General Knowledge Flashcards
(82 cards)
0
Q
How many sides does a dodecagon have?
A
12
1
Q
In which part of the brain does the vertebrate hindbrain control the unconscious coordination of movement and balance?
A
Cerebellum
2
Q
What are hues that have been lightened by white called?
A
Tints
3
Q
On July 23, 2003, Bill Mueller of the Boston Red Sox became the Major League History to hit what from both sides of the plate in the same game?
A
Grand Slam (NOT home run)
4
Q
The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic states that any positive integer can be represented in exactly one way as a product of what?
A
Primes / Prime Numbers
5
Q
Which novel tells the story of the Earnshaw and Linton families?
A
“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte
6
Q
Who was the Whig-like President that fought in the Wat of 1812 and won the nickname “Old, Rough, and Ready”?
A
Zachary Taylor
7
Q
What name was given to the alliance between the Soviet Union and Communists in Eastern Europe between 1959 and 1989?
A
Warsaw Pact
8
Q
In “The Diary of Anne Frank,” how old is Anne when the diary opens?
A
13
9
Q
Who was the first woman from the United States to go into space?
A
Sally Ride
10
Q
What was the first federal antitrust measure passed in 1890 to promote economic competition?
A
Sherman Antitrust Act
11
Q
In “Gone With The Wind,” Rhett Butler was expelled from which military institution?
A
West Point
12
Q
Let A and B be arbitrary subsets of a universal set I. What mathematical property says that A union B equals B union A?
A
Commutative Property / Commutativity
13
Q
Who joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952 and served as the President of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991?
A
Mikhail Gorbachev
14
Q
Which Danish physicist, using the work of Planck and Einstein in 1913, founded the theory of quantum mechanics and received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922?
A
Niels Bohr
15
Q
What is the 4th subphase of mitosis in which the chromatids of each chromosome separate and the daughter chromosomes move to the poles of the cell?
A
Anaphase
16
Q
Who wrote “The Measurements of the Circle”?
A
Archimedes
17
Q
What name was given to the 1787 plan for the creation of a bicameral legislation?
A
Great Compromise
18
Q
How many minutes are there in 30 days?
A
43,000
19
Q
What metabolic pathway synthesizes a complex molecule from simpler compounds?
A
Anabolic pathway
20
Q
Oxidation occurs through what electrode?
A
Anode
21
Q
What name was given to the U.S. retaliation in 1961 which was an unsuccessful attempt to destabilize the Cuban government?
A
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
22
Q
Which branch of mathematics studies the rate of change of quantities and the length, area, and volume of objects?
A
Calculus
23
Q
In which novel is Tom Joad released from prison after serving four years for a manslaughter conviction?
A
“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
24
One gross ton is equal to exactly how many pounds?
2240 pounds
25
What two countries were not invited to the 1948 Olympics?
Japan and Germany
26
Frida Kahlo was married to which famous painter?
Diego Rivera
27
In terms of radians, what is 22.5 degrees?
pi
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8
28
Which Shakespeare work begins on a Venice street with Roderigo and Iago arguing?
Othello
29
What type of clay is baked in a kiln and hardened to a red-earth tone?
Terra-cotta
30
Assuming interest compounded annually, how much interest is earned on a $500 investment with an interest rate of 10% per year after two years?
$100
31
This Hindu concept is described as the set of all actions, conscious and unconscious, and their consequences, foreseen and unforeseen.
Karma
32
Name the Norwegian painter of The Scream
Edvard Munch
33
Quarks are believed to be fundamental subatomic particles, but they never occur in isolation. What term refers to any particle that is comprised of quarks?
Hadron
34
Name the Austrian naval commander whose war time exploits are far less known than the musical talents of his wife and children as told in the play and film The Sound of Music.
Georg von Trapp
35
Iapetus is the third largest moon of this gas giant studied by Cassini and Huygens?
Saturn
36
Name the hormone that is produced by the posterior pituitary gland and facilitates birth and breastfeeding and hits a peak amount during labor.
Oxytocin
37
Name France's second longest river which famously flows through Paris and Rouen.
Seine
38
Name this series of relief and recovery efforts overseen by the Franklin Roosevelt administration in response to the Great Depression.
New Deal
39
This time period during the Age of Reptiles is in between the Triassic and Cretaceous periods and saw the appearance of the first birds.
Jurassic Period
40
Large coal deposits formed during this geological period that is named after coal. It contains the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian periods, and amniote eggs developed during it.
Carboniferous Period
41
This period that saw the first evidence of plant life on land ended with a pair of mass extinctions that resulted in the deaths of over sixty percent of marine invertebrates.
Ordovician Period
42
The Stuarts were overthrown in this event in 1688 that saw the removal of James II from the throne. William and Mary became became co-rulers of England following it.
Glorious Revolution
43
Name this equation that describes the quantum state of a physical system. It is named for an Austrian physicist and is often used to determine the wavefunction.
Schrödinger’s Equation
44
The Baha’i House of Justice is located in Haifa, a city in this country. Other holy sites in this nation include the Mount of Olives and the Dome on the Rock.
Israel
45
Angkor Wat is located in this modern-day country in southeast Asia with capital at Phnom Penh that was ruled by Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge.
Cambodia
46
Name this secondary-structure building block of proteins, which is formed by hydrogen bonding between every fourth amino acid. It has DNA-binding properties and is contrasted with beta sheets.
Alpha helix
47
The absence of genetic drift is necessary for this state of no-evolution. This theoretical state also requires random mating, no mutations, no selection, and no gene flow.
Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium
48
Name these organic compounds which are characterized by a hydroxyl functional group. Examples include ethanol and retinol.
Alcohol
49
These organic compounds can be formed by the Schmidt reaction, or just by the reaction of carboxylic acids or acyl chlorides with amines. They contain a bond between a carbon in a carbonyl group, and an adjacent nitrogen atom.
Amides
50
Name this empire who spoke the extinct Nesite language and whose capital was located at Hattusa. This empire was based in Anatolia.
Hittite Empire
51
Name this American composer who included the sections “The St. Gaudens in Boston Common” and “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” in his Three Places in New England.
Charles (Edward) Ives
52
Name this phase in meiosis where homologous chromosomes join into tetrads in preparation for lining up along the metaphase plate.
Prophase I [Prompt on “prophase.”]
53
The Great Vowel Shift produced the difference between modern English and this language, which Chaucer wrote in. It was displaced by the Chancery Standard, which became popular near London.
Middle English
54
Another concept in linguistics is this law describing the shift of stop consonants from Indo-European to Germanic. Its formulator was better known for folk tales.
Grimm’s Law
55
Name this law that states that force is equal to the time derivative of momentum, or, in the case of constant mass, that force equals mass times acceleration.
Newton’s Second Law of Motion [Accept logical equivalents.]
56
Name this medieval Spanish kingdom whose Queen Isabella joined it to another kingdom through her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon.
Kingdom of Castile
57
Identify this composer of Black and Tan Fantasy, Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington
58
Duke Ellington played this instrument that has 52 white keys and 36 black keys that can come in “grand”
and “upright” varieties.
Piano
59
This jazz pianist compiled many of his works in the albums Genius of Modern Music and composed the jazz standards “Straight, No Chaser” and “‘Round Midnight.”
Thelonius Monk
60
This branch of philosophy considers what is right and wrong, and tries to characterize and systematize how a person can act morally. Aristotle wrote a book on this concept named for his son Nichomachus.
Ethics
61
This branch of philosophy attempts to establish general rules for all of existence. David Hume famously wrote that this branch of philosophy should be condemned to the flames.
Metaphysics
62
Theodor Adorno famously wrote of this branch of philosophy that “it is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident.” Theorists like John Ruskin and Walter Pater all wrote in this branch of philosophy concerned with art.
Aesthetics
63
The set of rotations of one of these forms a group. When one of these puzzles is solved, each of the faces has squares of only one color.
Rubik’s Cube
64
Name this West African nation spanning the southwesternmost portion of the Sahara Desert that shares its name with an empire reaching its peak in the 14th century. It is located south of Algeria and east of Mauritania.
Republic of Mali
65
In this novel, the corrupt businessman Phil Connor rapes Ona, who dies in childbirth; later, Ona's first child, Antanas, drowns in a puddle of mud in a busy street. Name this work of muckraking literature by Upton Sinclair.
The Jungle
66
On Christmas night, 1776, George Washington's forces crossed the Delaware River and captured Hessian forces stationed in this New Jersey city.
Trenton
67
During this war, communist forces launched the 1968 Tet Offensive during a Lunar New Year ceasefire. The coordinated effort attacked numerous cities, include Hue and Saigon.
Vietnam War
68
On Yom Kippur in 1973, Syrian forces briefly retook the city of Quneitra in an assault on this territory, occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War.
Golan Heights
69
In 1918, a pandemic of this disease killed tens of millions of people worldwide. This disease was nicknamed "Spanish" because Spain, being neutral in World War I, was not censored from lowering morale by reporting on the disease.
(Spanish) influenza
70
More than one million citizens of this country were killed in a civil war between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In the midst of the civil war, this country signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers to withdraw from World War I.
Russia (accept Russian Federation or Soviet Russia, but do not accept or prompt on USSR)
71
In the 1910s and 20s, the Young Turks perpetrated a genocide on this ethnic group, in which the Ottoman Empire forced this group from their homeland. The modern Turkish government refuses to identify the event as a genocide.
Armenians (accept Armenian genocide or Armenian Holocaust, but do not prompt on Holocaust)
72
Name this British general whose fort at Yorktown, Virginia was sieged by forces under the Comte de Rochambeau and George Washington.
Lord Charles Cornwallis
73
This gas law defines a direct relationship between the volume and temperature of a gas at constant pressure. The ideal gas law combines it with Avogadro’s, Gay-Lussac’s, and Boyle’s laws.
Charles’s Law
74
This law states that the total pressure of a mixture of gases is equal to the sum of their partial pressures.
Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures
75
This World War II bombardier and friend of Milo Minderbinder desperately seeks to avoid dying after he witnesses Snowden’s death in a Joseph Heller novel.
Captain John Yossarian
76
This author made reference to Shakespeare with Mortal Coils and Brief Candles, and with a novel about John the Savage, Lenina Crowne, and Bernard Marx.
Aldous Leonard Huxley
77
Under the Greenwood Tree, a novel by this author, is a reference to Shakespeare’s As You Like It. This author titled another novel, Far From the Madding Crowd, after a Thomas Gray poem.
Thomas Hardy
78
This friend of Harper Lee was labeled a Southern Gothic writer for the short story collection Other Voices, Other Rooms. He also wrote In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Truman (Streckfus Persons) Capote
79
In one of his poems, a cistern of ale and a copy of the play Love’s Kingdom replace the ball and scepter in a ceremony crowning Shadwell as monarch of dullness. This man’s ode Alexander’s Feast was a sequel to his “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day,” while his other work besides the satire Mac Flecknoe includes Marriage a La Mode and such allegories for religious politics as Absalom and Achitophel and The Hind and the Panther. For 10 points, name this author of a 1677 play about Antony and Cleopatra entitled All for Love.
John Dryden
80
Typically, when a trough in a business cycle is not deep enough to be called a depression, it is referred to by this term. We may be experiencing one now.
Recession
81
On the right of this painting is a pink brocaded blanket held by a Hora. On the left, two figures blow rose petals toward the central figure, whose nude pose signifies an emergence out of prudish medieval art. That figure covers her privates with her long hair and stands on a scallop shell, emerging from the ocean. For 10 points, identify this Botticelli painting of a goddess.
The Birth of Venus
