1 - Who sponsored the most widely adopted school computer in the UK in the early 1980's?

Acorn

Apple

International Business Machines

British Broadcasting Corporation

2 - What is one difference between RNA and DNA?

DNA has two strands while RNA contains three strands.

RNA uses uracil as a base instead of thymine.

In RNA, the pattern of nucleotides is in reverse order.

RNA is only found in cell walls or membranes.

3 - Of the following, who did NOT take part in the development of the first steam engines?

James Watt

Thomas Newcomen

Thomas Savery

James Hargreaves

4 - For research in what field did Paul C. Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield win the Nobel prize of Medicine in 2003?

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The study of AIDS

The genetic causes of degenerative brain diseases

The use of laser in open-heart surgery

5 - What does 'SAS' stand for (when related to computer hard disks)?

Serial Attached SCSI

Server Attached SATA

Serial Attached SATA

SCSI Attached SATA

6 - What is the quark combination in a proton?

uud

udd

usd

ssd

7 - The mammal pictured below has a number of nearly-unique characteristics for a mammal. Which of the following is NOT one of them?

It has venomous spurs It lay eggs It can detect the body electricity of its preys It is deaf from birth

8 - Which British Astronomer has a Lunar crater named after him?

Sir Bernard Lovell

Henry Brinton

Sir Fred Hoyle

Sir Patrick Moore

9 - We say a planet is in ________ when that planet is furthest away from the sun.

Perihelion

Aphelion

Apoapsis

Periapsis

10 - Truth and beauty were the names of two sorts of quarks, what were the other four?

up, down, left and right

strange, charm, up and down

top, bottom, left and right

love, faith, spirit and soul

11 - Of the following animals, which is the most closely related to humans from an evolutionary point of view?

Cuttlefish

Sea Anemones

Starfish

Ants

12 - What is the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter?

Eros

Ceres

Vesta

Pallas

13 - What is a Lagrange point?

An orbital spot where a small object will remain stationary with respect to two large gravitational objects

The vertical angle at which a spinning object will become unstable and fall over

A sharp-pointed fulcrum where the slope from the point is equal in all directions

The temperature for a liquid at which no amount of pressure will prevent boiling

14 - What is a perfect number?

A number such that the sum of its factors, excluding itself, is greater than itself

A number such that its only divisors are 1 and itself

A number such that the sum of its factors, excluding itself, equals itself

A number such that it cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers

15 - How far away from is the Earth from the Sun (on average) ?

1.5 x 10^8 km (9.32 x 10^7 miles)

1.3 x 10^7 km (8.08 x 10^6 miles)

1.8 x 10^10 km (1.12 x 10^10 miles)

1.2 x 10^7 km (7.46 x 10^6 miles)

16 - The pH scale measures...

The concentration of hydronium ions.

The inverse concentration of hydronium ions.

The level of molecular activity

The concentration of NH- ions

17 - According to the Nyquist-Shannon theory:

to double an amplifier's loudness, you must quadruple the power supplied

doubling the density of a medium halves the speed of sound through that medium

to capture a signal, the sample frequency must be at least double the signal frequency

any telephone or telegraph system based on wires requires at least two of them

18 - What potential source of danger to space travellers was discovered by this Scientist?

Micrometeorites between the Moon and Earth A torus of energetic charged particles trapped by the Earth's magnetic field Deep dust fields in some lunar maria The solar wind

19 - Which of the following is not a formula for energy?

(mv²)/2 (where m is mass, and v is speed)

hf (where h is Planck's constant, and f is frequency)

ma (where m is mass, and a is acceleration)

mc² (where m is mass, and c is the speed of light)

20 - What scientific phenomenon is often (mistakenly) thought as having been first reported by Columbus?

The inversion of the sense of gyration of water emptying from a hole as one crosses the equator

The difference between the geographic & magnetic North Poles

The existence of Aurora Borealis above the ocean

The increase in the sea's level near the equator, due to the increased centrifugal force

 

  

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