2. 1.
X is a famous educational institute, which is regarded as one of the
best institute for a particular subject. A very famous scientist J is
long associated with it and was one of the founding members of the
institute. Sanjeev Dhurandar, a scientist who played a major role in
discovery of gravitational waves is also associated with this
institute. Arvind Gupta, another famous science enthusiast
conducted many activities when he worked in this institute. Known
for its innovative campus, X has a fractal garden, a Foucault
pendulum and statues of Galileo, Einstein, Aryabhata, and Newton.
ID X.
4. 2. Compatibility Issues
Karl Landsteiner was an Austrian physician and biologist. In 1930,
he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his
ground-breaking achievements in the field of medicine.
Before his findings, ________ was regarded as a risky and dubious
procedure, largely shunned by the medical establishment. As a
result of his achievements, countless lives have been saved. His
birthday, June 14th was chosen as World Blood Donor Day.
What was this achievement?
6. 3. Surely You’re Joking
The famous American physicist F (1918-1988) is famous for his
work in quantum mechanics. He was also a part of the Manhattan
project. He played a major role in the investigation of the space
shuttle, Challenger disaster of 1986.
The diagrams of the following type, usually
involving subatomic particles instead of
rocks, are named “F diagrams".
Sheldon from TBBT plays the bongos
because F did!
Who is F?
8. 4*. Emma Stone’d
Originally intended as a cough drop which would be effective
and safe for child consumption, this cough syrup was patented
by Bayer A.G. This was marketed as a non-addictive
replacement for morphine but, lo and behold – it turned out to
be addictive and quite dangerous.
This drug has been the fancy of many movies and even today
remains a fairly popular item.
Name the drug.
10. 5. Are we more than the sum of our parts?
Tool is one of heavy metal's most eclectic and original bands,
and their best songs reflect their musical ingenuity.
Lateralus is one of their well known compositions and a
certain segment of this song will be played soon, along with
the lyrics and the syllable count.
What is so special about how this song is sung?
11. The syllables in each line are sung as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1,
1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 8, 5, 3.
Ascending and descending Fibonacci sequences. Tool incorporated the
Fibonacci sequence and the Golden ratio into many parts of this song,
and the video is one of the clear examples of the same.
12. 6. Come at me, bro!
12th Nov 2014, marks the day when a human-made space probe
landed on a _____ for the first time. The webcomic by xkcd below
celebrates this
historic event.
Fill in the blank.
15. 7. KarDashian
People are very secretive about this recipe. The basic idea is to take
a solid and convert it into a HUUGE amount of gas to fill a common
safety device.
An old recipe was to take a container filled with NaN3 and add
spoons of KNO3 and SiO2 to it. This recipe was inherited from
military and rocket propellants industry. Heat the mixture using a
12V battery. A very heated chemical reaction will start releasing N2.
This will make your safety device ready in less than 1/25th of a
second.
Name the safety device.
19. 9. You will never guess this!
DHMO is perhaps the single most
prevalent of all chemicals that can be
dangerous to human life:
DHMO:
■ is also known as hydric acid, and
is the major component of acid
rain.
■ contributes to the Greenhouse
Effect.
■ contributes to the erosion of our
natural landscape
■ accelerates corrosion and rusting
of many metals
■ It is used in certain torture
techniques
■ has been found in excised
tumours of terminal cancer
patients.
■ Used as an industrial solvent
and coolant.
■ Found in nuclear power plants.
■ Is a fire retardant.
■ Used in the distribution of
pesticides. Even after washing,
produce remains contaminated
by this chemical.
■ as an additive in certain junk
foods and other food products.
What is this dangerous chemical we
are talking about?
21. 10. Enigmatic
X was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when "gross
indecency" was still criminal in the UK. He accepted chemical
castration treatment, as an alternative to prison. X died in 1954, 16
days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest
determined his death as suicide.
In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the
British government for "the appalling way he was treated". Queen
Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. The X law is
now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that
pardons men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation
that outlawed homosexual acts.
Who is X?
23. 11. This is very in-fashion
The following pictures depict changes in some dog breeds over the
last couple of centuries. Aside from the obvious visual differences,
the emergence of health defects has been found - particularly in
dogs from purebred lineages. This is because of a certain way of
breeding, which has also been used in cows and plants to generate
offspring of certain desired characteristics.
What is this type of breeding called?
26. 12. Twice as nice
We all love pies. But do we love the mathematical π (Pi)? There now
exists a faction that wants π to be removed as a mathematical
symbol, replacing it with another symbol τ (Tau), that is supposedly
more intuitive than π is. In fact, like π day is celebrated on March
14th, the followers of Tau also celebrate τ day.
When is τ day celebrated?
28. 13. Don’t play with _____
When John Walker used a stick to stir a pot containing a chemical
mixture, part of the mixture stuck to the end of the stick. This
combination had a useful property which resulted in the invention
of X. In the later versions of X, Sb2S5 had been replaced by Y. The
modern variants are safer because white Y has been replaced by
red Y.
What are X and Y?
32. 15. Transplant
The tree of 40 Fruits is an ongoing series of hybridized
fruit trees by contemporary artist Sam Van Aken. The
40 fruit-bearing tree includes only "stone fruits" which
all share very similar genetics. The tree looks like any
other fruit tree for most of the year until spring, when it
pops into pink, white and crimson blooms. In summer,
the tree bursts with ripened fruit, including peaches,
plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries and
almonds. These are engineered using a fairly common
gardening technique involving joining certain parts of a
plant so that they grow together.
What is this technique?
34. 16. Capture the Flag
Since the early days of the Internet, users have wanted to make text illegible to
computers. The first such people could be hackers, posting about sensitive
topics to online forums they thought were being automatically monitored for
keywords. To circumvent such filters, they would replace a word with look-alike
characters. This lead to the conception of _________, a type of challenge-
response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is
human. This user identification procedure has received many criticisms,
especially from disabled people, but also from other people who feel that their
everyday work is slowed down by this test. It takes the average person
approximately 10 seconds to solve a typical ________.
Fill in the blanks.
(Both blanks are the same.)
36. 17. Friend J Priest
B was an Indian nuclear physicist, who died when Air India Flight
101 crashed near Mont Blanc on 24 January 1966.
Miscommunication between the Geneva Airport and the pilot about
the aircraft position near the mountain is the official reason of the
crash…but very soon after, a team of journalists led by René
Desmaison climbed secretly near the wreck and declared to have
found debris of another aircraft than the Boeing 707. Many possible
theories have been advanced for the air crash, including a
conspiracy theory in which the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is
involved in order to paralyze India's nuclear program.
ID B.
42. 19. Big L
This picture shows places which are related to a ground-breaking discovery made last year in
the field of Astrophysics. What are we talking about?
44. 20. Problem, Queen of Hearts?
A mythical creature H had poisonous breath and blood so virulent
that even its scent was deadly. Over the generations, various
sources have given different versions of a particular characteristic
of this creature. Later versions gave this creature a new ability R
which made it a more formidable foe.
A paradoxographer attempted to rationalize this myth by stating
that this was an ordinary creature accompanied by its offspring so
that it appealed to Christian apologists. A creature (not mythical) is
now extensively being studied by scientists for the ability R.
What are H and R?
