Science Pub Quiz!

Round 1 in many a pub quiz would usually be a picture round, but since visuals aren’t super conducive to radio, Katie Haylor and Phil Sansom gave the players a series of clues to identify these famous scientists...

Katie - So climate; pollinators; animal communication; the way the body works; welcome everyone. We've got Ella, Sam, Hamish, and Eleanor. In terms of teams, we're going to put you against each other basically: we're going to have Ella and Sam, you're on team one; and then team two is Eleanor and Hamish. Phil is going to keep the scores. You ready Phil? You got your pen and paper?

Phil - I'm so ready!

Katie - Okay. Let's crack on with it then! Round one. Now this would usually be a picture round in many a pub quiz, but since visuals aren't super conducive to radio for obvious reasons, we're going to tell you about these people instead. So this is your 'Who Am I? Famous Scientists' round. Okay, you ready? Just to explain how the scoring's going to work: we'll give you three clues; if you can get the right answer after clue one, you get two points; if you get the answer after clue two, you get one point; and if you need all three, but you do get it right, you only get half a point. And if you get the answer wrong or you really don't know, we're going to throw it over to the other team. Does everybody understand?

Eleanor - Yeah.

Ella - Got ya.

Hamish - Yes.

Katie - Excellent. Right. Let's crack on with the first question! Ella and Sam, team one. Clue 1: I studied at Newnham College here in Cambridge and graduated in 1941. After graduating, I went to work at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association and studied the porosity of coal, which became the basis of my PhD.

Sam - Okay, well first thing we can work out is it's almost certainly got to be a woman if she was studying at Newnham college in 1940. Do you have any ideas Ella about who may be famous for studying coal?

Ella - I'm going to go with no. Not a sausage.

Katie - Okay. We'll give you clue 2 shall we?

Sam - I think we're going to need it.

Katie - In the late 1940s I worked at the State Chemical Laboratory in Paris, where I perfected my X-ray crystallography skills. Any the wiser?

Sam - Oh.

Katie - Sounds like some cogs might be turning there.

Sam - Yeah. DNA... could it be Rosalind Franklin, do you reckon Ella?

Ella - Oh yes it could be, but I am really notoriously bad with names.

Sam - Okay. Yeah. I'm just having a horrible feeling it's the wrong name, but given I think it's right and it's a female X-ray crystallographer who'd be the right age for the discovery of DNA, we'll go with that then.

Phil - Well done!

Katie - Congratulations! So Phil, that's...

Ella - I can claim no credit.

Katie - ...that's one point isn't it Phil?

Phil - One point to Ella and Sam, well done!

Katie - Excellent. Okay, over to team two!

Phil - Eleanor and Hamish -  who am I? Here's your clue number 1: I have a programming language named after me! Alright what do you think?

Eleanor - I'm guessing these are people rather than animals?

Phil - These are indeed people.

Eleanor - Dammit!

Hamish - So it's not python then?

Phil - That would have been a good, good guess, I shouldn't have given you that hint. But yes, it's a person, not an animal; and they've got a programming language named after them.

Hamish - I should know this given I was a software developer for about 10 years. So I'm racking my brains at the list of programming language whose names aren't single letters like R, or C, or things like that.

Phil - Shall I give you clue 2 and put you out of your misery?

Hamish - Hang on. I have one potential suggestion which is Fortran, but I can't remember if that's an acronym or whether it's named after someone.

Phil - Eleanor.

Eleanor - Linux. That sounds like it could be someone's name, couldn't it.

Hamish - No, that was Linus Torvalds invented that one.

Eleanor - Oh.

Phil - I'll tell you what, I'm going to give you clue 2 to move things along...

Hamish - Go for it!

Eleanor - Sorry!

Phil - So who am I? My father was the poet Lord Byron, and it's because of him I had an unusually good education for a woman at the time. What do we think?

Hamish - Oh, it's Ada Lovelace.

Phil - Is that your final answer?

Hamish - Ada Lovelace is Byron's daughter. As far as I know.

Phil - Hey, very well done. That's a point to you, Eleanor and Hamish, and so we're actually exactly even as we move into our next question.

Katie - Back to team one, Ella and Sam. Here's your guest question for this round.

Jack - Hello The Naked Scientists! I'm Jack, I'm the librarian at the Whipple library, which is the library for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Clue number 1: I was, along with Carolyn Herschel, jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society. I was a mathematician, geographer, and astronomer.

Sam - Any ideas Ella?

Ella - Oh my God. My knowledge of famous people is really, really showing to be very lacking here. I have no idea, I'm sorry.

Katie - Okay. We're going to give you clue 2. Ready?

Jack - Number 2: I wrote The Mechanism of the Heavens, which was published in 1831, and I appear on the Royal Bank of Scotland 10 pound note.

Sam - I've got no clue.

Katie - Right, I'm giving you clue 3.

Ella - Please help!

Katie - Okay here's number 3.

Jack - My namesake Oxford college has Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, and Iris Murdoch as alumni.

Katie - Any the wiser? Otherwise we're going to throw it over to the other team.

Ella - No, no, no. I know like... Wadham?

Sam - We'll go with that then...

Katie - Is that your answer?

Ella - I think it's going to have to be, yeah.

Katie - That's your answer, okay. I'm afraid not! Team two, do you have any thoughts? Do you want to guess?

Hamish - I'm not up on female astronomers.

Katie - Okay, I'll put you out of your misery. The answer was Mary Somerville. So no points there, Phil. Over to team two.

PART 2 - EVA
Phil -  Well, nice try guys. This is for team two: Eleanor and Hamish. Here's your question from Jack.

Jack - Clue number 1: I'm Italian, was born in 1625, and became a French citizen and changed my first name after being invited to work in Paris by King Louis the 14th of France.

Phil -  So Italian became French. Any ideas?

Hamish - Not without a subject area. I mean it's probably going to be physics or astronomy or something like that because yeah...

Eleanor - I know that Leonardo da Vinci spent a lot of time in France. I don't know if he took up citizenship though.

Phil -  Would you like to make that as your guess?

Eleanor - Yeah. Yes. Maybe. Is there a second clue?

Phil -  There's a second! Would you like to move on, second clue?

Eleanor - Let's get a second clue!

Phil -  All right. Clue number 2.

Jack - I helped to set up the Paris observatory where my son and grandson would also have leading roles and where I discovered four moons of Saturn: Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys, and Dione.

Phil -  There we go. You've got your subject area. Eleanor and Hamish?

Hamish - Moons of Saturn... I was revising moons of Jupiter just before the quiz, just in case.

Phil -  Oh wow. That's unfortunate. Any guesses?

Hamish - I can't remember who discovered the moons of Saturn.

Eleanor - da Vinci would be a shout, maybe given the...

Phil -  Oh, would you like to guess da Vinci? I'm going to have to press you!

Hamish - Let's give it a go.

Phil -  What a good guess. And in fact I might have thought it too, but no, the answer is Giovanni Cassini. And your third clue would have been that he had a namesake, which is a probe getting sent to Saturn - that might've given it away,

Hamish - I would've got that one!

Phil -  Nice try. We're still one each to both teams, so everything to play for as we go into the next part.

Katie - Okay. Team one. There's an audio hint for this question, but it's only on clue three. So clue one: I'm Scottish born but invented my most important creation in North America. Pretty hard for a first clue, I think.

Ella - Alexander Graham Bell? Is he Scottish?

Katie - That was very impressive!

Phil -  Unbelievable!

Ella - Whoosh, back in the game!

Phil -  How, how did you get that Ella?

Ella - I just know he's Scottish and I know that he did the telegraph in the States

Phil -  Team two Eleanor and Hamish - time to step up to the plate! Good luck with this one. Alright, clue number 1. I left school at 18 in 1952 and I'm one of very few people to have been awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge without having a bachelor's degree first, who am I?

Hamish - Hmm

Phil -  I'm going to move on cause we're a little pressed for time so here's clue number 2. Although I'm from the UK, I did my field work and research on a specific species in Africa.

Hamish - Ahhhhh

Eleanor - Could we get a third clue maybe? There's a lot of species in Africa!

Phil -  Clue number 3: I observed that chimpanzees are not vegetarian and in fact sometimes eat smaller monkeys.

Eleanor - Oh I feel like I should know this one.

Hamish - The only chimpanzee person I know is Jane Goodall.

Eleanor - Yes!

Phil -  Excellent. Well done. All right, that's round one done. Thanks very much everyone! Today we're getting stuck into a Naked Scientists science pub quiz. So do join in at home! How did you do in round one? Let us know. Tweet at Naked Scientists. And playing along down the line are climate scientist Ella Gilbert from the British Antarctic survey, bees and plants buff Hamish Symington from Cambridge University, metabolism maestro Sam Virtue, also from Cambridge University, and animal behaviour expert, Eleanor Drinkwater.

Katie - Right Phil - what are the scores on the doors?

Phil -  As we enter round two, it's three points to team one, that's Ella and Sam, against two points to team two Eleanor and Hamish.

Katie Haylor and Phil Sansom take the players through round 2 of the Naked Scientists science pub quiz!

Phil - This round is called the sky above. So contestants: it's gonna be one point per correct answer. We're going to start with team one. Ella and Sam get ready. Here's your question.

Q - Which constellation is home to Polaris, the North star, the all important navigation star? What do you think?

Ella - Is it near Ursa minor? I always remember it's near the big dipper and then along a bit

Phil -  Straight out the gate! We love to see that kind of performance. Well done Ella. It is indeed Ursa minor. All right, onto team two.

Katie - This question is taken from the Astronaut Selection Test Book by Tim Peak and the European Space Agency. So get ready to think like an astronaut. This is the question.

Q - Another crew member is exercising on the cycle machine when you're scheduled to be using the equipment. Do you: a) go for a run on the treadmill instead, b) speak with mission control to reschedule your activities, c) interrupt the other crew member’s exercise session to discuss the matter, d) just get on with something else until the cycle machine is free. What do you think?

Eleanor - What do you think Hamish?

Hamish - My instinct would be b) because everything on a space station is so totally controlled but you need to be doing your exercise and they might be doing their exercise for a good reason. What do you reckon?

Eleanor - I think for me it would depend how grumpy was feeling at the time, but I think your answer was probably the best one.

Katie - So you go in with (b) yeah?  Speak with mission control? I'm afraid not, I see where you're going and you definitely get credit for trying cause you were kind of near the right answer but the right answer was … c) interrupt the other crew members exercise to discuss the matter and exactly for the reason you say Hamish. Exercise is super important in space and daily activities are coordinated very carefully, and your medical team back on the ground have planned for you to do exercise at particular times. So you didn't get the point. But I feel bad cause you kind of were on the right lines.

Phil -  Yeah I think half a point for that? What do you think?

Katie - You're keeping the scores!

Phil -  Okay half a point, we'll be generous. I love that question. Well let's go back to team one. That's Ella and Sam. You've got a guest question from a celebrity. It's Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University and friend of the show, David Rothery.

David - Q - Now we're all rather concerned about something called a coronavirus at the moment. But where out in space would you not find something referred to as corona? Is it (A) surrounding the sun (B) among the clouds of Jupiter (C) on the surface of Venus or (D) a constellation of stars?

Phil -  Three of those things have corona, one doesn't. What do you think?

Sam: Do you know Ella or should we guess?

Ella - The sun has a corona and I assume other stars have a corona.

Sam: I reckon the clouds of Jupiter probably do so should we give Venus a crack?

Ella - Let's go for it.

Sam: Alright, Venus.

David - Well the answer is (B). There's nothing called a corona in the clouds of Jupiter. The Corona is the sun's really hot outer atmosphere, which you can see during the total solar eclipse. There are features on the surface of Venus, which we call a corona. These are large round features which might be caused by upwelling or downwelling of the crust we don't really know. And there are actually two constellations called corona, one's called Corona Borealis in the Northern sky and Corona Australis in the Southern sky. They're fairly unremarkable, vaguely ring-like arrangements of stars called corona.

Phil -  Well done guys. That was a tough one.

Katie - So team two Eleanor and Hamish. Here's your question from David.

David - Q - Out in space, what do the following have in common? Juliet, Miranda, Titania, and Margaret.

Hamish - Miranda and Titania are moons.

Eleanor - I mean they're all Shakespeare characters but I guess they're not...

Hamish - Yeah, they're all moons of something.

Katie - 'Of something' huh!

Eleanor - Oh, do we have to be specific about what they're moons of? I think the moons angle is a good one!

David - They're all moons of the planet Uranus! The one that sounds rather unexotic and mundane Margaret is a servant in the play 'Much Ado About Nothing', Juliet's from Romeo and Juliet you'd probably get that.

Katie - Sorry, not quite! So Phil, they didn't get the point right?

Phil -  No that leaves us at one point to team one and half a point this round to team two.

Hamish - No halves for that one!

Phil -  Well done for getting they're all Shakespeare characters, I thought that was pretty good. But let's move back to team one. Ella and Sam, here's your question.

Q - Which of the following bird songs is native to the UK? We're going to play three. Ready? Here's (A), and here's (B), and here coming up is (C). What do you think guys? Any aspiring birdwatchers among Sam or Ella?

Ella - I feel like I've heard (B) in a wood somewhere, but then again, I'm a Londoner born and bred, so I'm really not the best person to ask about wildlife.

Katie - We're going to need an answer!

Sam: I was thinking (B) as well, so we'll go with that.

Phil -  Yes. Well done. I'll tell you what, we're going to throw this to both teams, so get ready to answer as quickly as you can. What bird is it?

Katie - Stunned silence.

Phil -  Anyone?

Eleanor - I want to guess a Robin, but I'm not entirely sure. It's quite hard to tell.

Phil -  Okay. It's not a Robin. Team one?

Ella - Nope, no idea!

Phil -  Okay. Well you got it right, anyway, it was a Blackbird but still well done for getting it. It was indeed (B). (A) was some parents over in Australia and (C) was some birds called Cacique, which is a very fun tropical bird.

Katie - Team two:

Q - what phenomenon is named after the Roman goddess of Dawn and the Greek name for North wind?

Hamish - I know this one.

Eleanor - Woo. That's good. Cause I have no clue!

Hamish - It's the Aurora Borealis.

Katie - Correct! That was a very confident answer. Phil, what are the scores on the doors at the end of that round?

Phil -  Well, as we leave round two behind, we wave a fond farewell, we find that team one, have got two points out of that and team two have got one and a half. Which means that team one have cemented their lead by an extra half point.

Katie - Oh, so there is a bit of a difference, but everything could change in round three.

Phil -  Absolutely. It's a close one!

Katie Haylor and Phil Sansom take the players through the final round of the Naked Scientists science pub quiz...

Phil - Team one, Ella and Sam, here's a question for you.

Q - Which is the rainiest continent. What do you think?

Sam - South America?

Ella - Ooh, interesting. I was going to say, because you get the maritime continent being very wet. I mean it's got to have some tropics in it, right? Yeah. I'm happy to go South America if you like.

Phil - A - South America. Oh, well done. We weren't trying to trick you. It is home to the Amazon rainforest. So the clue's in the name. Very well done. That's the point to you. Excellent work.

Katie - Now team two...

Q - According to the Guinness World Records, where in the world has the highest natural temperature been recorded? So I'm not talking about like an oven or something. Natural temperature. Is it a) Death Valley, California, b) El Azizia, Libya or c) Oodnadatta South Australia?

Hamish - It always used to be Death Valley, but I can't remember if they got another one since...

Eleanor - Sounds like a good answer.

Katie - A - Death Valley, California. Congratulations. Right on the money. According to the Guinness World Records, it was in Libya until 2012 with 58 Celsius. But that recording was since disqualified by the World Meteorological Association. And now the US holds the record at 56.7. The town of Oodnadatta in South Australia holds the record for hottest place in Australia though, recorded at 50.7 Celsius in 1960.

Phil - Team one. Here's your next guest question.

Imene - I'm Dr Imene Bouhlel Bougdhira, a cell biologist at the University of Cambridge. My question for you all is -

Q - Which of these cellular organelles are present in animal cells but not plant cells? a) mitochondria, b) vacuole c) centriole d) nucleus.

Ella - Oh this takes me back to GCSE! I should know this. What do you think Sam?

Sam - I would go with centriole cause I mean I know that they've all got mitochondria, they've all got nucleus. So it's either a toss up between vacuole and centriole. Let's say centriole.

Phil - A - Centriole. Very well done. They're part of this structure that plays this role in cell division and organizing how things get moved around inside a cell.

Katie - Team two, which of the following elements is not found in the human body? And you've got multiple choice here. So is it a) gadolinium, b) chromium or c) actinium. What do you think?

Eleanor - I have no idea. Do you know Hamish?

Hamish - I think chromium is toxic (he said vaguely). Um, I don't know what either of the other ones do.

Eleanor - Let's go for chromium.

Katie - A - actinium. I'm afraid you didn't get the point there. The answer was actinium. Actinium doesn't appear to have any role in living things. In fact, it's extracted from uranium cores and it isn't actually found outside nuclear labs.

Hamish - It's radioactive, so I should have probably got that one.

Phil - All right, team one, this is for you.

Q - Which of the following is the longest dinosaur? a) Argentinosaurus b), Tyrannosaurus Rex, or c) Wannanosaurus. I'm sure you're big fans of all of those dinosaurs, but which was the longest? Ella? Sam?

Ella - When you say longest, do you mean tip to toe?

Katie - Sorry, I mean top of the head to the top of the tail, I think!

Sam - T-Rex we're pretty big. Should we go with that?

Ella - Go on. I've never heard of the other two.

Phil - A - the answer was a) Argentinosaurus, which is this giant dinosaur that was up to around 40 meters long, which is absolutely huge. There's even some controversy about whether it's the biggest of all time. So very tricky one. Well done.

Katie - A fun fact for you. According to Wikipedia, Wannanosaurus was only 60 centimeters long! Right, team 2, your last question in this round contains a musical clue.

Q - Apart from the drums, what instrument is the loudest in a traditional orchestra? Here's your clue for this instrument [sfx]

Hamish - Okay. So it's going to be a brass instrument. I thought it would be trombone. But that was a trumpet, not a trombone.....trumpet?

Katie - You were so close, you were within touching distance of the right answer. Apparently the trumpet often sounds the loudest during performances because it can be quite harsh. But actually according to decibel range, the trombone peaks higher, followed closely by the clarinet.

Physiologist Sam Virtue pondered this question for us...

The idea that the appendix is something we no longer need, really comes from arguably the greatest evolutionary biologist of all time, Charles Darwin, and dates back about 150 years.

And so what Charles Darwin suggested was as we evolved as organisms from ones eating predominantly grass or leaves, to being able to eat more palatable food, we ceased to need a large caecum.

Now the caecum is a part of the gut, which is really quite big in organisms like koalas, which eat eucalyptus leaves, or horses that eat grass. And it's a location where the grass or the leaves can be broken down by bacteria, sort of a fermentation like process, to turn it into nutrients that our body can absorb.

As we evolved as primates, into apes and humans, we no longer ate things like grass. So we didn't need this capacity to essentially ferment them into usable food and our caecum shrank and just left behind a little pouch of caecum and this vestigial appendix.

And really, up until about 20 years ago, that was the view. That essentially the appendix was something that was an evolutionary relic.

However, more recently, a lot of people have got interested in our gut microbiota. So the gut microbiota are all the bacteria that live with us. There are 10 trillion of our own cells containing our own DNA in our body.

But there are actually a hundred trillion bacteria that live inside us, inside our guts, and come along with us. And these bacteria are good for us on the whole, if they're healthy, they do things like help us to make vitamins that we need like biotin. And they also enable us to absorb minerals, and they protect us against bad bacteria. And the idea started to be formed, that the appendix might actually act as a sort of a safe house for these bacteria at times when they're under attack.

So if you were to get a really nasty disease like cholera, which gives you very, very bad diarrhoea, all of your gut microbiota could be washed away. And this would leave your gut free for really nasty bacteria like Clostridium difficile.

This is a bacterium that causes colitis and can even be fatal in people, to move in. But at times when we have diseases like cholera, where a large amount of our gut's contents have been washed away, and with them, our bacteria, the appendix acts as a place where our own resident bacteria can hide and stay safe, until after all the cholera outbreak has passed. And then they can re-enter our guts and repopulate them and then give us back our nice healthy bacteria, that we like to live with.

In support of the importance of the appendix for having a function, recent research has suggested far from it being evolved away.

The appendix in animals may have evolved as many as 30 different times independently. And if something's being evolved 30 different times independently, it suggests it's pretty important. So I think it's probably unlikely humans will evolve to not have an appendix, but you pretty much can't rule anything out.