College SciTech Quiz Report

College SciTech Quiz at i.Fest, DA-IICT, Gandhinagar || 21st November, 2020

Acknowledgements
• I would like to thank my friends Siddharth Mishra, Jayant
Verma, Snehashis Panda, and Anand Kumar Upadhyaya for
setting questions for me.
• To Rabin Jacob for helping me with a funda.
• And to my Guinea Pigs Daivat Bhatt, Shubhankar Bahl and
Major Chandrakant Nair.
• A big big thank you to the Headrush and i.Fest teams for
having me over.

Note to the Quizzer seeing this:
• The image of a camera ( ) on the bottom of a slide means an image
follows on the next slide. If it is not there, it means it is an answer slide
next.
• The font used is Candara, ‘for best experience’ download it before seeing.
• The framing of the questions in this quiz is different from how an on-
ground quiz would be, mainly due to the present scenario of quizzing, and
measures like removal of proper nouns, numerical approximations etc.
have been done to be as fair as possible. Many verbal clues were also
given.
• In the notes section of each answer is the source of the question, if you
may want to read further on it.

Rules of the Game:
• 4 Rounds in this Quiz.
• Rounds 1 and 3 are written rounds with 6 questions
each.
• Rounds 2 and 4 are the dry rounds with 11 questions
each.
• Rules of individual rounds as we go along.

Round 1: Software Bugs
• Simple Written Round to start off, on software bugs all but
Q4 has the word ‘bug’ in it. All but Q4 is a wordplay.
• 6 Questions
• 5 points each
• 30 points in all

• _________ is a software bug that changes or alters its
behavior when it’s being observed or undergoes isolation.
_________ can refer to any software bug with unusual
behavior, particularly when its operation appears to
disappear or change when it is being studied or worked on
by a software program or debugger application.
• What is the punny name for this bug?

• A _________ is a catastrophic bug that destroys data, and
may also shut down systems or cause other major
problems with an IT system. It is a general IT slang word
for a major bug that does more than just create a nuisance
or an annoyance for users.
• Taking its name from a 1937 incident, what is this bug
called?

• A _________ is a complex type of bug or glitch in a
software product that is difficult to fix because of its
complexity and unpredictability.
• The common idea is that these bugs are resistant to fixes,
because of their chaotic or “non-deterministic” properties.
• Named after a mathematician who built a career at IBM,
what is it called?

• A bug that, when an attempt to fix is made, introduces
two new bugs. It’s a bug that cannot be fixed.
• What is it called?

• A ___________ is a bug that manifests only after someone
reading source code or using the program in an unusual
way notices that it never should have worked in the first
place, at which point the program promptly stops working
for everybody until fixed.
• What pun fills in the blank?

• _____-______ is a hypothetical bug predicted to exist
based on a small number of possibly related event log
entries and vague anecdotal reports from users, but it is
difficult (if not impossible) to reproduce on a test
environment because you don’t really know if it’s there,
and if it is there what is causing it.
• What fills the blanks?

Time Up!

Answers ahead

List of Answers
• Heisenbug
• Hindenbug
• Mandelbug
• Hydra
• Schrödinbug
• Higgs-Bugson

Round 2: Clockwise
• 11 Questions in this round moving clockwise i.e. from Team
1 to Team 8.
• Infinite bounce rules apply. No more than 2 continuous
unanswered questions will be a direct for a team.
• +10 on the direct or a pass.
• +10/-5 when pouncing.
• Just to be clear, I will not reveal half answers anywhere,
until I get the full answer, and give points on discretion.

• In the early 2000s, a team of forensic investigators from Princeton
decided to conduct a digital autopsy using specialist software to
create a 3D reconstruction of the corpse.
• They took help from the original autopsy and a team of historians,
criminal profilers and pathologists, with the lead researcher using
their experience of mob violence to help the study.
• Numerous settings were looked at, and the study concluded that it
is highly improbable that more than 5-10 individuals were directly
involved in the actual act, while the remaining formed a hurdle to
prevent intervention.
• Who was being looked at?

College SciTech Quiz at i.Fest, DA-IICT, Gandhinagar || 21st November, 2020College SciTech Quiz at i.Fest, DA-IICT, Gandhinagar || 21st November, 2020

Julius Caesar
• This report is seen as the earliest documented post-
mortem report in history.

• In the present day Bengal region, approximately during the time when
Gautam Buddha was edifying in the India, someone was making use of
tools such as this.
• The specific rod was to be created either with gold, iron or copper, and
was measured to be created 8 fingers in length, with the middle part
having strings of thread, and a circumference of a thumb’s upper
section, and the edge forming a shape of a bud.
• This curved needle-like tool was used to push something out of its
delicate position, and according to the utilizer, due to the risks involved
with the procedure they used to only do this when necessary.
• For what specific purpose was this tool used and by whom?

Sushruta used the tool to
remove cataract
• Traditional cataract surgery was performed
with a special tool called the Jabamukhi Salaka,
a curved needle used to loosen the lens and
push the cataract out of the field of vision. The
eye would later be soaked with warm butter
and then bandaged. Though this method was
successful, Sushruta cautioned that it should
only be used when necessary. The removal of
cataract by surgery was also introduced into
China from India.

• Duke Nukem 3D is the 3rd installment in the series published by 3D
Realms, one of the forerunners of modern FPS games.
• The game features the exploits of the titular character who fights
an alien invasion on Earth using a range of weapons and moves.
• Among the enemies in the game, police officers from a certain
region in the US have turned into pig cops with the acronym of the
force being changed by one letter to ____.
• What was the changed name? (5)
• An easter egg in the game, when Duke Nukem enters the power
plant stage he comes across this familiar looking office.
• Whose office is this a reference to? (5)

LARD from LAPD
Homer Simpson’s Office

• The use of this kind of design in military
explosives dates back to the 14th century in a
Ming dynasty text which after talking about
the composition of the explosive, directs the
reader to fill the covering with iron pellets,
and bits of broken porcelain, and then fill
with gunpowder core.
• The earliest modern example comes from
WWI, when a cast iron pineapple design
based explosive was adopted by the British,
to deal more damage than a conventional
design.
• What design choice in what military items?

Fragmentation in Grenades

• While this age old idiom has survived the test of time with its
usage, science has been quick to debunk its premise of causation
correlation with a concept known as pyrolysis.
• Pyrolysis refers to the breakdown of organic material at elevated
temperatures in the absence of catalysts. Scientists are quick to
point out that the absence of a necessary catalyst in instances of
pyrolysis proves this idiom wrong, while others show more recent
electrical introductions as a proof of the end result being achieved
without the aforementioned starting point.
• What is being tried to debunk here?

No smoke without a fire

• In a poem, Sukumar Ray writes
about something an uncle of the
main character had created
(translated from Bengali by Satyajit
Ray):
• Sukumar Ray had accompanying
illustrations with the poem,
describing what kind of
technology, named for an
American cartoonist? Annual
contests are held to create the best
of this kind where a task cannot last
more than 2 mins, with the 2020
prize going to “Turn Off A Light”.
• That uncle said his intellect | Will
make a 5-hour walk go in 1.5 hours | I
am absolutely superior | With this
contraption on my neck || In front of
him hangs food as per his interest |
Manda Mithai, Chop-Cutlet, Khaja or
Luchi | The heart says ‘Khabo Khabo’,
the mouth moves and eats | The food
is put in the mouth, in small sizes || In
this way, greed pulls him |
Excitement takes him forward | And
move forward 10-12 yojana, without
feeling tired

Rube Goldberg Machine

• In a SmarterEveryDay video, a YouTube channel, Destin Sandlin
goes to a facility where he gets to see some objects of interest.
• The lady you see in the video is one of the only people who is
authorized to handle said items, and they have to wear such suits
to reach the final laboratory after a series of safety measures and
pressurized chambers.
• All of these items are indexed and stored in a nitrogen-filled
cabinet. Each also has besides it a dice shaped item which helps
maintain consistency of the objects; given their rarity.
• What objects are stored and tested like this? (5) What purpose
do the dice like objects serve? (5)

Moon Rocks
Orientation cubes placed with each rock to
indicate their orientation on the Moon

• Looking at these places of historical and anthropological significance,
it is clear that there are recurring colour themes used irrespective of
the geographies they are found in.
• The primary colour used can be attributed to the fact that iron oxide
is one of the more abundant minerals found on earth and was widely
available across the planet. The colour of the outlines could be
explained by the fact that at this point in human history, charcoal had
become standard due to long human exposure to fire.
• Another reason for the use of the primary colour beyond the
abundance of its source was that it was seen as the colour of life spirit
of the entity being depicted.
• What common colour scheme is being talked about?

Why cave paintings are red and black

• For seeds to germinate in a desert is a daunting task, especially if
there is a crust. This crust impedes seed germination in a couple of
ways, one by exposing the stranded seeds to the harsh
environment, which may not be able to grow, and two by acting as a
hurdle for water to get to the buried seeds, and for the seedlings to
sprout.
• In the rain-starved deserts of coastal Peru, you would find these
small patches of richer than usual plant life. These patches were
found to hold >1000 seeds/sq. m., which may give these terrains a
great chance at a biodiversity, and the team also observed that 5
species show-up solely in these areas.
• Rather surprising, what is source of such germination, this study
being the first to record such ecosystem engineering?

Fossorial Birds
• Specifically from three bird species — burrowing owl (Athene
cunicularia), coastal miner (Geositta peruviana) and greyish miner
(G. maritima), who dug up the soil in these mounds.

• In December last year, a team of scientists from Physical Research
Laboratory and IIT-B published a research in the journal Nature.
• With the research focused on the plains of Northwestern India, they
went about trying to prove a property a certain something had. For
this, they studied the temporal changes of sediment in a 300 km
stretch using 40Ar/39Ar dating, and by the determination of the
depositional ages of coarse sand layers 3-10m below the modern
alluvium, they were able to prove that the said something indeed had
those properties during the periods of 80-20 thousand years ago and
again between 9-4.2 thousand years ago.
• The fact that there were a large number of settlements which
declined with time was additional proof for the 2nd time period.
• What did this find unequivocal evidence to?

Perenniality of River Saraswati/Ghaggar
• The study says that the Saraswati had sources in the glaciated regions of
the Higher Himalayas, similar to the Ganga, Yamuna and Sutlej. The modern
Ghaggar has no direct connection to the Higher Himalayas and originates
from the foothills of the Himalayas — the Siwaliks.
• They found that the perennial river had uninterrupted flow starting 80,000
years ago; that flow continued till 20,000 years ago. It then diminished due
to the extreme aridity of the last glacial period. However, the river revived
its strength about 9,000 years ago and flowed for the next 4,500 years.
• The duration coincides with the flourishing of the Pre-Harappan and Early
Harappan cultures along the river’s banks. The final decline of the Ghaggar
was probably due to the rapid drying up of the Sutlej-fed channels that had
fed the Saraswati in the ancient times.

• Established during the Syrian Civil War, this refugee camp in Jordan
is now one of the world’s largest camp for Syrian refugees.
• Due to its location, the region receives very little rainfall, ~20 cm
per year which makes it difficult for the camp inhabitants to sustain
themselves and have to depend on humanitarian aid instead.
• During a 2016 visit by a group of scientists to discuss recycling of
items, they found that the camp had an abundance of a certain
item that could be used to make the refugees self sufficient.
• The material that forms this item is known for its use as artificial
soil in experiments, and is known to use 90% less water due to its
properties of retaining water.
• What were the items that were recycled?

Mattresses were used to grow plants
The foam was made of polyurethane which
retained water

End of Round, a look at the scores please.

Round 3: Women in Innovation
• A written round of 6 questions on Women In
Innovation.
• Each correct answer will fetch a team 10 points.

• A French national, who soon after marriage became interested in
natural history. She travelled around the isle of Sicily and
documented the animals and plants but became enthralled with
shells.
• To aid her research, she created something in the 1830s which
today you would see quite ubiquitously. She used this creation to
recognise that a certain species makes its own shell, unlike the
transferring nature of hermit crabs.
• You will hear an homage to her and her invention as part of a
campaign by the European Commission to get girls involved in
science and encourage young women in scientific research careers.
• What is she the modern inventor of?

• Speciation refers to the evolutionary process by which populations
evolve to become distinct. This renowned botanist famously tried
to find the reason behind the variance in speciation of flora in the
extremities of a geographical entity.
• Her explanation for the speciation was twofold – one extremity
was cold and humid, while the other was cold and dry. The humid
region was a key factor in encouraging speciation, and in addition
she reasoned that the confluence of Chinese and Malayan elements
to the flora contributed to the speciation in the region as well.
• What expanse did she study?

• This scientist was interested in the
work done by one Toni Jackman and
wanted to enlist her services, and to
arrange for her to go on Africa for
scientific studies.
• But his death in the 1970s put a rest
to those plans, and adequate funding
was not managed.
• What group would she have become
a part of?
• What would have been the subject of
her studies?

• Her mid 19th century work was path breaking as it defined a phenomenon
that we are currently bearing the brunt of. With an air pump, a couple of
glass cylinders and other instruments, she discovered the effect of a
carbonic acid on the temperature inside the cylinder. This has led to her
being known as the uncredited Mother of _______ _______.
• When she wanted to present her findings in the American Association for
Advancement of Science, she was denied due to being a woman. She had
to have her study editorialized by another member and it was not
presented in full.
• As a further blow, an Irishman by the name of John presented a paper
with a similar premise a few years later, and is widely reckoned as the
Father of _______ _______.
• FITB. (5) Who was the Irishman? (5)

• Born in Madhya Pradesh in the 1910s, her father and uncle studied as
chemists and were alumni of a famous Indian scientific organisation.
Following in their footsteps she applied to be a research fellow but
was rejected by the then director on grounds of women not been
seen as proficient enough to work in research.
• She held a non-violent dharna outside the director’s office, and
persuaded him to reconsider his decision; he accepted with a few
conditions. She not just became the first woman to be taken in
establishment, but also became one of the first females to get a
scientific doctorate in India.
• She later went on to become the first female director of the institute.
• Who is this biochemist? (5) Who was the then-director? (5)

• In the early 1900s, a German housewife wanted to remove the
bitterness of a consumable and make it less grainy, and after many
experiments a stroke of inspiration struck her. She used a blotting
paper from her son’s notebook and it worked wonders and later
received a patent for this.
• In May this year, the company she founded started producing an item
much in demand. The transition of the production was much quicker
than other companies due to the similar ergonomies of the products,
which was perfect for this alternate use. And while the design
remained the same, they had to change the material to a fibre-based
ones, which they use in vacuum cleaners.
• What had she created? (5) What products did they start producing
this year? (5)

Aquarium

Himalayas
The botanist was Janaki Ammal

The Trimates/Leakey’s Angels
Bonobos

Climate Science
John Tyndall

Kamala Sohonie and C. V. Raman
• She would later say, “Though Raman was a great scientist, he was very narrow-minded.
I can never forget the way he treated me just because I was a woman. Even then, Raman
didn't admit me as a regular student. This was a great insult to me. The bias against
women was so bad at that time. What can one expect if even a Nobel Laureate behaves
in such a way?”

Coffee Filter and Face Masks
• “The ergonomics of the thing, the fact that the filter fits exactly over
mouth, nose and chin is so unbelievable that you might call it a gift
from heaven.”

Round 4: Clockwise
• 11 Questions in this round moving anticlockwise i.e. from
Team 8 to Team 1.
• Infinite bounce rules apply. No more than 2 continuous
unanswered questions will be a direct for a team.
• +10 on the direct or a pass.
• +10/-5 when pouncing.
• Just to be clear, I will not reveal half answers anywhere,
until I get the full answer, and give points on discretion.

• In the late 1990s, this eminent Indian scientific institution came under
attack from hackers based in the United States, UK and other
countries. The reasoning behind this attack was political with the
group in question doing this for their anti-war stance and India
making the news for a similar reason at the time.
• While the hackers bypassed firewalls with ease and said to have
downloaded and erased ‘thousands of emails’ in less than a quarter of
an hour, sources inside the institution were quite confident that there
was no possible way for them to achieve this.
• Which institution? (5) Why was it not possible, at the time, for the
hackers to committed the destruction they claimed to have done? (5)

BARC
All research institutions at the time were running on
ERNET – which had a princely speed of 8-10 kbps

• While there have been many possible solutions proposed for
this problematic environmental demand, a Biotech firm in 2016
came up with a possible 3D printed version of the item.
• The company had produced a dried powder which they could
produce at close to $3400/pound (an eight of the price of the
real item), hoping to curb demand for the authentic one. This
would help with the market in Asia, where they are not just
used in conventional medicine, but also gifted as a status
symbol.
• What are they trying to produce a 3D printed version of?

Rhino Horn

• One of the more enduring competitive rivalries in science, the Bone
Wars of the 19th century was used to describe the frenzied enmity
between eminent American paleontologists Othniel Marsh and Edward
Cope.
• In a prolonged bid to outsmart the other, they made multiple mistakes
during exploration, like Marsh assigning a Triceratops skull as a Bison
due to his partial examination. In spite of this, they managed to
discover and name over a 125 new genus and species of dinosaurs.
• The discovery of fossils was also aided by a considerable engineering
undertaking in the latter half of the 19th century which required
blasting through mountains of granite and brought to light an
innumerable amount of fossils.
• What was the undertaking?

First Transcontinental Railroad

• In Brian’s 2004 book, he talks about an arrangement from the
1870s.
• A 120 feet track was set up inside a shed, with a black clothing
backdrop on the opposite side on which there were grids
created with white string of 50-centimeter squares, subdivided
into 5-centimeter sections.
• This backdrop was well-suited to lighter skin tones, and the
grid itself was instrumental in much clearer measurements of
movements and positions than ever before.
• What was being created?

Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion

• The Hedgehog and the Fox is a popular essay written by philosopher
Isiah Berlin. Written in the 1930s, the essay views writers and thinkers as
divided into two groups - hedgehogs, who view the world through a
single idea or concept, and foxes who draw on a variety of experiences
and do not rely on a single idea.
• In a recent football podcast, famous tactician Jonathan Wilson uses this
comparison to highlight the one dimensional football Manchester
United find themselves stuck with. He refers to them as hedgehogs and
then says when was the last time a football team equivalent of a
hedgehog won a major tournament. However he immediately followed
up by saying in light of recent history, this might not have been the best
comparison to make.
• Why was his comparison ironic?

Leicester winning the Premier League
Leicester are nicknamed the Foxes

• The focus of this Manchester based company was to tackle the
gargantuan issue of access to clean drinking water that faces
humanity.
• After years of research, they were finally able to create a
machine that purifies water with vapour distillation in a way that
requires very little electricity making it ideal for remote areas.
• When it came to naming the machine, the company chose the
name of a ‘weapon’ that was similarly instrumental in the defeat
of a much more powerful foe.
• What is the name of the machine?

Slingshot
Named after David’s slingshot

• Even though he had an early passion of the arts, when he realized he
couldn’t be successful artist, the Spaniard used his meticulous sketching
skills to make precise records of what he saw under the lens, and his
‘tree like’ drawings became crucial to a branch of science he is today
considered a father of.
• In the last quarter of the 19th century, he learnt of a cell staining method
using certain potassium and silver compounds from a fellow Italian
scientist and this gave him the opportunity to further his research.
• Within 20 years of this incident, they shared a Nobel Prize, even though
rather strangely his independent theory discredited his fellow winner’s
single network theory.
• Who are the two scientists?

Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi
The Nobel Prize in
Physiology or
Medicine 1906 was
awarded jointly
to Camillo
Golgi and Santiago
Ramón y Cajal “in
recognition of their
work on the
structure of the
nervous system.”

• In the late 2000s, when this design studio was approached to create a
playful mobile based experience for this famous European museum,
they came up with an innovative idea for an app with a powerful
search algorithm.
• Using the recently popularized features of the phone’s location data,
and other common information like time of the day, date and weather,
the algorithm would suggest a piece of artwork from the museum’s
archives that would be most appropriate to the user’s surroundings.
• The name of the app is a reference to both the fact that the user would
not know what was going to appear in the app, and the name of the
museum itself.
• What was the app called?

Magic Tate Ball

A final look at the scores please

• Being one of the highest points in many towns, they are used to
advertise local tourism and sometimes even warning sirens.
• One of the most common forms these public utility constructions
take is a mushroom shape i.e. like a funnel. The original one with this
kind of design was found in Sweden in the 1950s, and many
subsequent copies have been built around the world, most famously
in a series (30+) of them in a Middle Eastern country.
• The V-shape is structurally more efficient than flat bottom with
vertical walls in a regular design, as it carries load inside it uniformly
varying from maximum at the bottom to zero at top, as opposed to
maximum pressure throughout the bottom slab in the regular one.
• What commonplace constructions are these?

Water Towers

• Aspect ratios have been a rather fascinating aspect of filmmaking, with
filmmakers experimenting to imbibe a different sense of time or gravity.
• The first films had an aspect ration of 4:3, which was the norm for most
movies then. However in 1927, a system called Polyvision was developed
which boasted an aspect ration of 4:1.
• How did Polyvision achieve this aspect ratio?
• Unfortunately, the method of achieving this aspect ratio had some gaps
which ruined the cinematic experience. In 1952, a similar system called
Cinerama was developed. Cinerama also boasted an aspect ratio of 4:1
but the experience as a whole was much smoother and better than
Polyvision.
• What change did Cinerama introduce?

Polyvision placed three screens side by side to achieve this
Cinerama introduced the concept of projecting the movie on
a curved screen
Polyvision Cinerama

Brickbats on @xanedro on Insta and Twitter

• The director of Modeling and Simulation at Procter & Gamble in
April in mid-2000s gave a talk at the High Performance Computing
and Communications Conference showcasing the use of
Supercomputers in a bid to outdo other competitors in the R&D
department.
• Today owned by another corporation, the presentation focused on
the aerodynamics of a product in their portfolio. Along with the
well-known packing efficiency, the importance of controlling the
aerodynamics of the product is to ensure that it does not fly away
from the conveyer line, because they are produced so rapidly.
• What product was the subject of the director’s talk?

Pringles

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