9. The oldest living single organism is a tree, though not a sequoia; rather; it is a bristlecone pine, which can be found in California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. The oldest single living organism is a particular bristlecone pine nicknamed Methuselah in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of eastern California. In 1957, Methuselah was determined to be 4,789 years old, 3,820 years older than its biblical namesake. There are, by the way, some plants (such as the creosote bush) forming clonal colonies that may be several times older than bristlecone pines. The existing growth in clonal colonies sprang as shoots from older growth, creating an unbroken chain of life dating back tens of thousands of years. Nonetheless, the original ancient growth in those clonal colonies is long dead, making the oldest bristlecone pines the oldest single continuously living organisms.
10. Although leaves appear to change color from green to yellow and orange in the fall, the yellow and orange pigments (carotenoids) seen in autumn foliage were already there, but they were hidden under the green pigment (chlorophyll). When the chlorophyll breaks down, it disappears, exposing the yellow and orange pigments. The bright reds and purples seen on, for example, sugar maples, however, aren’t unveiled in the way that yellow and orange are; instead, the reds and purples are produced by sunlight striking glucose stored in the leaves.
Quiz 21
Physics
1. In what direction will a passenger’s head be thrown in a head-on collision?
2. Air is composed primarily of what gas?
3. Which is faster, the speed of sound in air or the speed of sound in water?
4. What color is water?
5. Does bumblebee flight contradict the laws of thermodynamics?
6. Does battery current flow from the negative electrode to the positive electrode or from the positive electrode to the negative electrode?
7. What is the speed of light?
8. True or false: Glass is a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature.
9. Why would a person place a teaspoon in the neck of an opened bottle of champagne?
10. True or false: Water in a sink or toilet rotates counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere because of the Coriolis Effect, caused by the rotation of Earth.
Quiz 21 Answers
Physics
1. A passenger’s head in a head-on collision will not be thrown back but forward. Because a moving body will continue to move in the same direction unless met by an opposing force, a human body in a forward-moving vehicle will continue to move forward if the vehicle is brought to a sudden halt. If the drivers aren’t restrained by seat belts or air bags, their heads may strike steering wheels or windshields. Only if a vehicle is struck from the rear, or it strikes an object while moving in reverse, is there a chance that the driver’s neck will snap back enough to cause true whiplash.
2. Air consists mostly of nitrogen (about 78 percent).
3. The speed of sound in water is faster than the speed of sound in air. The speed of sound describes how much distance a sound wave travels in some specified medium. In dry air at 68°F, the speed of sound is 767 mph or about one mile in five seconds. The speed is highly dependent on air temperature but almost independent of air pressure or density. Sound travels faster in liquids and nonporous solids than in air. In fact, sound travels about 4.4 times faster in water than in air.
4. The color of water is an extremely faint blue. The blue color is visible through the ice of a frozen waterfall. The water can appear to be strikingly blue when people look at it rather than through it because of the reflected color from the sky. In seas and lakes, algae and microscopic plants will affect the appearance of the water. When particles reflect and scatter the light as it returns to the surface, the water can appear to be different colors, including green, like the Mediterranean.
5. Bumblebees obviously can fly, and their flight violates no scientific laws. In the past, some people, including some scientists, were puzzled by the flight of the bumblebee. Such people believed that its wings are too small, its body too big, and its muscles too weak to support flight. Some say the mystery of the bumblebee began with researchers in aerodynamics in the 1930s who viewed bumblebee wings as static airfoils, without having the necessary lift to get the insect’s mass airborne. Bumblebee wings, however, are not static but mobile, producing lift by moving through the air in many directions. In fact, the wings oscillate about two hundred times per second. Bumblebees resemble helicopters more than airplanes, and the flight of the bumblebee is, therefore, explicable.
6. A battery current flows from the negative electrode to the positive electrode. When a battery cell operates, the negative electrode gives up electrons to an external circuit, and the positive electrode accepts electrons from the external circuit.
7. The speed of light is not constant except in a vacuum. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792.458 meters per second or roughly 186,282,397 miles per second. That speed is about a million times faster than the speed of sound in air. The fastest speed light actually travels, however, is roughly 670,616,629.4 miles per hour. At such speed, sunlight takes about 8.3 minutes to reach Earth. The speed of electromagnetic waves slows down as they pass through matter. How much light slows down depends on the nature of the medium through which it passes. The speed of light through diamonds, for example, is about 80,000 miles per second, about half as fast as it moves in a vacuum.
8. The proposition is false because glass is not a high-viscosity liquid but an amorphous solid, a solid in which there is no long-range order of the positions of the atoms. Most classes of solid materials can be found or prepared in an amorphous form, including many polymers and even foods such as cotton candy. People who think that glass is a high-viscosity liquid note that panes of stained glass windows often have thicker glass at the bottom than at the top. That unevenness, however, is due not to the movement of the glass but to the unevenness of the glass when it was installed. It is fairly common to find old windows that are thicker at the sides or the tops.
9. People who place spoons in the necks of opened champagne bottles believe—erroneously—that a teaspoon will help the champagne retain its carbonation. There is no good empirical evidence for that belief. Because many people believe that the practice will work, they may, however, perceive it as effective, especially in the absence of any scientific test.
10. The proposition about the drainage of water is false. The Coriolis Effect is the inertial force that deflects an object (such as air masses) moving about Earth. The deflection is rightward in the Northern Hemisphere and leftward in the Southern Hemisphere. In an episode of The Simpsons “Bart vs. Australia,” Lisa tells Bart that toilets in the Northern Hemisphere (for example, America) drain counterclockwise, whereas those in the Southern Hemisphere drain clockwise. Lisa is incorrect. Although the Coriolis Effect influences the movement of ocean currents and air masses in the atmosphere, it is negligible in affecting the water that runs down toilets and bathtub and sink drains. What determines the direction of drainage is principally the shape of the basin and the direction from which it was filled.
Quiz 22
Slang
1. In slang, what is German tea?
2. In slang, what are Russian boots?
3. In slang, what are Mexican strawberries?
4. In slang, what is a Chinese fire drill?
5. In slang, what is a Spanish fiddle?
6. In slang, what is a Turkish medal?
7. In slang, what is an Arizona tenor?
8. In slang, what is a Scotch organ?
9. In slang, what is Italian perfume?
10. In slang, what is a Dutch feast?
11. In slang, what is a Dutch nightingale?
12. What is a bunghole borer?
13. What is blowing the grampus?
Quiz 22 Answers
Slang
1. In slang, German tea describes beer.
2. In slang, Russian boots descr
ibes leg irons.
3. In slang, the phrase Mexican strawberries describes beans.
4. In slang, Chinese fire drill describes chaos or a situation in which everyone gets out of a car when it’s stopped at a traffic light, runs around it, and gets back in a different seat.
5. In slang, Spanish fiddle describes a crosscut saw.
6. In slang, Turkish medal describes an unbuttoned fly.
7. In slang, Arizona tenor describes a cougher (who has gone to the southwest for reasons of health).
8. In slang, Scotch organ describes a cash register.
9. In slang, Italian perfume describes garlic.
10. In slang, Dutch feast describes a dinner at which the host gets drunk before or after the guests arrive.
11. In slang, Dutch nightingale describes a frog.
12. A bunghole borer is one who operates a machine that bores holes in casks or barrels.
13. Blowing the grampus describes the tradition of throwing a bucket of cold water on a sailor who has been asleep while on watch.
Quiz 23
Insects and Related Things
1. What do moths do to clothes?
2. What do bees collect from flowers?
3. How do crickets chirp?
4. What sort of creature is a daddy longlegs?
5. How dangerous is tarantula venom to human beings?
6. Which creature has killed the most human beings?
7. What will dragonflies do to human beings?
8. What do female mosquitoes do to people that is irritating?
9. How do most tree worms get into apples?
10. What are male bees called?
Quiz 23 Answers
Insects and Related Things
1. Moths do little or nothing to clothes, and they don’t eat them. The damage found in wool and fur is done when the eggs of moths hatch and the larvae begin feeding on clothes. After feeding, the larvae will eventually form cocoons, change into moths, and then fly away to repeat the cycle.
2. Bees do not collect honey from flowers; they collect nectar, which is converted into honey by other bees in the hive.
3. Crickets chirp not by rubbing their legs together, but by rubbing a scraper on one forewing along a row of 50 to 250 teeth on an opposite forewing.
4. A daddy longlegs is not a spider or an insect. Although a daddy longlegs has eight legs like a spider, it isn’t a spider. While daddy longlegs, like scorpions, ticks, mites, and spiders, belong to the class Arachnida, the daddy longlegs belongs to the separate order Phalangida; spiders belong to the order Araneida.
5. Though they look scary and have a fearsome reputation, tarantulas have bites that are often no more harmful than wasp stings and aren’t fatal. Accounts of bites by tarantulas of some species, however, are reported to be painful. What’s more, some people can suffer severe symptoms because of allergic reactions to proteins included in the venom.
6. The creature most deadly to human beings is the mosquito, which carries disease-causing viruses and parasites from person to person without catching the diseases itself. Mosquitoes can transmit many diseases, including encephalitis, but they are especially known for producing yellow fever, dengue fever, and malaria. Mosquitoes are estimated to transmit disease to more than seven hundred million people annually in Africa, South America, Central America, Mexico, and much of Asia, killing millions of people.
7. Contrary to popular opinion, dragonflies don’t sting, though their larvae (nymphs) can bite. By the way, dragonflies are among the fastest flying insects, if not the fastest.
8. Female mosquitoes do not bite but pierce their victims with a long hollow tube (a proboscis), through which they suck blood. Before the female mosquito extracts blood, she injects an anticoagulant to prevent the blood from clotting. The itchy bumps people get from mosquito “bites” are allergic reactions to the anticoagulant. The mosquito gets blood not to eat but to nourish eggs. Mosquitoes feed on nectar and other plant juices.
9. The usual way in which tree worms get into apples is not by boring into the apples but by being born in them. After a fruit fly punctures a growing apple and plants its eggs in the hole, the eggs hatch and release tiny white worms that grow as they eat the apple tissue. After the apple falls to the ground, the worms crawl out the apple and develop into fruit flies.
10. Male bees are drones; female bees are workers—unless they are queens.
Quiz 24
Measurements
1. How many pounds are in a British hundredweight?
2. In Britain, France, and Germany, a billion is how many million?
3. What are the dimensions of the familiar lumber known as a 2×4 (a two by four)?
4. According to the U.S. government and its mints, what is the coin whose value is 1/100 of a dollar?
5. What percentage of the brain do people use?
6. What is relative humidity?
7. Roughly, how much water would a ten-gallon hat hold?
8. What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?
9. Roughly, what percentage of heat is lost through one’s head?
10. In seismological circles, what is the name of the scale for describing the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake?
Quiz 24 Answers
Measurements
1. A British hundredweight (also known as a long hundred weight) equals 112 pounds.
2. In Britain, France, and Germany a billion is not a thousand million (as in the United States) but a million million (a trillion in the United States). The U.S. million in those countries is called a milliard.
3. Lumber known as a 2×4 (two by four) is not 2 by 4 inches but 1½ by 3½ inches. When the board is first sawed from the log, it’s a true 2×4, but the drying process and the planing of the board reduce it to the finished 1½- by 3½-inch size.
4. The U.S. coin that is worth 1/100 of a dollar is officially called a cent, not a penny.
5. Contrary to popular opinion, people do not use only 10 percent of their brains but much more. In fact, imaging studies have shown that no area of the brain is completely inactive. Further, when almost any area of the brain is damaged, it has specific and lasting effects on mental and behavioral capabilities.
6. Relative humidity is not the actual amount of water in a given volume of air, which is absolute humidity, but the percentage of water in the air in relation to the amount of water the air can hold at a given temperature. On a cold day, relative humidity of a given area may be 30 percent, and yet the air may contain below 1 percent water.
7. A ten-gallon hat holds about three quarters of a gallon.
8. A pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold because feathers are measured by avoirdupois weight, according to which a pound is sixteen ounces, and gold is measured by troy weight, according to which a pound is twelve ounces.
9. Even though many believe that a person will lose 40 to 45 percent of body heat through the head, heat loss from the head is proportional to the size of the individual. The figures 40 to 45 percent were given in a poorly researched military study and were expressed, for example, in the 1970 United States Army Survival Manual.
10. The answer is not the Richter scale, which has been superseded by the Moment Magnitude Scale (MMS), devised in 1979 by seismologists Hiroo Kanamori and Tom Hanks (different guy) of the California Institute of Technology. The scientists found the Richter scale unsatisfactory because it measures only the strength of the shock waves, which don’t fully reflect an earthquake’s impact. Large earthquakes can have the same score on the Richter scale but cause sharply different degrees of devastation. Instead of measuring the seismic waves or vibration as experienced 373 miles away, the MMS expresses the energy released by an earthquake, multiplying the distance of the slip between the two parts of the fault by the total area affected. The MMS yields values that make sense when compared to those of the Richter scale. Further, both scales are logarithmic; a two-point increase, for example, means a hundred times more p
ower.
Quiz 25
Language/Initials/ Mottos
1. What does SOS, the emergency distress signal, stand for?
2. What does the S in Harry S. Truman stand for?
3. “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” is whose motto?
4. Where does the expression “His name is mud ” originate?
5. When was the English word pig first used as a pejorative for a police officer?
6. Spell the English word expressing a unit for the relative purity of gold.
7. What’s the difference in the meaning between flammable and inflammable?
8. Whose official motto is e pluribus unum (“out of many, one”)?
9. What is corpus delicti?
10. In Old English, the word with meant what?
11. Of Yiddish, Greek, Finnish, Czech, and Armenian, which language isn’t Indo-European?
12. How should one pronounce primer in the sense of “an introductory book to teach reading” or “a short book presenting the basics of some discipline”?
13. What does CISCO stand for?
14. What’s unusual about the word rhythms?
15. What is the source of the English word arctic?
16. What, if anything, is incorrect about the expression “is comprised of ”?
17. How should one pronounce Gallaudet in Gallaudet University, the university for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Washington, DC?
18. What does the Latin abbreviation i.e. mean?
19. How do the Cherokee pronounce Cherokee?
20. What is the origin of the word sincere?
Quiz 25 Answers
Language/Initials/Mottos
1. SOS stands for nothing but was chosen because of the ease with which it can be expressed in Morse code (three dots, three dashes, three dots).
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