General Knowledge 1

1 Dry ice is a frozen form of which gas?


Carbon Dioxide


2 Where are human triceps muscles to be found?


At the back of the upper arm


3 What is the brightest star in the night sky?


Sirius (The Dog Star)


4 A leveret is the young of which animal?


Hare


5 What term is given to a piece of rock or metal from space that reaches the surface of the Earth?


Meteorite


6 Which part of the eye is coloured and surrounds the pupil?


Iris


7 What colour is the most-prized variety of jade?


Green


8 What type of tree is often found in churchyards?


The Yew


9 Who invented the jet engine?


Sir Frank Whittle


10 What would you use VOIP for?


Making a telephone call on the internet (it stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol)


11 To which animal does the word lupine refer?


Wolf


12 Which subatomic particles are found in the nucleus of an atom?


Protons and Neutrons


13 Which part of the Earth lies between the outer core and the crust?


The Mantle


14 Orbiting 35,900km above the equator, what term is given to satellites that remain above the same point on the Earth’s surface in their orbit?


Geostationary


15 In trigonometry, what is calculated by the adjacent over the hypotenuse?


Cosine


16 What unit do barometers and weather maps usually display atmospheric pressure in?


Millibars


17 Which chemical element, number 11 in the Periodic table, has the symbol Na?


Sodium


18 Named after a Surrey town where a spring containing this was discovered, how is hydrated magnesium sulphate better known?


Epsom salts


19 Reed, Marsh, Sedge and Grasshopper are varieties of which bird?


Warbler


20 Which New Zealand-born physicist is credited with splitting the atom?


Sir Ernest Rutherford


21 Which mineral forms the lead in a pencil?


Graphite


22 SS Archimedes was an appropriately named ship which was the world’s first to use what form of propulsion?


A Screw Propellor


23 What is the largest fish in the world?


The whale shark


24 What shapes are attached to a line of a weather map to denote a warm front?


Semicircles


25 Who discovered the law that the volume of a given mass of gas at a constant temperature is inversely proportional to its pressure?


Robert Boyle


26 What is the longest bone in the human body?


The femur (or thighbone)


27 Relating to flat-screen televisions and monitors, what does LCD stand for?


Liquid Crystal Display






28 What creature is an ophidiophobe afraid of?


Snakes


29 What is the mathematical series that starts 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 called?


A Fibonacci Series


30 Deriving its name from an Icelandic word meaning erupt, what term is given to a natural hot spring that intermittently ejects a column of water and steam into the air?


Geyser


31 Diamonds are a form of which chemical element?


Carbon


32 Which paper size measures 297x420mm?


A3


33 What piece of computer equipment was invented by Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute in 1963?


The Mouse


34 What is the highest digit that can appear in an Octal number system?


7


35 Alopecia is a condition causing the loss of what from the body?


Hair


36 What colour are most thistle heads?


Purple


37 Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange and Charm are the six “flavours” of what elementary particle?


A Quark


38 What is the device that blends air and fuel for an internal combustion engine called?


A carburetto


39 Which part of a horse’s anatomy is the equivalent of a human ankle?


Fetlock


40 Magnetite, hematite, limonite and siderite are ores of which metal?


Iron


41 What name is given to the condition created by too much bile in the bloodstream creating a yellowing of the skin?


Jaundice


42 What acid accumulates in the muscles once the anaerobic threshold is passed when doing exercise?


Lactic Acid


43 What do 1,000 gigabytes make?


A Terabyte


44 Which major spiral galaxy is the closest to the Milky Way and might collide with it in about three billion years?


Andromeda


45 What is the usual colour of copper sulphate?






46 What is the name given to the substance that covers a deer’s antler when it is growing?


Velvet


47 What is the igneous rock seen in hexagonal columns at the Giant’s Causeway and Fingal’s Cave?


Basalt


48 Which wind is a warm southerly coming from the Sahara Desert over the Mediterranean?


Sirocco






49 What colour head does a male Mallard have?


Green


50 In which temperature scale is the boiling point of water 80 degrees?


Réaumur


(The Réaumur scale French, also known as the "octogesimal division", is a temperature scale in which the freezing and boiling points of water are set to 0 and 80 degrees respectively.)


51 Which acid is found in car batteries?


Sulphuric


52 What is the ratio 1:1.618 known as?


The Golden Section (also Golden Ratio, Golden mean and Divine Proportion)


53 What is an ECG used to show?


Heart activity and rhythm (it stands for electrocardiogram)


54 Where was a speed record of 11.2mph set in 1972?


The Moon (John Young of Apollo 16 driving the Lunar Rover!)


55 Which form of cloud has an anvil shape and is associated with heavy showers and storms?


Cumulonimbus


56 Old Man’s Beard and Traveller’s Joy are names for a variety of which flower?


Clematis


57 What is the fruit of the tropical plant Ananas comosus?


Pineapple


58 Which astronomical distance is about 3.26 light years?


A parsec


59 What is created when the loop of a meander of a river is cut off and the river diverted on a different course?


An Oxbow lake


60 Which sugar is found in milk?


Lactose sugar

 Science and Nature Quiz

1 What was the only probe that has so far been sent to Uranus and Neptune?






2 What is defined as “Any rock or soil material that has remained below 0˚C continuously for two or more years”?


3 Which insect is the host for the parasitic organism that causes sleeping sickness?


4 What did Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discover by accident on November 8 1895?


5 Which is the largest species of big cat to be found in South America?


6 An Astronomical Unit is the mean distance between which two bodies?


7 What term is used in mathematics for a number, such as Pi or √2, which cannot be expressed as a fraction?


8 What is manufactured by the Haber process?


9 Of what is a Positron an antiparticle?


10 What sort of structure is DNA?


12 And what is DNA an abbreviation for?


13 Which chemical element is named after a village in Scotland?


14 Which of Jupiter’s moons is the largest in the solar system?


15 What was a Clepsydra used for?


16 How is the fossilised resin of coniferous trees from the Middle Tertiary period better known?


17 Monotremes are egg- laying mammals, the order comprising echidnas and which other animals?


18 What number on the Beaufort scale is given to a “strong breeze”?


19 The diet of which birds creates their pink plumage?


20 What colour are the flowers of the primrose?


21 Which alkane, chemical formula CH4, occurs naturally in oil wells, marshes and the emissions from cows?


22 What does the mathematic sign ≥ mean?


23 Which black and white bird of the crow family has the scientific name Pica pica?


24 What facet of human anatomy did William Harvey discover?


25 In weather, regions of high pressure are also known as what?


26 Which London structure was designed so it could act as a giant telescope, although it proved unsuccessful in this role?


27 Centre of a long-standing industry in Cornwall, how is kaolin also known?


28 In which spacecraft did Yuri Gagarin become the first man in space?


29 Where in the body are alveoli to be found?


30 Riboflavin is an alternative name for which vitamin of the B Group?