevance lies in the fact that the subjects react differently to a number of stimuli, such as cold and physical or emotional stress and that this aggravated response can induce diseases. Although the syndrome has some advantages, it also contributes to certain diseases, such as normal tension glaucoma. The syndrome occurs more often in women than in men, in slender people than in obese subjects, in people with indoor rather than outdoor jobs, and in academics than in blue collar workers. Name this syndrome.

Flammer’s Syndrome

2. This Theory lies at the crossroads of the paths connecting the most important areas of applications of mathematics with its most abstract parts. It can be viewed as the modern equivalent of the differential calculus, and this explains its central position and wide applicability. The subject started with the fundamental discoveries of Whitney (1955), Thom (1958), Mather (1970), Brieskorn (1971). The Penrose–Hawking theorems based on this theory are a set of theoretical results based on general relativity which attempt to answer the question of when gravitation produces the effect described in this theory. The fundamental role this theory plays is in the investigation of the bifurcations of stationary and periodic regimes. Name this theory.

Singularity Theory

3. It is a stone discovered in the northern part of Finland, that turns black or blackish grey when it is going to rain, and shows white spots at the approach of fine weather. Serves the locals as well as any barometer. It is supposed to be a fossil mixed with clay and consisting of rock salt, ammonia, or saltpetre. The stone was thought to attract dampness from the atmosphere. If the weather was good, it would dry out and the salt would appear as the white spots. Modern scientists say the rock is a fossil of potassium nitrate and rock salt . This stone is an example of a natural weather indicator and is used in place of a barometer at its location. Name the stone.

Ilmakiur

4. This structure helps control electricity and makes it safer for our computers, cars and other inventions. The same effect was predicted earlier by Francesco Beccaria (1716–1781) at the University of Turin, a student of Benjamin Franklin. This structure is an enclosure that blocks external static and non-static electric fields by channeling electricity through the outer layer, providing constant voltage on all sides of the enclosure. Microwave ovens reverse the effect, trapping waves and quickly cooking your food. MRI rooms in hospitals are an example of it. Name this structure.

Faraday’s Cage

5. This bacterium causes infections in people who've been in hospitals or other health care settings (HA-hospital associated) or infections in the wider community (CA –community associated)— among healthy people. This bacterium can cause illnesses ranging from minor skin infections to life threatening diseases like Toxic Shock Syndrome and necrotizing pneumonia. A defining characteristic is its ability to thrive in the presence of penicillin-like antibiotics, which normally prevent bacterial growth. Just as bacterial evolution had allowed microbes to develop resistance to penicillin, strains of this bacterium evolved to become resistant to methicillin. It is considered to be one of the 18 microbes listed by the CDC as a multidrug-resistant microbe or “superbug”. Name this microbe.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

6. This element is the eight-most abundant element in the universe by mass. Number of isotopes are 24. It was first isolated in 1824 by Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius but Gay Lussac and Louis Jacques Thénard discovered an impure form of it in 1811. When the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, they left behind a white pouch containing a disc of this element slightly bigger than a silver dollar which had on it inscribed in microscopic font messages, each from a different country, expressing wishes of goodwill and peace. The iridescence of an opal is thanks to this element. In 2006, researchers announced they had created a computer chip that melded the components of this element with brain cells. Name this element.

Silicon

7. Johann Joachim Becher proposed a theory which stated that compounds that burn, contain the “inflammable principle”. His student Stahl, attempted to explain calcination and respiration, in a way that contrasts with our present belief that metals combine with oxygen to form oxides. Now obsolete, this theory states that ores are simpler than metals and that when ores are heated, this ‘inflammable principle” combines with them to “produce” metals. What theory is this?

Phlogiston Theory

8. Also known as supramolecular assemblies or inclusion compounds, these structures are “polymeric hosts containing molecular guests”. They were discovered in 1810 by Sir Humphrey Davy. In the 1930s the formation of this structure turned out to be a major problem, clogging pipelines during transportation of gas under cold conditions. The most famous group are methane hydrates where the hydrogen-bonded framework is contributed by water and the guest molecules are methane. Large amounts of methane naturally frozen in this form exist both in permafrost formations and under the ocean sea-bed and are being considered as a source of fossil fuels. Name this structure.

Clathrates

9. This term, coined by Leo Beranek, describes a room capable of completely absorbing sound or electromagnetic waves. The interior of an anechoic chamber is very quiet, with typical noise levels in the 10–20 dBA range. In 2005, the best anechoic chamber measured at −9.4 dBA. The human ear can typically detect sounds above 0 dBA, so a human in such a chamber would perceive the surroundings as devoid of sound. Anecdotally, humans do not like such quietness and are disoriented. chambers range from small compartments the size of household microwave ovens to ones as large as aircraft hangars. The size of the chamber depends on the size of the objects to be tested and the frequency range of the signals used. Name this enclosure.

Anechoic Chamber

10. This process is a continuous-time stochastic process, i.e. a collection of random variables, representing the evolution of some system of random values over time. It occurs frequently in economics, mathematics, qualitative finance and physics. It is useful as a model of noise in electronics engineering, instrument errors in filtering theory and unknown forces in control theory. It is also used to study eternal inflation in physical cosmology. Name this process.

Weiner process/ Brownian motion

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