Valencia Tossups Broward Team A 1. This lecture was delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in August 1837. In it, the author argues that in his right state, the scholar is "Man Thinking." Later in the lecture one finds the famous assertion that "Books are among the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst." FTP, name this 1837 lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ans: The American Scholar 2. This physical phenomenon was first noticed in 1911 by Heike Onnes, when he cooled a sample of mercury to a temperature of about 4 Kelvins. Thousands of compounds have been shown to exhibit this phenomenon at near-zero temperatures, but in 1986 two scientists in Zurich discovered that a ceramic compound could exhibit this behaviour at 35 Kelvins, and since then the world's record has climbed to 134 Kelvins. FTP, name this phenomenon in which a substance loses all electrical resistance. Ans: Superconductivity (Accept Superconductors) 3. Warning: two names needed. Both were astronomers in 18th-century England, though their most famous piece of work involved using their surveying skills in the American colonies in the mid-1760s. They were an interesting and often conflicting pair, but unlike their adventures in the 1997 Thomas Pynchon novel, they did not meet any learned English dogs or robot ducks. FTP, name these two men who settled a dispute between the Calvert and Penn families by surveying the line which still divides Maryland from Pennsylvania. Ans: Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon (Accept Mason-Dixon Line) 4. His only official military experience was in the 1832 Black Hawk War, and even there, he said, his biggest battles were against swarms of mosquitos. His political career nearly ended because of his opposition to the Mexican War, which led to defeat in his first Congressional re-election bid. FTP, name this man whose presidency would be defined by a war in which 620,000 Americans would lose their lives. Ans: Abraham Lincoln 5. The equation of the catenoid in 1690; a technique for harmonic analysis in the late 18th century using added trigonometric functions; the posing of the brachistochrone problem in 1696; the conception of the lemniscate in 1694; combinatoric studies in the 1750s; the physical law which states that fluid pressure decreases as the velocity increases all of these works are attributed, FTP, to what family of Swiss mathematicians which included Jakob, Johann, Nikolaus, and Daniel? Ans: Bernoulli 6. Some of this modern author's books are based in part on personal experience, such as the episode of a man being shot for stealing a teapot after the bombing of Dresden. His diverse cast of recurring characters includes science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, Mr. Eliot Rosewater, and Billy Pilgrim. FTP, name this author of Galapagos, Breakfast of Champions, and Slaughterhouse Five. Ans: Kurt Vonnegut 7. Four popes -- Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IX, and Leo XI came from this family. Its family crest is the six balls, probably the most famous crest from the Renaissance. By the mid-15th century their family business had branches in Rome, Venice, Milan, Geneva, Avignon, and London, in addition to the central establishment at Florence. FTP, name this banking family whose more famous members include Cosimo and Lorenzo. Ans: The Medici (accept de' Medici) 8. If you go into the castle of Mad King Ludwig, you will find scenes depicting the operas of this composer. He enjoyed the patronage of the king for a few years, and he was one of the few composers who wrote his own libretti, many of them inspired by old German myths and folklore. FTP, identify this composer of Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. Ans: Richard Wagner 9. For a very quick ten points, evaluate the log base 8 of 32. Ans: 5/3 10. This Mediterranean island nation consists of two main islands, and each has a city named Rabat. It is famous for its tall white cliffs, and some scholars believe it may have been the historical inspiration for the island of Aeolus in the Odyssey. FTP, name this small nation south of Sicily whose capital is Valletta. Ans: Malta 11. Examples of these include Threonine, Aspartic Acid, and Tryptophan. There are 20 of them in all, and they serve as the building blocks for proteins, their sequence based on the coding determined by the RNA and DNA. FTP, name these building blocks whose better known members include Alanine and Phenylalanine. Ans: Amino Acids 12. Sir William Davenant, Cecil Day Lewis, Thomas Shadwell, Sir John Betjeman, Robert Southey, John Dryden, William Wordsworth, Ben Jonson, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, are all former holders, FTP, of what post held since 1984 by Ted Hughes? Ans: Poet Laureate (of England) 13. This principle was stated in 1965 by the co-founder of Intel, whose name has since become attached to the principle. Despite its name, it is just a guideline and not a law in the sense of a scientific law. Still, it has been uncannily accurate in predicting that computer power doubles roughly every eighteen months. FTP, name this rule-of-thumb law which is the basis for many predictions about the future growth of the computer industry. Ans: Moore's Law 14. This city on the Atlantic Ocean is the capital of a nation which has been independent since 1975, but much of the nation's era of independence has been filled with nearly constant civil war involving 3 main factions and even troops sent from Cuba to support the Marxists. This city also holds the ignominious title of having more land mines than any other city in the world, an estimated 9 million. FTP, name this capital city of Angola. Ans: Luanda 15. As a boy, this future writer was once accused by a teacher of intentionally breaking his glasses, and his hands were struck by a ruler as punishment. Apparently that incident at Clongowes had a big impact on this future writer, as it appears in some form in several of his novels. FTP, name this writer whose protagonist Stephen Dedalus is struck on the hands at Clongowes in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ans: James Joyce 16. Jocelyn Bell was the first to discover one of these celestial objects in the 1960s. They give off a signature of precisely periodic radiation bursts that initially puzzled astronomers, such that the objects were jokingly called LGMs for Little Green Men. FTP, identify these celestial objects, one of which can be found in the Crab Nebula. Ans: Pulsar (accept Neutron Star) 17. Of all the languages in Europe, the language of this people is one of the few whose origins have not been definitively traced. They have withstood invasions by Romans, Visigoths, and Moors, and they were present at the Battle of Roncesvalle. More recently, members of their independence movement threatened to bomb the Tour de France stages which cross through the Pyrenees. FTP, identify this group who have lived in the Pyrenees for more than 16 centuries. Ans: The Basque 18. It was written over the span of a few years in the decade following the English Civil War. Every morning the author, while hiding out in Andrew Marvell's house, would begin dictating lines to one of his daughters at four in the morning, which led his daughters to resent him. For the plot of this work he built on the opening sections of Genesis, and it professes to "justify the ways of God to men." FTP, name this 12-book work of John Milton in which Satan is the most striking figure in Book I. Ans: Paradise Lost 19. In the United States this element is usually spelled with 6 letters, but in many British books it has 7 letters because of a diagraph. Commercially-sold samples of the element usually contain some rubidium, but they resemble each other so closely that no effort is made to separate them. Recently, the 137-isotope of the element has been employed as a medical tracer. FTP, name this alkali metal discovered by Bunsen and Kirchhoff which has 55 protons in its nucleus. Ans: Cesium (Caesium) 20. According to the old story, lawyer John Dickinson was a great shot, not someone you'd want to duel but this ex-Congressman did. Dickinson fired first, hitting the man in the chest, where he would carry the bullet for the rest of his life. The man struggled to his feet and shot Dickinson where he was aiming in the groin. His military skills would later serve him in victory at Horseshoe Bend over the Creek Indians in 1814, and in his most famous military conquest in January 1815. FTP, name this victor at New Orleans who went on to revolutionize the office of the American presidency. Ans: Andrew Jackson 21. Of the 4 most common types of conic section, this is the only type whose eccentricity is a natural number. Its standard form is given by y2 = 4px, and the distance from its focus to the vertex is equal to the minimum distance between vertex and directrix. FTP, name this conic section with eccentricity 1. Ans: Parabola 22. Barbara McClintock, Roger Sperry, Edwin Krebs, Hans Krebs, Konrad Lorenz, Paul Ehrlich, and Thomas Morgan are all winners, FTP, of what prize which in 1962 was shared by Watson, Crick, and Wilkins? Ans: Nobel Prize for Medicine or Nobel Prize for Physiology Valencia Tossups Broward B 1. This painting is of a traditional subject, a reclining nude based on a nude of Venus by Titian, but the painting was anything but traditional when first exhibited at the Salon des Refuses in 1865. The model stares at the viewer, and her body is surrounded by a black outline instead of the soft edges of the Titian work. FTP, name this work by Edouard Manet which some say established the break of the Impressionist movement from the French Academy. Ans: Olympia 2. Consider the equation y equals one over x on the interval from one to infinity. Revolve the graph around the x-axis. When you integrate to find the surface area, it turns out to be infinite, as expected. However, when you integrate the find the volume of the resulting figure, the value turns out to be finite. FTP, name this mathematical paradox that shares its name with the instrument of a certain Biblical archangel. Ans: Gabriel's Horn Paradox 3. This poetic form was especially popular among some of the major poets of Victorian England. Arnold's "Dover Beach" and Tennyson's "Ulysses" are two such examples, and the form is often associated with Robert Browning. In this form, the poem is essentially a soliloquy by a character, in which the character's personality and psyche is revealed entirely by his own words and tone. FTP, name this poetic form exemplified by Browning's "My Last Duchess" and "Andrea del Sarto." Ans: Dramatic monologue 4. Its chemical structure is relatively simple. Fundamentally it is built on a benzene ring, except that four of the six hydrogens are replaced by a methyl group and three NO2 groups. FTP, identify this common explosive. Ans: TNT or Trinitrotoluene (Accept 2-4-6 trinitrotoluene) (NOT nitroglycerine or dynamite) 5. This Mediterranean island has been an important source of wealth for thousands of years. Today it is divided by the Attila Line, but long ago it was a tremendous source of copper which was used in forming early weaponry. The island became so well identified with copper that our word copper' ultimately derives from the name of that island. FTP, name this island whose capital is Nicosia. Ans: Cyprus 6. When he and G.H.Hardy first got in a cab together, he observed that the cab number, 1729, was the smallest number to be the sum of two cubes in two different ways. This mysterious mathematician had few books when growing up in India and spent only a few years in London, yet mathematicians are struggling to prove some of his thousands of formulae. He was especially adept with sequence and series, and he developed a series which converged to pi much faster than the existing methods. FTP, name this formula man' whose story was mentioned in the recent movie Good Will Hunting. Ans: Srinivasa Ramanujan 7. The Kotan Utunnai myth is a hero myth of this culture, possibly based in a centuries-old struggle with the Okhotsk. They are of Caucasoid descent, though finding a full-blooded member is rare because of intermarriage. Today some are found on Sakhalin and the Kurile islands, while most live on Hokkaido. FTP, name this group which was forced northward by Japanese expansion and which struggles to retain its identity amidst assimilation by Japan. Ans: The Ainu 8. In the early 1960s, scientists Larry Roberts and Ivan Sutherland, among others, conceived of this military-funded system, which was designed to be a fail-safe messaging system that packetized information. It was specifically aimed to be a decentralized messaging system which could not be knocked out by a nuclear strike, but it laid the foundation for what would become the Internet. FTP, provide the name of this system. Ans: ARPAnet 9. In 1687, during a war between the Venetians and the Turks, an arsenal exploded. This would not be especially significant except that the arsenal was housed in a famous structure which barely survived the blast. More recently it has been surrounded by scaffolding to repair damage caused by the smog of Athens. FTP, name this temple to the Athena on the Acropolis. Ans: The Parthenon 10. In discussions of this mathematical theory, one will find such terms as period doubling and strange attractors. This theory observes that a tiny change in the initial conditions of a system can potentially magnify into an enormous change over time. Edward Lorenz's observation that in theory a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan can cause a hurricane a month later in the Atlantic is one illustration of this type of system. FTP, name this theory developed by Mitchell Feigenbaum in the early 1970s. Ans: Chaos theory, or chaotic systems, or non-linear dynamics 11. Officially, this nation existed from 1918 to 1993. After a long period of rule by the Austrian Habsburgs, this state was formed after World War I. It was occupied by Germany in 1938 and later by the USSR in 1946. Attempts at liberalization were crushed by the Soviets in August 1968. FTP, identify this nation which was forced to cede the Sudetenland to Germany in 1938 and which broke into two nations in 1993. Ans: Czechoslovakia (Do not accept Czech Republic or Slovakia/Slovak Republic) 12. Some critics have called this the greatest American play of the 20th century. It is highly autobiographical, as the four central characters are thinly disguised portraits of the author's family. It is set in Connecticut in August 1912, and the flaws of each character return repeatedly like musical motifs, such as Edmund's illness, Mary's drug dependance, and James Tyrone's miserliness. FTP, name this Eugene O'Neill play first performed in 1956 which earned him his fourth Pulitzer prize, posthumously awarded in 1957. Ans: Long Day's Journey into Night 13. It is circular, just under 5 inches in diameter. It rotates at a variable rate such that the speed of the track is kept constant over the optical read-out system, roughly 500 rpm near the center and 200 rpm near the edge. Its surface looks smooth but actually consists of a sequence of pits and ridges, a sequence which contains the information decoded by the optical read-out system into an electric signal. FTP, name this circular object which revolutionized the music industry in the 1980s. Ans: Compact Disk or CD (accept CD-ROM) (prompt for more info if Laser Disk answered) 14. Had the history of mathematics taken a different turn, we might associate this with the name of Chu Shih-chieh, who drew it as early as 1303 using Chinese rod numerals. The mathematician it is named for wrote about its properties in a work posthumously published in 1665. It is very useful for determining coin toss probabilities and working out binomial expansions, among many other things. FTP, name this well-known chart of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two numbers diagonally above it. Ans: Pascal's Triangle 15. His drawings can be found in nearly any textbook of 19th-century American history or politics. His criticism of William Tweed in Harper's Weekly helped to build public opposition to the Tammany Hall Ring, and he is credited with creating the symbols of the two major American political parties. FTP, name this German-born 19th-century political cartoonist who created the donkey and elephant symbols to represent Democrats and Republicans. Ans: Thomas Nast 16. In an era when marriage was a merger of estates, they believed in marriage based on love, or at least on lust. At least 400 are known, including William IX of Aquitaine, Macabru, and Cercamon, and they were both poets and performers. Their poetry, written in the native language of the Provencal region of southern France, was influenced by Moorish poetry and by the developing medieval traditions of chivalry and courtly love, though they did also write about subjects like politics and war. FTP, identify these traveling poet-singers whose flourished in France from the late 11th to late 13th centuries. Ans: Troubadours (Accept trobaritz or trouveres, but not minnesingers or minstrels) 17. His mausoleum serves as the setting for the final act of Puccini's Tosca. Tertullian wrote this emperor was "the explorer of everything interesting," and his villa at Tivoli rivaled the splendour of Nero's Golden House. He created the Jewish diaspora by crushing a Judaean rebellion in 134 C.E., and he was responsible for building the Pantheon. FTP, name this Roman emperor who succeeded Trajan, and whose wall ran from Walsend-on-Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway. Ans: Hadrian 18. Fundamentally, these important devices merely consist of two solenoids. A current flows into one coil, which induces a current in the second coil. The power in the outflowing current is the same, but because the second coil has either more or fewer turns than the first, the voltage and amperage of the outflow will be different from the inflow. FTP, name this device which allows current to be converted so that less power is lost in transport. Ans: Transformer 19. When Russian painter Viktor A. Gartmann died in 1874, an art show displaying over 400 of his paintings commemorated his passing and inspired this musical piece. The cramped movements of a deformed gnome, a rumbling Polish ox-cart coming nearer and going away, the "Ballet of the Chickens in their Shells," the wild ride through the air of the witch Baba Yaga, and the tremendous procession passing through the Great Gate of Kiev all are movements of the piece and interpretations of Gartmann's paintings. FTP, name this Russian orchestral piece composed by Modest Mussorgsky and not by Emerson, Lake , and Palmer. Ans: Pictures at an Exhibition or Bilder einer Ausstellung 20. This family of rulers was in power of their country for over 3 centuries, beginning in the early 17th century. Among its members were a seven-foot-tall ruler and one of history's most famous nymphomaniacs, and many of its members died of unnatural causes. FTP, name this family whose members ruled from 1613 to 1917 as czars and czarinas of Russia. Ans: Romanov 21. M13, one of the closest examples of a globular cluster, can be found in this constellation. It is also the only constellation on the ecliptic which is not classified as part of the zodiac. It is named for a mythical hero who died when his robe was coated with poison by his wife, and whose funeral pyre was struck by lightning, leaving no bones behind and transporting the hero to Olympus. FTP, name this constellation which depicts a man wielding a club and grabbing the neck of the Hydra in performing the second of his 12 labours. Ans: Hercules 22. This New York statesman was an important figure in early American politics, though he is often overshadowed by others. His time as Chief Justice is overshadowed by John Marshall, and he is the least famous of the 3 men who used the pen name Publius. FTP, name this man who was one of the 3 authors of the Federalist Papers. Ans: John Jay