Thursday, May 07, 2009

[science and technology] five questions for you



1. Mrs. Thomas Smith of Ryde, NSW, Australia, produced a new variety of fruit in 1868. What is it called?

2. Name anything that happened in Britain on September 3rd, 1752.

3. The prefix mega- is a millionfold in the SI units and giga- is a billion. Tera is a trillion but what is the quadrillionfold (10 to the power of 15) prefix?

4. Truth, beauty, strange, charm, up and down are types of what?

5. If the camel with one hump is called a dromedary, what’s the other type called?

Answers

The Granny Smith apple; nothing happened - after September 2, the next day was September 14, due to the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, peta, quarks, bactrian

10 comments:

  1. 4/5 I couldn't remember thatpeta was the next one up. The first one was a guess based on the apple pic

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  2. I was allowing myself to get confused with the apple pic too.

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  3. Draw the B of Bactrian on its side - two humps. Draw the D of Dromedary.....

    Oh what fun.

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  4. CherryPie - memorable but not, alas, original.

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  5. Red-faced, I must confess I wasn't aware of that one of Dearieme's and perhaps I'm of that era too.

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  6. Of that era too? Oh, you mean

    The sexual life of the camel
    Is stranger than anyone thinks
    In the height of the mating season
    He attempts to bugger the Sphinx
    But the Sphinx's posterior orifice....

    You finish it, James.

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  7. Whatever happened to milliards?

    10^9 milliard
    10^12 billion
    10^15 trillion

    or at least that's what we were told by our Metrication Board when we adopted SI units back in 1971.

    As for what happened on 3 September 1752, that would depend on where you were, wouldn't it? 3 September 1752 in Russia was 14 September 1752 in Britain, for example. 3 September in Denmark was 23 August in Britain and Russia.

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