1. This document contains 25 multiple choice science, history and literature prelim questions along with some commentary about the exam format. 2. It discusses topics like companies, scientific discoveries, works of art, and famous movies or books. 3. The questions cover a wide range of subjects and require different types of thinking to arrive at the correct answer.

1. Sci-Biz-Tech Prelims
Pranav Hari
Gokul S Nair

2. Prelims
● 25 Q
● NO NEGS
● QM is Gawd
● _/_

4. Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

5. Q1- ID this company
This company was founded by two Danish engineers in London who then
sensed opportunity in India and moved their business here
The company began as a representative of Danish manufacturers of dairy
equipment. However, with the start of the Second World War in 1939 and the
resulting restriction on imports, the partners started a small workshop to
undertake jobs and provide service facilities.
Though it has a very “Videshi” sounding name , it is an Indian company on the
likes of HUL etc.

6. Ans: L&T

7. Q2- Which famous “photograph”
● This photo was considered as the most viewed image at one point before
Google’s Logo beat to it.
● This was shot in Los Carneros American Viticultural Area of Sonoma
County, California, United States by Charles O’Rear who was a Nat Geo
photographer
● Since it was taken way back in 1996 , some things have changed at the
particular location making it impossible to duplicate the same picture
Charles shot.

8. Ans: Bliss

9. 3. Fill in the blanks with two scientists(order doesn’t matter)
In retrospect there is no side to choose:
in math, _________ was earliest to make the formulas contort and yield
but never told a soul; and _________, a little later,
did the same startling calculations somewhat differently,
and published them, as was his way:
wishing always to improve the world.
What they had in common:
dead fathers
bookishness
rigorous, enormous curiosity
sitting for hours at a stretch in one chair, thinking
not sleeping enough
never marrying
egotism
alchemy
the abandonment of alchemy
bureaucratic service, which made science and philosophy a hobby
coinage
dying out-to-pasture, genius-wise

10. Ans: Newton and Leibniz

11. 4. LitSoc Prelims
The Geneva mechanism, shown below is a gear mechanism that converts
continuous rotary motion into intermittent motion.
It gets its name because it first became widely used in a particular industry. Which
industry?

12. Ans: Watches

13. 5.
Which family of computer networking technologies derives its name from the
supposed omnipresent, completely-passive medium for the propagation of
electromagnetic waves, the existence of which was famously disproved by the
Michelson Morley Experiment?

14. Ans: Ethernet

15. A 2015 paper in the Journal of personality and individual differences analyses one particular
personality test you can take online. The participants were then asked to take various standard tests
and results were compared.
X were higher than all the others in extraversion which is a trait that correlates well to the trait that X
is usually known for
Y were more agreeable than the average of all others
Z were higher than the average of others in need for cognition
W scored higher than the average of others in the Dark Triad; Narcissism, Machiavellianism and
Psychopathy
However, the test does intentionally screw with results to keep a ratio of 25% for each category.
What test?
5.
.

17. Ans: Pottermore’s Sorting Hat

18. 7. What is ‘this’?
This was created by a team of scientists at the University of Florida College of
Medicine, following a request from the university team’s football head coach
Ray Graves.
The researchers initially wanted to name it _____-___ which meant “helping the
team (read nickname of the team/mascot)” but decided that they wanted to
create a commercial product, not a scientifically-validated one and also they
couldn't use the suffix because the Food and Drug Administration prohibited it
and would classify it as something other than a cola or soft drink.
Identify ‘this’

19. Answer - Gatorade ([Florida] Gators + Aid)

20. 8. What was used to showcase it’s freight capacity?
● The Boeing 747’s cargo hauling version provides 31 percent of the world's freighter fleet
capability. The first 747 Freighter could easily carry 100 tons (90,000 kilograms) across
the Atlantic Ocean or across the United States.
● Lufthansa - the German airliner debuted their cargo service in 1972 and used the 747’s
freight version for its inaugural flight from Frankfurt to New York on April 19, 1972. In
order to showcase the flight’s cargo carrying capacity, Lufthansa loaded 72 nos of
‘something’, where each weighed about 780-800 kgs.
● This ‘something’ was recently announced to be halting production from next year. It has
been the subject of films and film cameos’ - most popular cameo being in Woody Allen’s
1973 ‘Sleeper’.

21. Answer - Volkswagen Beetles

22. One of the many theories for this pair of terms is that they refer to the ways the
animals attack their prey: X swipe downward with their paws while Y thrust
upwards with their horns.
Another popular theory is that phrase “X-skin jobber” had become a pejorative for
sellers, especially the disreputable ones who actively bet that prices will fall. Even
the author Daniel Defoe in 1726 wrote “Thus every dissembler, every false friend,
every secret cheat, every X-skin jobber, has a cloven foot,”
An entirely different theory, which discounts the whole X-skin jobber business,
says the terms come from a London institution, where the practitioners in the
institution would fill a board with bulletins during times of volatile activity, while in
times of lull the board would be bare.
What is X & Y or the pair of terms?
9.

23. Answer - X: Bears Y: Bulls

24. 10.
An fan-ad ad on Youtube for the iphone
replaces an element in scenes from a famous
20th century movie with the iphone.
This clever ad thus makes the iphone the
harbinger and benchmark of human
progress.
What element from which movie?

25. Ans: The Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey

26. 11.
One criticism often levelled at the restaurant industry is their inhumane
treatment of lobsters- specifically the fact that they are boiled alive.
One restaurant in Maine has come up with a solution to alleviate the lobsters’
pain in this process, and they assure customers that it will not affect them
since a further process of steaming to 420 degrees will obliterate any traces
of the material used, which breaks up at 392 degrees.
What is their solution?

27. Ans: 420 BLAZE IT!!

28. 12.Prelims:
Yusaku Maezawa is a japanese fashion and music billionaire entrepreneur.
Recently Mr Maezawa was in the news for a purchase which would have cost
him around 10 to a 100 million dollars according to the New York Times.
Mr. Maezawa shall employ the services of an organisation whose founder has
been in the news for all the wrong reasons this year, and shall specifically
employ the services of the organisation’s product known as BFR, although
there is some ambiguity in what exactly the F stands for.
What did Mr. Maezawa Purchase?(generic answer gets half point. Specific
answer gets full points)

29. Ans: SpaceX’s ticket to moon orbit aboard the Big
Falcon Rocket (does F really stand for Falcon?)
SpaceX or Space or SpaceX flight to space or variants fetch half a point
Rocket to Moon or Flight to Moon or SpaceX flight to moon fetches full points

30. 13. Prelims
A B.E.D is informal measurement of ionizing radiation exposure.
The origin of the name is from the fact that these contain Potassium-40 which
decays by either 𝛃- or electron capture. What commonplace object is the origin
of this unit? OR What does B stand for?

31. Ans: Banana Equivalent Dose

32. Q14- Which company came up with this billboards all
across London and for what?

33. Ans: Spotify; brexit

34. 15. Prelims
Shown in the next two slides are two different paintings by American artist
Thomas Eakins titled “The Gross Clinic” and “The Agnew Clinic” set in 1875 and
1889 respectively.
Comparing the two paintings allows you to observe the introduction of
something in medical practice in the intervening years, something nowadays
almost universally associated with doctors, although House M.D. has been
known to shun this.
What?

37. Ans: The White Coat

38. 16. Prelims:
Which simple and powerful programming language was originally developed
under the codename Mocha?

39. Ans: Java

40. 17.
Proposed by Henry Moseley and discovered at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in 1945, which element was named after a figure associated with
the quest for scientific knowledge, and the risk of overreaching or unintended
consequences so to symbolize both the daring and the possible misuse of
mankind's intellect?

41. Ans: Promethium

42. 18.Litsoc Prelims
This American company is the largest annual receiver of US taxpayers money -
close to $35.2 Billion which is higher than many federal agencies like NASA
($20.7 Billion), FBI($8.7 Billion), CIA($14.7 Billion) etc
It is often considered to have one of USA’s most robust lobbying tactics and
has “perfected the strategy of spreading jobs on it’s manufacturing programs
in key states and congressional districts"
Name this company

43. Answer - Lockheed Martin

44. 19.Which company came up with this ad? Hint: heavily
dependent on tourism and it’s name is inspired from a biblical
character.

45. Answer - Samsonite

46. 20.Prelims
In 2004, when this particular character was added to the Morse code, it
became the first character to be added since World War I.
This addition was necessitated because Ray Tomlinson introduced this symbol
circa 1971 to allow messages to be sent outside a given system.
Which symbol?(No need to name it. Just write it down)

47. Ans: @

48. 21.
As a result of appearing in the film Good Will
Hunting as an extra, Daniel Kleitman, a
professor of applied mathematics at MIT holds
the record (at 3) for something which is a
combination of two different, but related,
concepts.
What record does he hold?

49. Ans: lowest Erdos-Bacon number.

50. 22.
Famous for giving rise to the Monty
Python foot(as well as a depiction of
Athlete’s foot), this is “Venus,Cupid,Folly
and Time” by Agnolo Bronzino.
Why is the guy on the left screaming in
pain, perhaps a result of excessive
Veneration?

51. Ans: Syphilis

52. 23.
This european businessman decided to name his store after a 1964 British-
Greek film starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates. However he found that a
pub down the street had the same name. Since the molds for the sign had
already been made, he decided to use the same molds and came up with
another name, one that we all know today.
Name the Businessman and the company?

53. Ans: Amancio Ortega; Zara

54. 24.Litsoc Prelims Biz
X is a popular open source distributed storage and big
data analysis utilities software. Y is a “work in progress”
open source distributed linAL framework many of which is
implemented using X. For this reason Y gets its name from
the trainer of the animal used in the logo of X. ID X and Y

55. Answer
X - Hadoop
Y - Mahout (trainer of an elephant)

56. 25.
The origin of this dates back to May 2007 on 4chan. Due to heavy traffic, a
trailer of Grand Theft Auto IV was not available. This led to a link claiming to
be a mirror propping up.
This in turn traces its origin to a 2004 prank on 4chan where 4chan’s director
Chris Poole aka moot replaced instances of “egg” with “duck”.
The 2007 phenomenon became so popular that the associated person wrote
about Chris Poole in 2009’s Time 100 issue.
What is this, which most recently made an appearance in Disney’s final trailer
for “Ralph breaks the internet”?

57. Answer video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ