| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| An epoch named after these objects began about 10 to the negative 12 seconds after the Big Bang. A model of these objects was developed by George Zweig, who called them "aces." Evidence for the existence of these particles was first observed at SLAC using deep inelastic scattering. Murray Gell-Mann [[“gel”-mahn]] coined the name of these particles, which are held together by gluons. For the point, name these elementary particles that make up protons and whose six flavors include top, up, and charm. | quark (accept quark epoch; accept quark model; accept top quark; accept up quark; accept charm quark; prompt on "ace") |
| This man and a German co-name a theorem that states the structure of a star only depends on its mass and chemical composition. Charlotte Moore Sitterly performed computations for this Princeton professor, who convinced Cecilia Payne to omit a groundbreaking discovery from her thesis. A representation co-created by this American includes the Henyey [[HEN-yee]] track. This man is the alphabetically second namesake of a diagram in which the absolute magnitude of stars is plotted against their temperature. For the point, identify this astronomer who co-names a diagram with Ejnar Hertzsprung [["EYE- nar "HURT-sprung"]]. | Henry Norris Russell (accept Vogt–Russell theorem; accept Hertzsprung– Russell diagram) |
| This pathogen was determined to not be a bacteria when Martinus Beijerinck crystallized its host and ran it through a Chamberland filter. Rosalind Franklin build a model of this pathogen for the 1958 World’s Fair, positing that it was hollow and single- stranded. Wendell Meredith Stanley earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the crystallization of this pathogen. This virus is named for the mottled discoloration that it causes on its namesake plant's leaves. For the point, name this first virus to be discovered, which infects a cash crop smoked for its nicotine. | tobacco mosaic virus (or TMV) |
| Mary Frances Winston Newson was the first person to translate these things into English. German historian Rüdiger Thiele rediscovered a lost one of these things concerning proof theory. The formulator of these things stated that "in mathematics, there is no ignorabimus." Dehn invariants were used to solve the third of these problems about two polyhedra of equal volume. The validity of the continuum hypothesis was the first of these problems proposed at a mathematical conference in 1900. For the point, name this set of 23 problems named for a German mathematician. | Hilbert's problems |
| This man was criticized by Antoni Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks by claimiing his ideas would prompt revolutionary ideas in industrial workers. This man is remembered for combining his work with Frank Gilbreth's motion study methods to develop the stopwatch time study. One of this man's first ideas to improve industrial engineering caused him to get dismissed from the Bethlehem Steel Company. For the point, name this mechanical engineer regarded as the father of scientific management. | Frederick Winslow Taylor |
| Both of this man's parents were part of the team that designed the Ferranti Mark 1, the first commercially available general-purpose computer. This scientist created a prototype system called ENQUIRE that displayed hypertext information on pages called "cards." While working at CERN in 1989, this man used a NeXT computer to design the first ever server that could accept requests using the HTTP protocol, which was built to connect over the Internet. For the point, name this British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web. | Tim Berners-Lee (accept TimBL) |
| Despite his conversion to Christianity, this scientist was targeted by anti-semitic campaigns as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. This scientist’s law states that the time to receive a fatal dose of poison gas was directly proportional to the concentration of the gas. This scientist proposed using heavier-than-air chlorine at the Second Battle of Ypres [[EEP-ruh]], earning him the infamous title "the father of chemical warfare." For the point, name this German chemist who, with Carl Bosch, invented the first industrial process for synthesizing ammonia. | Fritz Haber |
| Trouton and Noble carried out a follow-up to this experiment which used a self- orienting parallel-plate capacitor. The Kennedy-Thorndike setup was a modification of this experiment, which fixed a half-silvered mirror serving as a beam splitter atop a stone slab floating in a pool of mercury. This experiment was performed at Case Western Reserve University by two scientists who used an interferometer to measure the speed of light in two perpendicular directions. For the point, name this experiment that disproved the existence of luminiferous ether. | Michelson-Morley experiment |
| The Banburismus technique developed at this location lends its name to a logarithmic unit for information entropy. The "wicked men" worked at this location's Station X, where Gordon Welchman devised the Diagonal Board to optimize its bombe machines. The National Museum of Computing is housed in this facility's Block H, which is where the first Colossus computers were built and operated. An operation codenamed "Ultra" was based at the Government Code and Cipher School in, for the point, what estate where Alan Turing led British efforts to break the Enigma code? | Bletchley Park |
| Clarence Thomas, who was a lawyer for this company in the late 1970s, did not recuse himself from a 2013 case in which it sued Vernon Hugh Bowman for patent infringement. This company names a rhodium-based method of making acetic [[uh-SEE- tik]] acid that is similar to the Cativa [[kah-TEE-vah]] process. This company, founded by John F. Queeny to manufacture saccharin, was acquired in 2018 by Bayer. Many lawsuits filed against this company claimed that its glyphosate-based [[GLYE-foh-sayt-“based”]] herbicide caused cancer. For the point, name this chemical company that made the weed killer Roundup. | Monsanto Company (accept Bowman v. Monsanto Co.; accept Monsanto process) |
| This man is the attributed author of lost books like the Catasterismi, a compendium of Hellenistic myths about the constellations, as well as the Geographika. This mathematician constructed a device to draw a line called the mesolabio, which he utilized to solve the Delian problem. While chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria, this mathematician developed a primality test known as his namesake sieve. For the point, name this Greek polymath who was the first person known to calculate the circumference of the globe. | Eratosthenes of Cyrene (accept Sieve of Eratosthenes) |
| A scientist with this surname discovered the largest elephant tooth observed in Britain at the time while working in a gravel pit in Swanscombe [[SWONZ-kuhm]]. Another discovery made by a person with this surname was originally placed into a special genus that roughly translates to "eastern man" before being classified in the Paranthropus genus. That specimen was called the "Nutcracker Man." For the point, give this last name shared by Mary and Louis, a pair of British paleoanthropologists who recovered stone tools made from early hominins at Olduvai Gorge. | Leakey (accept Mary Douglas Leakey; accept Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey) |
| This scientist’s most famous experiment used a gravity-driven weight to spin a paddle, heating a tub of water. In the paper "The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat," this scientist described how motion and heat are interchangeable, inspiring Helmholtz's conservation of energy. This scientist’s first law describes the heating of a conductor through current and resistance. With William Thomson, this scientist names the effect of a nonideal gas cooling when forced through a valve. For the point, name this physicist, the namesake of the SI unit for energy. | James Prescott Joule |
| Gore-Tex fabric is made by rapidly stretching this material, which names a thread seal tape used by many plumbers. The possibly carcinogenic compound PFOA [[“P-F-O-A”]] is burned off during the production of this material, which is the namesake of a "flu" that is also called polymer fume fever. DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett accidentally discovered this polymer, which is made of C2F4 monomers and is known for having a high melting point and slippery surface. For the point, name this synthetic polymer often used to coat non-stick cookware. | Teflon (or polytetrafluoroethylene; or PTFE; accept Teflon tape; accept polytetrafluoroethylene tape; accept PTFE tape; accept Teflon flu; accept polytetrafluoroethylene flu; accept PTFE flu) |
| At this university, the first campus-wide WiFi network was invented in 1993 by Professor Alex Hills. With a public university and Westinghouse Electric Company, this school established a Supercomputing Center called PSC. Alumni of this private university include David Tepper and Stephanie Kwolek, the latter of whom invented Kevlar. This school's Mobot races have been run by its School of Computer Science. For the point, name this Pittsburgh university that shares its name with two Progressive Era philanthropists. | Carnegie Mellon University (accept CMU) |
| This man’s measurements confirmed the hypothesis that radiation emitted by the Crab Nebula was due to synchrotron radiation. This scientist discovered the galactic halo around the Milky Way, whose local rotational properties are also described by his namesake constants. A location named for this man is the probable source of long-period comets. For the point, name this astronomer whose namesake "cloud" lies at the edge of the solar system. | Jan Hendrik Oort |
| Marcus Lipton suggested that this event caused 6,000 deaths and led to 25,000 people claiming sickness benefits in one city. Previous events called "pea-soupers" may have prepared some people for this 1952 event, which caused all above-ground modes of transportation in its city to cease. This disastrous event prompted an investigation by the British Parliament, which resulted in legislation regulating the height of chimneys and establishing smoke control areas. The Clean Air Act of 1956 was passed after, for the point, what massive air pollution event in London? | Great Smog of London (prompt on descriptive answers) |
| This scientist's namesake "tendon organ" is a sensory receptor that lies at the muscle-tendon interface. This scientist created the "black reaction," a staining method that visualizes neural tissue using potassium dichromate and silver nitrate. This man won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with his rival Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who developed the "neuron doctrine." The cis face of a structure discovered by this scientist receives vesicles from the endoplasmic reticulum. For the point, name this Italian scientist who names a cellular "apparatus" that packages proteins. | Camillo Golgi (accept Golgi apparatus; accept Golgicomplex; accept Golgi body; accept Golgi stain; accept Golgi tendon organ) |
| For his work on carotenoids, Richard Kuhn was awarded this prize in 1938 but was forced to reject it by a Nazi government decree. Frederick Sanger is the only person to have won this award twice. In 2020, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna shared this award for their development of the CRISPR gene-editing technology, marking the first time it was awarded to two women in the same year. Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff was the first person to win, for the point, what science prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Society of Sciences? | Nobel Prize in Chemistry (prompt on "Nobel Prize" alone) |
| José Pereira Lages was killed when a switchgear of this device fell on him. This device underwent a quench after it launched, damaging the niobium-titanium superconducting magnets that create its 8-tesla fields. This device contains the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which observed evidence of a particle with a mass of 126 GeV [[giga- electron-volts]]. On November 30, 2009, this device achieved 1.18 TeV [[tera-electron- volts]] per beam, making it the world's highest-energy particle accelerator. For the point, name this device at CERN built to detect the Higgs boson. | Large Hadron Collider (accept LHC; prompt on "CERN") |
| The safety of these things was tested in the Francis Field Trial, which was one of the largest clinical trials ever conducted. The distribution of contaminated forms of these things by Cutter Industries in 1955 led to the resignation of the first U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. The March of Dimes Foundation provided funding for one of these things but opposed another oral form of them created by Albert Sabin that contained live attenuated virus. For the point, name this inoculation created by Jonas Salk which protects against a paralysis-causing infection. | polio vaccines (or poliomyelitis vaccines; prompt on "vaccines") |
| In response to criticism from a New York Times reporter, this man once said, "Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace." This man was influenced by Europeans such as Hermann Oberth in his best-known ventures. A measure now known as internal efficiency was central to experiments by this man that accelerated exhaust velocity beyond 2,130 meters per second. This man used propellants that aimed to improve upon a solid-fueled predecessor. For the point, name this pioneer in liquid rocketry. | Robert Hutchings Goddard |
| Clifford Kwan-Gett created an early form of this device that relied on the Frank- Starling Law to control its fluid flow. The voice of the character Tigger, Paul Winchell, co- created the first mechanical one of these devices with Dr. Henry Heimlich, who invented the Heimlich maneuver. The first of these devices to be permanently implanted was the Jarvik- 7, whose recipient lived for 112 days until his death from "circulatory collapse." For the point, name these mechanical devices meant to replace an organ that no longer pumps blood. | artificial heart (or fake heart; prompt on "heart" or "heart implant"; do not accept or prompt on "pacemaker") |
| An early geometric text by an author from this country takes its name from the word for string and contains approximate constructions of circles from rectangles. A theorem named for a mathematician from this country states that if a cyclical quadrilateral is orthodiagonal, then the perpendicular to a side from the point of intersection of the diagonals must bisect the opposite side. Manava was an early mathematician from this country who wrote about geometry in the Śulba Sūtras. For the point, name this country, whose geometric contributions were advanced by Brahmagupta. | Republic of India (accept Bharat Ganrajya) |
| The Tang Dynasty treatise Jigu Suanjing systematically solved 25 of these functions. Scipione del Ferro found solutions to a class of these functions but did not generalize them due to not using negative numbers. Niccolò Tartaglia tried to keep his formula for solving these functions secret, though another mathematician published it anyway. That man, Gerolamo Cardano, names that formula for solving these functions. For the point, name these polynomials which are a degree above quadratics. | cubic equations (or cubic polynomials; or third-degree polynomials; prompt on "polynomials") |
| Building on Joe Woodland’s circular design, George Laurer created the first standardized type of this technology. Colored metal slats were used in a predecessor to this technology known as KarTrak. The most commonly used version of this technology is the Universal Product Code, which was first used on a pack of Juicy Fruit gum purchased at Marsh's Supermarket in 1974. Matrix examples of this technology include QR codes. For the point, name this printed technology that is scanned at grocery store checkouts. | barcode (accept UPC or Universal Product Code before mention) |
| This island's Kuk Swamp is an important archeological site that was the site of ancient drainage systems to harvest the Eumusa cultivar. This island has been added as a "center of origin" to the original list developed by Nikolai Vavilov. Bananas, taro, and sugarcane were early domesticated crops grown on this island, from which many "canoe plants" diffused to the rest of Oceania. For the point, name this island in Melanesia where agriculture was developed by Papuan people. | New Guinea (accept Papua until mentioned; accept Niugini or Irian; do NOT accept "Papua New Guinea") |
| This man was introduced to one field of science by Archibald Spencer, who gave lectures in Maryland. This man stated "I am ashamed to have been guilty of so notorious a blunder" after being shocked by Leyden jars. This man, the first to label positive and negative charges, named a phenomenon of electric bath treatment. This contributor to early electrical engineering proposed an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm. For the point, name this scientist better known as a Founding Father. | Benjamin Franklin |
| In this state, William M. Bass established a forensic facility nicknamed "The Body Farm." Meters were monitored by the Calutron Girls at this state’s Y‑12 National Security Complex. Black nuclear chemist Clarice Phelps helped confirm the 2009 discovery of a halogen named for this state. A facility in a "secret city" in this state is where plutonium was produced and uranium was enriched for the Manhattan Project. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is in, for the point, what southern state, the namesake of the element with atomic number 117 and chemical symbol Ts? | Tennessee (accept Tennessine) |
| Though not produced commercially, an early version of these devices was pioneered by John W. Starr. Lewis Latimer, who also invented the evaporative air conditioner, created a more efficient process for manufacturing these devices. Alessandro Cruto and Heinrich Göbel produced versions of these devices, while Siemens proposed a tantalum design for them in 1902. Designs for these devices used a vacuum to protect the filament from oxidation. For the point, name these devices which include an incandescent variety. | lightbulbs (accept incandescent lightbulbs; accept lamps or light globes) |
| Early developments to these things by Joshua Shaw and Casimir Lefaucheux led to their widespread trade. Christopher Spencer successfully demonstrated using one of these things on the White House lawn to Abraham Lincoln. During Bleeding Kansas, these things were known as Beecher’s Bibles. Eli Whitney's interchangeable parts made the production of these things more efficient. At the Great Exhibition, these weapons were showcased by Samuel Colt. For the point, name these weapons protected by the Second Amendment. | guns (accept firearms; accept rifles; accept revolvers; accept muskets) |