competitions & quizzes...pit your wits & win with Planet Science
nobel prize quiz
What’s more fun than winning a Nobel Prize?
Winning a Discovery PostBag of Nobel Prize stamps + goodies!
These packs were issued by the Royal Mail to celebrate the Nobel Prize centenary this year. And they feature what must be the grooviest and most high-tech stamps ever …
There’s a hologram stamp, a scratch ‘n sniff stamp, and a stamp printed in ink that mysteriously becomes clear when you touch it – to reveal the secret below, plus three others, all TOO COOL TO SEND if you ask us!
And they come along with an experiment pack that includes a very cool build-it-yourself glow-in-the-dark molecule of Buckminsterfullerene (the one that looks like a wireframe of a football), plus wacky-fact science postcards, quizzes with self-revealing answers, and instructions for a variety of amazing home experiments.
We have ten of these packs to give away … so what are you waiting for?
All you need to do is come top in our Nobel Prize quiz!
PS: The Royal Mail has also created PostBags on Pond Life, Weather, and Buses, and like the Discovery pack, they’re full of cool stuff as well as the stamps…
They cost £5.99 for one, or £19.95 for all four. For more information, call 08457 641 641.
GOOD LUCK!
01 Niels Bohr won the physics prize in 1922 for establishing the structure of the atom. In 1940 Denmark was occupied by the Germans and he hid two fellow winners’ gold medals from the Nazis. How did he do this?
He dissolved them in acid, then left them in unmarked jars in his lab
He baked them in a fruit cake
He melted them and had them cast into cufflinks
He cut out sections of his notebooks and concealed them in his library
02 Graphite and diamond are two different structures of carbon. Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley shared the chemistry prize in 1996 for their discovery of a third structure, buckminsterfullerene. Its popular name is based on its shape, what is it?
Pyramidal Peaks
Bucky Balls
Fuller Rings
Tubular Bells
03 Alexander Fleming, Ernst Chain and Howard Florey won the medicine prize in 1945 for the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic. From what substance was penicillin obtained?
A mould
A flower
A sea-sponge
A bacterium
04 Alfred Nobel, the founder of the Nobel prize, worked on many inventions, including artificial silk, leather and rubber. But what was his most famous invention?
The telegraph
Canned food
Dynamite
The motor car
05 Ronald Ross was awarded the medicine prize in 1902, for showing how the malaria parasite enters humans. How does it?
Infected mosquitoes transmit the parasite when they bite humans
Humans catch the parasite from drinking infected water
Infected people can transmit the parasite by coughing on healthy humans
Eating infected meat allows the parasite to infect humans
06 Which father and son team won the 1915 physics prize for their work on determining the structure of crystals using X-rays?
Marc Isambard Brunel and Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Harry Redknapp and Jamie Redknapp
George Bush and George W Bush
William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg
07 Stanley Prusiner won the medicine prize in 1997 for his discovery of prions, a biological agent of infection. With which disease have they been connected?
BSE
Foot and Mouth
Myxomatosis
Flu
08 Which of these is not a Nobel Prize category?
Physics
Chemistry
Economics
Mathematics
09 Apart from being a genius in your chosen subject, what else do you have to be to win a Nobel prize?
Alive
Swedish
Male
Over 6 foot tall
10 The Ig Nobel Prizes complement the real Nobel Prizes, they honour people whose achievements cannot or should not be reproduced! Which of these people did NOT win an Ig Nobel Prize this year?
Peter Barss for his work on injuries due to falling coconuts
David Schmidt for his work producing a partial solution to why shower curtains billow inwards
Lawrence W. Sherman for his work on studying glee in small groups of preschool children
William S. Knowles and Ryoji Noyori for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions
11 There is no limit to the number of Nobel prizes you can win. How many Nobel prizes did Einstein win?
None
One
Three
Five
Answers:
1= Dissolved in acid 2= Bucky Balls 3= A Mould 4= Dynamite 5= When they bite 6= The Braggs 7= BSE 8= Mathematics 9= Alive 10= Knowles & Noyori 11= One
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