Answer to Question 1: (d) 10%.
Amazingly it is estimated that 90% of 'your' cells are not human at all. There
are, for instance, many million bacteria (E. coli and the like) in your large
intestine.
Answer to Question 2: (c) the water
level will stay the same.
Since ice is less dense than water it
floats and part emerges above the surface. Nevertheless its weight remains
unchanged and so when it melts it simply fills the space that it had displaced
when it was frozen. Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC)
is credited with discovering this principle i.e. that a body immersed in a
fluid is buoyed upward by a force equal in magnitude to the weight of the fluid
displaced by that body
Answer to Question 3: (d) out of thin
air.
Although the atmosphere only contains
about 0.03% carbon dioxide (CO2), this is the source of 95% or more of the
material, other than water, of which plants are made (about 45% carbon and 45%
oxygen). The alcohol that we drink is made entirely of carbon, oxygen and
hydrogen. Like other plant products this carbon and oxygen originally comes
from CO2 in the air, courtesy of green plants, sunlight and the process of
photosynthesis
Answer to Question 4: (b) a pendulum
clock will lose time.
As the pendulum reaches the top of
its swing, it is the force of gravity which pulls it back down. The moon is
much smaller than earth and its gravitational pull correspondingly less (one
sixth). Accordingly, the pendulum would move more slowly and the clock would
'lose' time.
Answer to Question 5: (a) hops are
used to make beer bitter.
Urticales, the "nettle
order" of flowering plants, includes two genera of the hemp family,
Humulus and Cannabis which have been economically important for many centuries.
Various parts of the hemp plant (Cannabis sativa) are used to make fibre and
marijuana. The flowers of Humulus lupulus are the hops used in brewing. Their
principal role is "bittering", i.e. balancing the sweet flavour
imparted by the malt, but hops also act as a preservative and were used for
this purpose before the advent of refrigeration.
Answer to Question 6: (b) one third of the world's
vegetation is produced in the seas and oceans.
The seas and oceans produce about one
third of the world's vegetation It has been calculated that 173, million,
million, million tonnes (173 gigatonnes) dry weight of vegetable matter are
produced each year of which about 42 gigatonnes come from the open oceans and
about 13 gigatonnes from coastal environments.
Answer to Question 7: Answer: (a) Yes, they might be
right.
It is suggested that our water originally arrived here (a few
billion years ago, as Earth was being formed as ice crystals from space,
deflected in our direction by the planets Neptune and Uranus.
Answer to Question 8: Answer: (c) less than
60%.
Until 1740, the strength of spirit
was determined by mixing it with gunpowder and igniting the mixture. If it
'blew" the spirit was "proved". Today, proof spirit is only 48%
alcohol by weight and 56% by volume
Answer to Question 9: Answer:(c) a
'toadstool' called Armarillaria bulbosa.
Like most 'toadstools' it has an
extensive underground portion or 'mycelium' which, in this case, covered 36
acres or more. The fact that it was one fungus rather than many was established
by DNA testing.
Answer to Question 10: 20 hexagons
The Soccerš football is made up of
twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons. So are "bucky balls", a form of
carbon discovered by Nobel prize winners, Curl, Kroto and Smalley. They called
it "buckminsterfullerene" in honour of the American architect R.
Buckminster Fuller, who designed a famous dome, for the 1967 montreal world
exhibition, which also had hexagonal surfaces joined in such a way that they
were interspersed with pentagonal (5-sided) surfaces. Given 20 hexagonal beer
mats, a fair amount of beer, some sticky tape, and a little help from your
friends you could make a passable model of a football or a bucky ball
Answer to Question 11: Right-handedness'
DNA ( the genetic blue print, Watson
and Crick's "double helix") is a right-handed or dextral helix; i.e.
it is like a spiral staircase which climbs to the right rather than the left.
Ordinary wood screws have a 'right-hand' thread. The hops used in brewing are
the flowers of Humulus lupulus, a climbing plant with stems which
twist to the right.
Answer to Question 12: Lucky.
There are many alcohols but the one that you would buy in a
pub or off-licence is ethyl alcohol (ethanol) and its chemical formula is CH3CH2OH. Cheers!
Answer to Question 13: (b) More.
The molecular 'weight' of CO2 is 44, that
of O2 is 32. On this basis, a bubble of O2 of equal
volume would weigh about 25% less than a bubble of CO2
Answer to Question 14:
(a) Agave
tequilana is used to make tequila (b) Oryza sativa to make sake
(c) Saccharum officinarum to make rum (d) and Hordeum
vulgare to make malt whisky. Being smart, you probably worked this out
from their Latin names even if you didn't know that Agave tequilana is a
'cactus', Oryza sativa is rice, Saccharum officinarum is sugar
cane and Hordeum vulgare is barley.
Answer to Question 15: (c)
stereochemistry
When Louis Pasteur looked at crystals
of a form of tartrate derived from wine, he became aware that they all looked
exactly alike, whereas crystals of what, until then, had been thought to be an
identical kind of tartrate (paratartrate) were a mixture of two types, some
asymmetric to the right, some asymmetric to the left. This became the basis of
a new science (stereochemistry) which recognises that some organic molecules,
differ from one another much as your right hand differs from your left.
Usually, only one of these forms is utilised by living organisms. Eventually
Pasteur went on to conclude that fermentation was a biological process carried
out by micro-organisms ("the germ theory"). In turn this led to many
of the observations and processes such as 'pasteurisation' for which he is so
justly famous.
Answer to Question 16; (a) about 15%
The laws of physics rule us all. They
tell us that the amount of energy used to move a body from a to b is the same
regardless of the time taken. However, if we run rapidly for half an hour we
get warmer than if we walk slowly. This heat is dissipated to the environment
and accounts for most of the 15%. Similarly, motor vehicles consume more fuel
if travelling fast. The belief that walking briskly uses more calories than
walking slowly arises from the fact that comparisons are often based on time
rather than distance. If you walk briskly for an hour you go further than if
you walk slowly for the same time.
The answers to the first fifteen questions,
together with the images of the original beer-mats, are available in PowerPoint
format from http://www.oxygraphics.co.uk/