An online quiz is like an exam to which students can bring their phones. You could google for the answers, or most of them, but it will be more fun for you if you keep to this rather elastic rule:
As you read, write your answers, maybe in a little Word file, BEFORE googling. Your pre-Wikipedia answers! Then, if you like, you can google and give yourself a point for each success. Then send us your honest score, and, if you wish, your answers, as a “comment,” as is made easy at the end of the post.
Or, if you like, you can just send your honest answers, and wait to find out your score when I give what I think are the correct ones next time.
I might also mention that I got almost all the questions out of my head without or before googling.
It’s an informal quiz. Some of the questions are about your own opinion – you can’t get that wrong, so you get a free point! It’s a mixed quiz: some about astronomy, some not, as is the habit of this blog.
Earthrise from the Moon, Christmas Eve, 1968
(1) Was Isaac Newton born 1642 December 25 or 1643 January 4? (1 point.)
(2) The word quiz: does it come from Latin quis, “who?” or from a bet made by an Irishman? (1 point.)
(3) What are the languages in which these are the words for “star”? (12 points.)
Stern, étoile, estrella, zvezd, stella, astêr, astron, yildiz, kaukab, kochav, setâre, stela
(4) Suppose your name is Jack Mambrino, you discover a comet, and it turns out that meteors radiating from the constellation Scutum on April 1 are dust from this comet; so the meteor shower gets to be named the Scutids and, alternatively, the Mambrinids. Can you think of two other showers that, like this, have a name derived in the usual way from a constellation and an alternative name from a person? (2 points. If you know of more examples, let us know, and give yourself an extra point for each.)
(5) Who mistook a barber’s basin for the enchanted Helmet of Mambrino? (1 point.)
(6) We had a discussion about the Roman politician Cato. There are two rhymes for his name in British English and three in American; what is the odd one out? (1 point.)
(7) Do you know of three comets that bear the names of persons other than their discoverers? (3 points. If you know of more, tell us, and gain a point each.)
(8) Who says this, in what play? “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” (2 points.)
(9) Another play uses those words, “Dear Brutus,” as its title. Who was the author? (1 point.)
(10) What do these acronyms stand for? MVEMAJSUNP. OBAFGKM, VIBGYOR, (3 points.)
(11) What can you detect from the placing of the commas and period (full stop) in the previous question? (1 point.)
(12) Suppose you are making a chart of a planet’s path, and want to indicate its position at the beginning and middle of each month. The label at the beginning of the first day will be “1,” but which number will serve best for what is most typically the middle of the month? (1 point.)
(13) What are the works of literature that start with these lines? (9 points.)
Mênin aeide, theâ, Pêlêïadeô Akhilêos…
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris…
Be-reshit bara Elohim et ha-shamayim ve-et ha-aretz…
Iqra’ bi-smi rabbika lladhî khalaq, khalaqa l’insâna min `alaq…
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura…
Whan that Aprile with his shoures soote / The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote…
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree…
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo…
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong / Under the shade of a coolibah tree…
(14) Name the female astronomers who:
Used her brother’s telescopes to discover a record number of comets.
While cataloguing numerous stars, laid the basis for our classification of them by their spectra.
Discovered the first pulsar.
By studying the rotation of galaxies, revealed that their speed of recession must be increasing.
Made many contributions to mathematics and astronomy in Egypt around 400 AD and was murdered by a Christian mob.
(5 points, and extra for others you can remind us of.)
(15) What is your technique for getting to sleep, and-or sleeping longer? (Someone once gave me a book about walking and camping, since I had done a lot of it, and the book included a short chapter that went something like this: “My publisher tells me I should have a chapter on how to get to sleep. Very well, my method is this. Having unrolled my sleeping bag, I get into it, lie down, and go to sleep.” His physiology was evidently different from mine.) (1 or 2 points.)
(16) Which figures are correct for the distance of the imaginary Earth 10 days ago? (1 point.)
“Nearly 60 million miles away – nearly 250 times farther from us than the Moon,” as I said in my “A trail of Earths.”
Or: About 16 million miles away – 68 times farther from us than the Moon.
(17) Eve was born at the morning of the world. So does her name mean “evening” or “life”?
(18) Which two names of countries differ by only one letter (as we spell them), and which of the two means “valley”? (3 points.)
(19) Which planet has shrinking polar icecaps? (1 point.)
(20) When the star led the Wise Men to Bethlehem, in which direction was it moving? (1 point.)
I’m not going to amend my score, but I reconsidered my answer for #7 since I wondered what your definition of “person” is. One answer is obvious to anyone with even a little astronomical knowledge, and I thought a second one might represent the same situation (named after the calculator of an orbit instead of the discoverer). But the more interesting case that I was more sure about than the second case is a comet named according to a different naming convention, but which was then reclassified, so does its given name represent a “person” or a “fictional character / figure”?
Interesting quiz! I’m not very well read nor versed in linguistics, so I’m going to score worse than anyone else who answers. My score is based on what I believe is the expectation value of my answer ( E(ans) ), hence sometimes fractional scores.
1. this seems like a trick question, maybe “it depends on the calendar you are using?” expectation value = 1/2
2. no idea, E(ans) = 1/2
3. I’m fairly confident of 4 languages, 4 points
4. 0 points
5. 0 points
6, 1 point
7. I can think of one easily, and I believe I know of another one, so E(ans) = 1 1/2 points
8. 0 points
9. 0 points
10. 3 points
11. 0 points
12. only two possible answers, so my E(ans) = 1/2 point
13. 0 points
14. 3 points (I am pretty confident of the 1st, 2nd, and 4th ones)
15. 1 point, which I will under no circumstances share with anyone on this blog!
16. 1 point, after a quick back of the envelope calculation
17. no idea, but my E(ans) = 1/2 point
18. 3 points (this came to me shortly after I googled “Bali” to see if it was a country; it is not LOL)
19. 1 point (although Mars definitely has “shrinking” and “enlarging” (dry) ice caps, doesn’t it?)
20. couldn’t there be numerous answers to this question, depending on “moving *in relation to* what?). In any event, since they were planets, I know what direction our solar system is moving, so I award myself 1 point.
Expectation value of my total score = 21 1/2 points
Guy Ottewell’s Christmas Quiz
Here are my unresearched answers (off the top of my head):
3.3
German, French, Italian, Russian, Latin, Greek, Esperanto, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Portuguese
5. Don Quixote
6. tomato
8. Cassius in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
9. J.M. Barrie
10. MVEMJSUNP Men very early made jars serve useful needs, period. Order of the planets starting at the sun. Your mnemonic is different: the A would, usefully, be the asteroids, but I love my mnemonic because it’s so silly.
VIBGYOR the rainbow (or sunlight broken down by a prism): violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red
I have no idea what the third is, but would guess it has something to do with the color/temperature/size of stars
11. the first mnemonic is a sentence; the other two are lists
13. 1. The Iliad
2. The Aeneid
3. The Book of Genesis
5. The Divine Comedy (Inferno)
6. The Canterbury Tales
7. Paradise Lost
8. Don Quixote
9,Waltzing Matilda!
14. Caroline Herschel, Henrietta ?, Jocelyn Bell, Vera Rubin, Hypatia
15. thinking of the plot of a book I love (Jane Austen works; so does “Middlemarch”) or remembering my elementary school
17. No. Life is “chayah”, evening is “erev”.
19. Earth
20. I quote: “westward leading, still proceeding…”
QUIZ RULE IMPROVED. In your comment, give us just your honest score; also, if you wish, your post-Wikipedia score. DON’T give your ANSWERS, except for the sleep question.
Giving the answers can spoil it for others. I hadn’t thought out my rule well enough. Anthony Barreiro did, and used the better rule.
Oops-sorry! Please feel free to delete my answers.
Not at all. It was my fault for not getting my changed rule up there quickly enough before your very quick answers.
Pretty darn good, given too soon for my rule change, which I still hope others may be able to comply with.
I haven’t checked my answers, but I’m fairly confident of these scores:
1. 1 point (if I’m right, this should be worth two points!)
2. This one’s a quantum uncertainty around a value of 0.5. I could guess either way and be half right until you tell us the answer.
3. 9 points at best. I’m not great at languages.
4. Goose egg. I don’t have a clue.
5. 1 point.
6. Another goose egg. I’ve read Cato’s name a lot more times than I’ve heard it pronounced, other than when some libertarian pundit from the Cato Institute is on the radio. They pronounce it “Kate-oh”.
7. 1 point. Only the famous one.
8. 1 point. I looked this one up to be sure, and learned I was wrong about the speaker.
9. Another goose egg. No clue.
10. 3 points.
11. 1 point. I usually see the third acronym spelled the other way round, but if you spelled it that way the relationship would be inverse.
12. 1 point, I think.
13. 9 points, with four very confident guesses.
14. 4 points. I can’t remember the name of the pulsar discoverer, but I do recall that she had two strikes against her: she was a woman and a grad student. (I looked at my Moon globe to confirm the last one.)
15. No glowing screens after dinner time and keep the lights dim. A cup of warm chamomile tea before bed. Blackout curtains in my bedroom and keep the bedroom comfortably cool when possible. Don’t turn on lights when I wake up to pee in the middle of the night. At bedtime and after awakening, lie comfortably on my back and consciously relax my body, starting with my feet and progressing upward. When my mind wanders to other concerns, start over with my feet. You can decide how many points this one is worth.
16. Another quantum uncertainty, this one around 0.75. You would be more likely to make note of an isolated error than a correct value.
17. Yet another quantum uncertainty around 0.75. The obvious answer seems less likely.
18. 2 points for sure and probably 3 points based on my limited knowledge of geography.
19. 1 point, but I would gladly sacrifice this point for a different answer.
20. 1 point, unless I’m completely wrong.
So, at best, 36 points plus three clouds of quantum uncertainty. I’m looking forward to the answers.
Thanks very much for the quiz, whether Latin or Irish. It’s raining and I have a cold, and this has been a pleasant pastime.
Best wishes for a happy Christmas to you and yours, Guy. I hope the new year will bring you happiness, good health, and fulfillment.
My bad,
Fact-checking myself after a too spontaneous comment I find that Frank Borman didn’t TAKE the picture himself – but he was there when it was taken – and saw the view 1st-person.
I think William Anders took the photo.
Before I even look at the quiz (I just scanned it diagonally for questions on this but didn’t notice one in my cursory scan) I wonder about the inclusion of the famous photo with the typical and provocatively incorrect caption.
I used to mention this photo in astronomy classes in order to dispel the easy/lazy assumption that the Earth “rises” when seen from the Moon. This photo was NOT taken from the Moon – rather from the Command Module orbiting the Moon – from which a sort-of Earthrise would be a pseudo phenomenon in that – from the perspective of flight the Earth will displace from the limb of the Moon in a rise-like manner. Then I ask folks what the Earth did from the view on the surface of the Moon – and someone usually exclaims that it does not rise and set – may even elaborate that it moves in a small circle-ish manner.
As a young boy I got to meet Frank Borman and ask him questions about his experience and views from space.
He took the very photo you posted!
Apollo 8 did not land on the Moon – it was a preliminary test mission – I’m sure you knew that anyway.
Merry Christmas and THANK YOU for reminding me on the 50th year from that photo!
Yours,
PBDavis