What Does the Moon Smell Like?: 151 Astounding Science Quizzes (4 page)

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The Pencil Tree

Anyone who’s ever sharpened a pencil knows that it Q

smells of wood. What kind of wood? That depends on where your pencil was made. American-made pencils are usually cedar, Russian ones are white pine, WRITE

and pencils made in China are often basswood. Have you ever wondered how many pencils you can get

ON!

from a tree? I’ll give you a hint — more than enough to give one to every person in your school, or work-place.

How many pencils does an average cedar tree yield?

About the right number to give one to every person in . . .

a) Brasilia, Brazil

b) Canberra, Australia

c) Reykjavik, Iceland

d) Washington, DC, U.S.

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The Pencil Tree

How many pencils does an average cedar tree yield?

A

About the right number to give one to every person in . . .

a) Brasilia, Brazil

WRITE

b) Canberra, Australia

ON!

c) Reykjavik, Iceland

d) Washington, DC, U.S.

CORRECT ANSWER:

c) Reykjavik, Iceland

An average cedar yields approximately 172,000 pencils, about enough to give one to every person in Reykjavik. In Iceland, as in the rest of the world, the yellow pencil rules. Most of the billions of pencils made in the world every year are painted yellow, but there are other colours available too. In Argentina and Brazil, you’ll find black-painted pencils. In Australia and New Zealand, red ones are common; in

Germany, there are green as well as blue ones. In the Nordic countries, unpainted pencils are a popular nod to environmentalism, though they haven’t threatened the world dominance of the yellow pencil yet.

The colours on the outside of the pencil may vary, but when it comes to the hardness of the lead, the world is united. The most common pencil lead on the planet is HB, which stands for hard and black.

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Printing Like a Genius

The first time you printed your name, you were prob-Q

ably using the writing implement favoured by some of the most brilliant minds of all time. Albert Einstein worked out his theory of relativity in pencil, and WRITE

Thomas Edison carried one in his vest pocket for making notes. Author John Steinbeck went through ON!

60 pencils a day while writing
The Grapes of Wrath
.

Every time the point got dull, he picked up a fresh pencil. But what if you didn’t have that option? Say you had reams of lined paper, a passion for writing, but just one average-sized, new pencil.

What’s the maximum you could you write with an

average pencil?

a) 10 average-length magazine articles

b) a 12-volume encyclopedia

c) the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights

d) this book

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Printing Like a Genius

What’s the maximum you could you write with an averA

age pencil?

a) 10 average-length magazine articles

b) a 12-volume encyclopedia

WRITE

c) the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human ON!

Rights

d) this book

CORRECT ANSWER:

d) this book

Pencil makers claim that a pencil will write about 45,000 words. I suppose that depends on how long the words are, and how often you break the point and need to sharpen the pencil. But even with a few broken points, there should be enough lead in a pencil to write this book, provided you could do it in just one draft. (Good luck!) So how would you get pumped for the task of writing tens of thousands of words? You could do what famous novelist Ernest Hemingway did. He sharpened dozens of pencils to get himself in the mood to write. It obviously worked for him. I tried it, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with all those pencils when I sat down at my computer.

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COMPUTER FIRSTS

A Mouse in the House

The first computer mouse looked like a small block of Q

wood with a cable sticking out of it. Douglas

Engelbart patented his wooden mouse in 1970. Back then, a mouse was just a novelty that you might find in a computer lab. The first popular computer mouse came with the Apple Macintosh released in 1984.

When the designers were coming up with the new

concept for the Mac mouse, they built various prototypes. The very first conceptual prototype was made by Dean Hovey.

What did he use to make it? A . . .

a) butter dish and a roll-on deodorant ball

b) cardboard candy box and toy truck wheels

c) juice box and a small rubber ball

d) sardine tin and a catnip ball

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A Mouse in the House

What did he use to make it? A . . .

A

a) butter dish and a roll-on deodorant ball

b) cardboard candy box and toy truck wheels

c) juice box and a small rubber ball

COMPUTER

d) sardine tin and a catnip ball

FIRSTS

CORRECT ANSWER:

a) butter dish and a roll-on deodorant ball

Many prototypes followed, but the concept of the deodorant ball made it into the final design. The way that Hovey and his team designed the new mouse is called rapid prototyping. Instead of waiting for parts to be manufactured, they used whatever they could find to get the ball rolling, as it were. The Mac mouse was a hit with consumers, and a mouse population boom began when other companies started

releasing their own versions. These days, there’s a mouse in almost every house.

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First Computer Bug

The Mark II Aiken relay computer at Harvard

Q

weighed about as much as a triceratops and

measured about 15 metres (50 ft) by 18 metres (60 ft).

This early computing behemoth was controlled by COMPUTER

pre-punched paper tape, and could do basic math, but very slowly by today’s standards. Needless to say gigantic, one-of-a-kind computers like the Mark II FIRSTS

Aiken relay have been “extinct” for decades, yet some of the terms we use today have been around since the early days of computing.

What was the first computer bug?

a) moth

b) Trojan horse

c) virus

d) worm

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First Computer Bug

What was the first computer bug?

A

a) moth

b) Trojan horse

c) virus

COMPUTER

d) worm

FIRSTS

CORRECT ANSWER:

a) moth

When the Mark II Aiken relay computer kept making adding mistakes, its operators began to hunt for the cause of the malfunction. The computer had 13,000

relays, so it could have taken a long time to find the problem. But incredibly, it only took 20 minutes to figure out what was tripping up the computer — a moth trapped between the metal contact points of Relay 70 in Panel F. They removed the moth and

taped it into their logbook with the comment, “First actual case of bug being found.” The amusing story of how the operators had found the bug and “debugged”

the computer got around. This was in 1945, and it was probably the first time that the term “debug” was used in reference to a computer.

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First Computer Programmers

If you wanted to set the ENIAC computer up in your Q

living room, it would have to be the size of a banquet hall 30 metres (100 ft) long. The ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was the first COMPUTER

large-scale, electronic, digital computer that could be reprogrammed to solve a full range of problems.

Those who worked the massive machine were the

FIRSTS

world’s first computer programmers. Can you believe that no one thought to honour these trailblazers for more than 50 years? By the time their work was recognized, several of them had died. So, who were these computer pioneers? Maybe you know . . .

Who were the first computer programmers?

a) female mathematicians

b) military electrical engineers

c) Phi Beta Kappa fraternity members

d) telephone operators

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First Computer Programmers

Who were the first computer programmers?

A

a) female mathematicians

b) military electrical engineers

c) Phi Beta Kappa fraternity members

COMPUTER

d) telephone operators

FIRSTS

CORRECT ANSWER:

a) female mathematicians

Most of the programming was done by six female

mathematicians in the mid 1940s: Kay McNulty,

Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman. ENIAC was a top-secret military project, and the women weren’t allowed on site to watch it being built. They had to figure out how to make the computer work by memorizing

drawings and diagrams. Because ENIAC had no stored programs, the women had to program every computer task by hand, by manipulating cables and switches —

many, many cables and switches. Only one ENIAC was ever built. It showed that electronic circuitry worked, and the rest is computer history. Or is it herstory?

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SUN GAZING

Average Joe Star

There are about 100 million stars just like our sun in Q

the Milky Way. Our sun is an average Joe, or Sol, hanging out in the suburbs of the galaxy. The sun is a middle-aged, yellow dwarf, and a bit on the cool side, but still the big guy in the solar system. If the sun wore pants, it would have to find a pair with a waist size of 4.3 million kilometres (2.7 million miles).

Those are big pants to fill. How big? Have you ever wondered how massive the sun is compared not just to Earth, but to everything else in the solar system?

How much of the solar system’s mass does the sun make up?

a) less than 33%

b) about 50%

c) close to 66%

d) more than 99%

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Average Joe Star

How much of the solar system’s mass does the sun A

make up?

a) less than 33%

b) about 50%

SUN

c) close to 66%

GAZING

d) more than 99%

CORRECT ANSWER:

d) more than 99%

If the sun wore pants, the rest of the solar system’s mass would fit into one of the pockets. Astronomers estimate that all the planets, their moons, every planetary ring, all the asteroids, meteoroids, and comets, every rock, pebble, speck of dust, and all the space junk, in the solar system add up to anywhere from 0.02% to 1% of the solar system’s mass. It may not be impressive compared to the biggest stars out there, but in our solar system you can’t get more massive than the sun.

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The Sunshine of Our Lives

What’s the most important thing for sustaining life?

Q

Are you thinking food? Water? Clean air? All of those things are, without a doubt, critical to life, but the most important thing is the sun, and the energy that SUN

it beams to Earth. Not only does it power all life on GAZING

the planet, but if we could collect all the sunshine that reaches us, it would be more than enough to meet the world’s energy needs. Now let’s take it one step farther. What if we could collect
all
of the sun’s energy, not just the rays that hit the planet.

How many planet Earths could the sun power?

About . . .

a) 3 million

b) 30 million

c) 3 billion

d) 30 billion

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The Sunshine of Our Lives

How many planet Earths could the sun power?

A

About . . .

a) 3 million

b) 30 million

SUN

c) 3 billion

GAZING

d) 30 billion

CORRECT ANSWER:

d) 30 billion

The sun’s total energy output is enough to provide solar power to more than 30 billion planet Earths. We only intercept a billionth of the sun’s output, and half of that gets scattered or bounced off the atmosphere.

Still, the amount of solar power that gets through is nothing to sneeze at. If you took the 187 cubic kilometres (116 cubic miles) of water in Lake Erie (one of the Great Lakes), and turned it into fuel oil, and you burned it all in one second, it would produce the same amount of energy as the sunlight that strikes Earth in a day. That’s a lot of solar power.

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A Stellar Old Age

Our sun is about halfway through its expected life-Q

span of 10 to 12 billion years. It will last longer than some stars, but not nearly as long as others. Some stars burn out in a few million years, but there are SUN

others that will last 100 billion years or more. If you’re GAZING

a star, what’s the secret of living to a stellar old age?

The stars that burn the longest are . . .

a) 100 times as massive as our sun

b) 10 times as massive as our sun

c) 5 times as massive as our sun

d) less than half the mass of our sun

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A Stellar Old Age

The stars that burn the longest are . . .

A

a) 100 times as massive as our sun

b) 10 times as massive as our sun

c) 5 times as massive as our sun

SUN

d) less than half the mass of our sun

GAZING

CORRECT ANSWER:

d) less than half the mass of our sun

When it comes to stellar longevity, size matters. Red dwarfs are the smallest stars, and last the longest, because they burn cooler. Burning cool means they’re dim, and that makes them hard to locate, never mind study. Even the largest red dwarf known is only a tenth as bright as our sun. But just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Some