The document provides information about various science-related topics in the form of a quiz with multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. Some of the questions are about African clawed frogs, bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans, the village of Ytterby that elements are named after, lithium citrate, racemic acid, Benjamin Franklin's involvement in investigating animal magnetism, and penicillin being used to treat Winston Churchill.

1. Science Quiz
Mains
(Utkansh’15)
QM : Sujit J Patil

2. Round 1
Infinite Bounce

3. • The African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) is a species of African
aquatic frog which are commonly found in south-eastern portion
of Sub-Saharan Africa.
• It is widely used for research purposes owing to its large oocytes.
In fact, the first vertebrate ever to be cloned was an African
clawed frog.
• In 1930, a scientist based in CapeTown, South Africa, named
Lancelot Hogben while working on these frogs developed the
Hogben test.This test was one of the first scientifically proven
test for detection of _______. But the development of new testing
methods in the 1960s made the Hogben test obsolete.
• Fill the blank.
1)

4. • Pregnancy

5. • Deinococcus radiodurans is an extremophilic bacterium, one of the
most radiation-resistant organisms known. It can survive cold,
dehydration, vacuum, and acid and has been listed as the world's
most radiation-resistant lifeform inThe Guinness Book OfWorld
Records.
• Due to its resistance(or toughness), it has been given a special
nickname after a fictional hero.
• Three films have been released on this fictional hero : in 1982,
1984 and 2011.The 1982 film had Arnold Schwarzenegger in the
lead role.
• What is the nickname?
2)

6. • Conan the Bacterium

7. • This is a small
village situated in
Sweden. Four
elements
discovered here are
named after this
town : Atomic
number – 39,65,68
and 70.
• Name this village.
3)

8. • Ytterby
– 39 :Yttrium
– 65 :Terbium
– 68 : Erbium
– 70 :Ytterbium

9. • Lithium citrate is a chemical compound of lithium and citrate
that is used as a mood stabilizer in psychiatric treatment of
manic states and bipolar disorder.
• The soft drink ______ was originally named “Bib-Label
Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda” when it was formulated in
1929 because it contained lithium citrate.
• The beverage was a patent medicine marketed as a cure for
hangover. Lithium citrate was removed from the soft drink in
1948.
• Which soft drink is this ?
4)

10. • 7 Up

11. • In Latin a bunch of grapes was called _______. In 1822 Kestner
isolated an acid from grapes, and Gay-Lussac called it X acid. It
was in all respects chemically identical to tartaric acid, except that
it did not rotate polarised light, a phenomenon described by Jean-
Baptiste Biot, who postulated molecular asymmetry.
• Later Louis Pasteur crystallised it and saw in his microscope that
it contained two types of crystal, left handed and right handed;
when he physically teased them apart he found that a solution of
one behaved like ordinary tartaric acid, while a solution of the
other rotated light in the opposite direction. X acid, being a
mixture of the two, was neutral to polarised light.
• What is X ?
5)

12. • Racemic acid

13. • Animal magnetism was the name given by the German doctor
Franz Mesmer to what he believed to be an invisible natural force,
(a magnetic fluid) present in animals. He believed that the force
could have physical effects, including healing.
• In 1784, King Louis XVI appointed five commissioners from the
Royal Academy of Sciences to investigate animal magnetism.
These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and
the American ambassador ____________, who ultimately
concluded that there was no such magnetic fluid.
• Fill the blank.
6)

14. • Benjamin Franklin

15. • Churchill fell ill in Carthage inTunisia in 1943.The DailyTelegraph
and the Morning Post on 21 December 1943 wrote that he had
been saved by ________. Instead he was saved by the new
sulphonamide drug, Sulphapyridine, known at the time under the
research code M&B 693. In a subsequent radio broadcast,
Churchill referred to the new drug as “This admirable M&B”.
• It is highly probable that the correct information about the
sulphonamide did not reach the newspapers because, since the
original sulphonamide antibacterial, Prontosil, had been
discovered by the German laboratory Bayer, and as Britain was at
war with Germany at the time, it was thought better to raise
British morale by associating Churchill's cure with the British
discovery, _______.
7)

16. • Penicillin

17. • trans-4,5-Epoxy-(E)-2-decenal is an oxygenated
α,β-unsaturated aldehyde found in mammalian
blood. It is permitted as a food flavouring in the EU.
• What important role does it have for the predators,
who need to find and locate their prey ?
8)

18. • It gives the blood its characteristic smell, which
helps the predators to find prey

19. • Sir Arthur Eddington was the most distinguished British astrophysicist in
the 1930s.
• X was a young physicist who had a theory explaining what happens to stars
when their nuclear fuel runs out. His calculations showed that if a star was
large enough it literally collapsed into ‘nothing’ of huge mass and
gravitational pull, or simply, a black hole.
• Eddington vehemently disagreed with X and ridiculed him at a meeting at
the RoyalAstronomical Society. He said X's ideas were "stellar buffoonery".
Eddington thought stars ended their lives as lumps of metal called white
dwarves.
• The result of the dispute was that the science of astronomy was put on
hold for thirty years. X was hurt and left Cambridge University for the
United States . He also changed his topic of research and it was three
decades before his theory was proved right. Eddington died in 1944 and
never retracted his attack on X. Identify X.
9)

20. • S. Chandrasekhar

21. • X solution is a mixture of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and hydrogen
peroxide (H2O2), used to clean organic residues off substrates.
Because the mixture is a strong oxidizing agent, it will remove
most organic matter from a sample.
• It was named so because large quantities of organic residues
immersed in it are dehydrated so violently that the process
resembles a X feeding frenzy.
• The second and more definitive rationale for the name, however,
is the ability of it to "eat anything," including in particular
elemental carbon in the form of soot or char.
• Identify X.
10)

22. • Piranha solution

23. Round 2
Differential Scoring

24. • In 1957, a soil sample from a pine forest on the French Riviera
was brought for analysis to the Lepetit Pharmaceuticals
research lab in Milan, Italy.There, a research group headed
by Prof. Piero Sensi and Dr. MariaTeresaTimbal discovered a
new bacterium.
• This new species appeared immediately of great scientific
interest since it was producing a new class of molecules with
antibiotic activity. Because Sensi,Timbal and the researchers
were particularly fond of this 1955 French movie, they
decided to call these compounds “_________”. Fill the blank.
1)
Image :

26. • Rifamycins

27. • X is a potent poison extracted from Castor beans. It takes its
name from the scientific name of the castor plant.
• X has been used on several occasions as a tool for terrorism
and assassinations. For example, on May 29, 2013 two
anonymous letters sent to NewYork City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg contained traces of it. A letter was also alleged to
have been sent to American President Barack Obama at the
same time.
• Identify X, which acts by inhibiting ribosomes and hence
protein synthesis ?
2)

28. • Ricin

29. • In Greece, X was known by the name chalkos.
Aphrodite andVenus represented X in mythology and
alchemy, because of its lustrous beauty, its ancient use
in producing mirrors, and its association with the
island,Y which was sacred to the goddess.
• Due to its use in mirrors, its alchemy symbol also looks
like a mirror.
• X derives its name fromY. Identify X andY.
3)

30. • X – Copper
• Y – Cyprus

31. • The ulnar nerve is a nerve that runs from the neck all the way
to the hand, where it innervates several muscles in the hand
and forearm and ends in two branches that innervate the
pinkie and half of the ring finger.
• It has a two-word nickname. Regarding the origin of this
nickname, there are two sides. One side says that it's an
anatomical pun, because the nerve runs along the humerus,
which sounds like "humorous." The other side claims that the
nerve got its nickname because of the funny (as in odd)
feeling one experiences after hitting it.
• What’s the nickname, which also forms a part of a commonly
used phrase ?
4)

32. • Funny bone (to tickle someone's funny
bone)

33. • This is a sweetly scented, highly poisonous woodland
flowering plant. It is a symbol of humility in religious
painting. It is considered the sign of Christ's second coming.
• According to a 2003 research, its odor, specifically the ligand
bourgeonal, attracts mammal sperm. But in 2012, a study
demonstrated instead that at high concentrations,
bourgeonal imitated the role of progesterone in stimulating
sperm to swim (chemotaxis), a process unrelated to odor
reception.
• It can be seen here as well :
5)
Image :

34. Kate Middleton with it
Walter White staring at it

35. • Lily of theValley/Mary's tears

36. • 2,147,483,647 was the largest known prime number
until 1867.The primality of this number was proven
by Leonhard Euler.
• Connect this number to “Gangnam Style” and the
“Year 2038 problem/Unix Millennium Bug”.
6)

37. • It’s the highest value possible in 32-bit
systems
– When Gangnam Style reached this many
views,YouTube had to upgrade their
technology
– The furthest time that a signed 32-bit integer
can represent the Unix time format is 03:14:07
UTC onTuesday, 19 January 2038
(2,147,483,647 seconds after 1 January 1970).

38. Way back in 1864, German chemist Adolph von Baeyer combined malic
acid isolated from apples with urea from urine to make ________.
Claims of origin of its name :
• Its origin lies in the Latin barba, for “beard,” since at the time chemists
would supposedly shake their beards over a solution that refused to
crystallize. Bits of dandruff or perhaps crystals from previous experiments
acted as “seeds” around which crystals could form.
• Another theory is that a waitress named Barbara had provided the urine
sample that was used to isolate the required urea.
• The most reasonable story is that on the day von Baeyer first synthesized
it, he had visited a local tavern where soldiers were hoisting a few pints in
honor of St. Barbara, the patron saint of artillerists and miners.
7)

39. • Barbiturates

40. • The Four Great Inventions are inventions from ancient China that
are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance
and as symbols of ancient China's advanced science and
technology.
• Identify all.
8)
Hint : next slide

42. • Gunpowder
• Printing
• Paper making
• Compass

43. • X strung some freshly dissected frog legs on a brass wire that he attached
to the iron fence in front of his house.Then he waited for lightning to
strike. It didn’t. But something else did happen.The frog legs swayed back
and forth in the breeze, and every time they touched the iron fence they
twitched uncontrollably. He hypothesized that somehow, electricity was
stored in the frogs’ muscles and it could be released under certain
conditions. “Animal electricity,” he called it.
• Y, X’s countryman and a professor of physics at the University of Pavia
searched for an alternate explanation for the frog legs’ activity in the
thunderstorm and soon found it.The electricity had not come from the
frogs; it had come from the brass support and the iron fence.
• Identify X andY.
9)

44. • X - Galvani
• Y -Volta

45. • In January 1848, Horace Wells self-experimented with chloroform
for a period of four weeks. One day, delirious, Wells rushed out
into the street and threw sulfuric acid over the clothing of two
women. He was jailed. As the influence of the drug waned,Wells'
mind started to clear. In despair, he realized the horror of what he
had done.Wells requested the Guards to escort him to his house
to pick up his shaving kit, then committed suicide, slitting an
artery in his leg with a razor after inhaling an analgesic dose of
chloroform to blot out the pain.
• Which other chemical’s anesthetic properties did he discover ?
10)

46. • Nitrous Oxide, the laughing gas

47. Round 3
Google Doodles on
Scientists

48. 1)

49. • Robert Noyce

50. 2)

51. • Hans Christian Oersted

52. 3)

53. • Jan Evangelista Purkinje

54. 4)

55. • Léon Foucault

56. 5)

57. • JohnVenn

58. 6)

59. • Pierre De Fermat

60. Round 4
LongVisual Connect

61. 1)
50/-25
Sylvester H. Roper

62. 2)
45/-22.5
William Bullock

63. 3)
40/-20
MaxValier

64. 4)
35/-17.5
ValerianAbakovsky

65. 5)
30/-15
James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton

66. 6)
25/-12.5
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier

67. 7)
20/-10
Thomas Midgley, Jr.

68. 8)
15/-7.5
ThomasAndrews

69. 9)
10/-5
Franz Reichelt

70. 10) 5/0
Marie Curie

71. • Inventors/Designers killed by their own creation
1. Sylvester H. Roper : steam-powered bicycle
2. William Bullock : rotary printing press
3. MaxValier : liquid-fuelled rocket engines
4. Valerian Abakovsky : Aerowagon
5. James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton : Scottish Maiden
6. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier : Rozière balloon
7. Thomas Midgley, Jr. : an elaborate system of ropes and
pulleys to help others lift him from bed.
8. Thomas Andrews : Shipbuilder of Titanic
9. Franz Reichelt : the coat parachute
10. Marie Curie : Radium and Polonium

72. ThankYou