Fuddland

The Bookworm had the second of its regular quiz evenings last week, and for a special treat I presented the participants with a round of ten maths- or physics-based questions to provide some contrast to the fun they’d been having up to that point. I tried to strike a balance between questions requiring general knowledge and those that people could possibly work out, and was pretty impressed by how some teams did. The highest score for the round was 8.5 out of 10 — see how you’d have fared [no cheating, and I’ll be deducting points for use of calculators!]:

1. In Einstein’s most famous equation, E=MC². What do the letters E, M, and C represent?

2. A right-angled triangle has two shortest sides of length 5cm and 12cm. What is the length of the hypotenuse?

3. A perfect number is a number whose factors add up to twice the original number. As a non-example, the factors of 10 are 1, 2, 5 and 10, but 1+2+5+10 does not equal 20, so 10 is not a perfect number. What is the smallest perfect number?

4. What is the total if you add up all the whole numbers between 1 and 100 (inclusive)?

5. One million seconds is roughly 11 days. To the nearest multiple of five, how many years is one billion seconds? (American billion.)

6. Imagine you loop a rope tightly all the way around the equator so that its ends meet exactly. You now want to raise this rope by 1 metre above the ground all the way around the Earth. How much extra rope would you need? (Answers to the nearest metre.)

7. If a boy weighs 60kg on Earth, what would he weigh on the Moon? (This is not a trick question!)

8. (a) What is the next number in the sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. (b) What is this famous sequence of numbers called?

9. (a) How many zeroes are there after the 1 in a googol? (b) How many zeroes are there after the 1 in a googolplex?

10. Complete this famous quotation often attributed to Newton: “If I have seen further than those before me, it is only because…”

#1

Clair | 2008 / 01 / 22 – 04:27

I think I get 8.5 without cheating. I think.

#2

Kav | 2008 / 01 / 24 – 10:17

Is the answer to 10 “…because I wisely invested in this rather nice telescope”?

#3

David | 2008 / 01 / 24 – 12:14

Re #2: Not if you rely on funding from STFC it’s not. ;)

#4

Kav | 2008 / 01 / 27 – 08:07

lol.
That’s right, laugh at my pain boy!
:-)

Commenting on this post is closed. Thanks to all those who left comments. If you'd still like to say something about this entry, feel free to email me.