There’s one in M. Night Shamalayan’s Old. No idea what his name is, but he’s there.
Remembering the lyrics to this song did help me with an answer (monotreme) once.
Some ideas for each round, trying to be on the non-obscure not too hard but not too easy balance.
Round 1: Virginia Dept of Ed 4th grade exam prep (Hope you’re smarter than a 4th grader)
- Round 4,395,509 to the nearest thousand
- How many phases of the moon are there
- What is 2/5 + 1/3
- List the four largest planets in the solar system, in order by size
- Electrical energy can be transformed into other types of energy - list 4 of them.
Answers
1. 4,396,000
2. 8
3. 11/15
4. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
5. Any form, but Heat, Light, Sound, Mechanical, Magnetic, Chemical, Kenetic, Potential are all good.
Round 2: Maths geek
- Which is bigger 3/7 or 16/39
- Fig Newtons were named after Isaac Newton, one of the two inventors of calculus. What is the name of the other inventor of calculus, who also happens to have a cookie named after him?
- Rank these in order of most likely to least likely:
a. Filling out a perfect NCAA March Madness bracket
b. Winning the powerball lottery
c. Flipping a coin and having it land on heads 50 times in a row
d. Saying “hit me” 10 times in a row in Blackjack and ending on a stopping hand (17-21), six deck game.
e. Getting a royal flush in Texas Hold 'em AND beating someone who has four aces in the same hand - List 2 irrational numbers
- A child is standing facing away from the sun, creating a shadow. The shadow is 3 feet in length. The point from the end of the shadow to the top of the child’s head is 5 feet in length. How tall is the child?
Answers
1. 3/7
2. Leibniz
3. d,e,b,c,a
D) 1 in 100 million (per wizard of odds)
E) 1 in 165 million (per wizard of odds, ESPN incorrectly calculated it at 1 in 2.7 billion when it happened)
B) 1 in 292 million
C) 1 in 1.1 quadrillion
a) 1 in 9.2 quintillion
4. sqrt(2), pi, etc etc
5. 4 feet (3,4,5 triangle rule)
Round 3: Enginerding
- In what year did Thomas Edison invent the lightbulb? (maybe give a/b/c/d options)
- In electricity, voltage is measured in volts while current is measured in…
- Rank these modes of transportation in order of their invention:
a. Steam Train
b. Bicycle
c. Car
d. Hot air balloon
e. Airplane - Identify which of these are programming languages, and which are not:
a. C
b. C+
c. C++
d. C-
e. C- -
f. C&
g. C#
h. C$ - Who is generally known as the Father of Computer Science?
Answers
1. 1879
2. amperes or amps
3. Hot Air Balloon (1783), Steam Train (1804), Bicycle (1817), Car (1886), Airplane (1903)
4. C, C++, C- -, C# are, the rest are not
5. Alan Turing
Round 4: SCIENCE!!!
- What is the only temperature that is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit
a. -100 degrees
b. -40 degrees
c. 0 degrees
d. 100 degrees
e. 212 degrees - How fast is the speed of light
- Name 3 of the 5 components of a cell
- What is the normal number of chromosomes a human has?
- What are the three types of rocks
Answers
- -40
- 300,000 km/s (~186,000 miles/second)
- Choose 3 of Nucleus, mitochondria, ribosome, cytoplasm, cell membrane
- 46 (23 pairs)
- igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic
Answers should be right, but no guarantees as I got all the odds off of Google and didn’t actually calculate them myself.
4 Likes
More interesting might be the four smallest, or even the two smallest. Wrong if they include Pluto, since if dwarf planets are counted Pluto would not be in smallest 2 or 4. Or even explicitly ask for the two smallest planets among the 8 planets.
1 Like
Definitely trying to stir controversy over here
…or something like 1/3+1/4+1/5+1/6+1/7
…I really like something like 1/3 + 1/6 because it gives you an answer (in properly reduced form) with a denominator that is not just the other two denominators multiplied together (like 1/2 + 1/3 would be).
I think someone’s mentioned something along the lines of “How many radians are in 1/4 of a circle?”
What does 1/2 +1/3 +1/4 +1/5 +1/6 +1/7+… approach
Yes, when forcing them to decide whether to include Pluto. But I think many might think Neptune was among the 2 (or 4) smallest excluding Pluto. I’m not even sure what the correct ordering of the 4 smallest would be. I know Mercury is smallest, and two of the other 3 are pretty close together. Venus and Earth? And if those are those closest two (in size) are they 2 and 3 or 3 and 4? I know: Google would be my friend.
(The answer to last Fridays 538 Puzzle!)
Might be interesting to have a Star Trek science round . . .
This is always an option:
how many decks?
May the 4th was the last one and it was all Star Wars based.
For Science:
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, what was the destination of Discovery One? Accept either Jupiter (movie and sequels) or Saturn (original book)
10 prime numbers closest to 100
Without googling my guess would be Mercury < Mars < Venus < Earth
Venus and Earth are nearly the same size.
I agree with both of those, especially VA’s. But still haven’t googled.
I think it’s a much more interesting question than the 4 largest, but for bar trivia 4 largest might be challenging enough, and smallest might be too tough, even if you explicitly eliminate Pluto from consideration. If we aren’t positive about the order of the 4 smallest, good chance too tough even if our gut feeling is correct.