IBA Toss-Up Set 7

1. This man was the son of Robert I the Devil, and the nephew of Emma the wife of Canute and Ethelred the Unready.  FTP, identify this illegitimate first cousin of the childless Edward the Confessor who claimed the English throne in 1066 after winning the battle of Hastings.

Answer: William the Conqueror or William I

2. Pencil and paper may be necessary.  Consider the equation 4x squared + 3x + y = 14 - 3y squared + 3x + y.  For 10 points, what type of conic section does this equation describe?

Answer: ellipse

3. This novel, dramatized in 1960 as All the Way Home, is the semiautobiographical story about a family whose life is shattered by the father's untimely passing.  FTP, identify this 1957 book by Knoxville born author James Agee.

Answer: A Death in the Family

4. As early as his Untimely Observations, this man had sharply criticized the systematic philosophy of the earlier 19th century, especially that of Hegel.  His other works include Der Antichrist and Human, All Too Human.  FTP, identify this German philosopher, author of Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spake Zarathustra, in which he said, "Dead are all the gods."

Answer: Friedrich Nietzsche

5. It rises on the Saint Gotthard massif in the Alps where two rivers join at Tamins to form its start.  It is navigable as far as the Schaffhausen Falls near the western end of Lake Constance. For 10 points, identify this river which flows from Switzerland through Germany and Holland to the North Sea.

Answer: Rhine

6. He laid out a mathematical theory of the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets and improved on the lunar theory of Hipparchus. For 10 points, what is this first century Alexandrian astronomer and author of The Almagest?

Answer: Ptolemy

7. Later historians regarded him as an ideal emperor, in part because he spent great sums on games and monuments including the colosseum.  To the victims of the famous eruption of Vesuvius he dispensed generous aid, but this era of good feeling ended when he was succeeded by his brother.  For 10 points, identify this Roman emperor, the son of Vespasian who shares his name with the Biblical book following Second Timothy.

Answer: Titus

8. In childhood she suffered a spinal injury and seemed to be doomed to invalidism and seclusion from the world before she met the man who was to become her husband. A poet at an early age, her collections include Essay on Mind, The Seraphim and Other Poems, Casa Guidi Windows, and Poems Before Congress. FTP, identify this English poet who is perhaps best known for her sequence of love sonnets addressed to her husband entitled Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Answer: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

9. Its rounded smooth head articulates with the pelvis at the acetabulum, and its large flattened lower end articulates with the tibia, the larger of the lower leg bones.  FTP, identify this longest and strongest bone of the human skeleton.

Answer: femur

10. Noted for his supreme mastery of language, he used blank verse in his dramas and began the development of heroic tragedy by restoring to it the grandeur of the early Greek tragedians.  His plays, which were the first ever written for the public theater, include The Massacre of Paris, Edward II, and Hero and Leander. FTP, identify this author of The Jew of Malta.

Answer: Christopher Marlowe

11. After his retirement, he was left penniless through the failure of a brokerage firm, but his Personal Memoirs, which he completed while dying of throat cancer, brought his family nearly $500,000. FTP, identify this former Union general at the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson whose term as president was marred by the Whiskey Ring and Credit Mobilier scandals.

Answer: Ulysses S. Grant

12. English poets who have referred to her tale include Spenser, Chaucer, Keats, Milton, Shelley, and Shakespeare who has Juliet speak of her "Else I would tear the cave where she lies and make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine".  For 10 points, identify this mythological nymph of Mount Helicon, the lover of Narcissus.

Answer: Echo

13. The first in US history was initiated following the Civil War so that the Union government could pay its bills, but in 1895 it was declared unconstitutional, and another was not able to be enacted until February 25, 1913.  FTP, identify this tax made constitutional by the 16th amendment.

Answer: income tax

14. Based in part on earlier work by Sadi-Carnot and Lord Kelvin, it was first defined by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius. Clausius found the even for "perfect" or completely reversible exchanges of heat energy between systems of matter, an inevitable loss of energy results.  For 10 points, what is this scientific term for the degree of randomness or disorder in processes and systems usually designated with capital S?

Answer: entropy

15. It was this artist who first applied to Alexander Calder's works the term "mobile" to describe the wire and metal sculptures. He developed a dynamic version of facet cubism in which the image depicted successive movements of a single body.  For 10 points, identify this man who caused a scandal with his Nude Descending a Staircase.

Answer: Marcel Duchamp

16. It was first produced from coal tar by the German researchers Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser.  It was made more tolerable to the gastrointestinal tract by the addition of the neutral salt calcium glutamate and was first marketed in 1905.  For 10 points, identify this substance, the world's largest-selling over-the- counter medication.

Answer: aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid