Quiz: Battle of the Sciences

Izzie - It’s now QUIZ time! As promised we have a little quiz for our panel, please do play along at home. Don’t look so worried everyone, it’s going to be OK.

Team 1 is Ben and Howard

Team 2 is Kit and Bill

ROUND 1

There are three rounds - round one is More or Less…

Team 1 - Ben and Howard

Q1: Does a Bee hummingbird weigh more or less than a 1p coin?

Ben - A Bee Hummingbird. Now that’s interesting. I would think they would certainly be types of hummingbirds that weigh more than a 1p coin.

Howard - But I think from the sound the bee hummingbird. I mean to be or not to be that is the question. I would say could weigh less.

Ben - It’s a trick question. I’m a colonial I must say, so I have not got a lot of experience with 1p coins but can you really fathom a bird that weighs less than that?

Izzie - I’m going to have to hurry you.

Howard - I’d would say yes.

Ben - Okay. I’ll go with the biologist, let’s go with less then.

Izzie - Congratulations.

A: Less - a 1p coin weighs 3.56g, a bee hummingbird - found in Cuba - on average weighs just 1.8g

Ben - Wow.

Team 2 - Kit and Bill

Izzie -  How do you feel in quizzes, are we good at them?

Kit - Well I was in the worst scoring University Challenge team of all time. So no!

Bill - I did win a quiz at school once.

Q2: Is the height of the Elizabeth Tower, home to Big Ben in London, more or less than the height of the tallest Redwood tree in california?

Kit - Wow. I mean, The redwood trees grow pretty big.

Bill - Yeah. My gut instinct here would be to say the tree’s bigger.

Kit - Yeah. I think the biggest tree is called the General Sherman. I might be wrong with that and it’s a fair old size, so I think the tree is probably bigger.

Izzie - So you're saying that redwoods are bigger?

Kit - Bigger, yes.

Izzie - Correct. Less: Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, the tallest being 116 m tall, that’s 380 ft. The Elizabeth tower that’s home to Big Ben is just 96m.

Round Two - Animal magic…

Team 1 - Ben and Howard

Q3: What do you call a group of flamingos?

  A - A fiend
  B - A flamboyance
  C - A fortune

Ben - I feel like any of them are appropriate but I might have said something like a festival of flamingos if it was up to me. I like flamboyance.

Howard - Yes. It sounds reasonable to me. I'll go with that.

Ben - Unless, do you have any leaning?

Howard - No, I have no idea whatsoever so I'll go with you.

Ben - I'm going to go with the flamboyance of flamingos.

Izzie - Bill, you can’t give a thumbs up to help you’re supposed to be on the other team.

Bill - He’d already got the right answer!

Izzie - Well, let’s hear it. Correct.

Team 2 - Kit and Bill

Izzie - Similar question…

Q4: What do you call a group of ferrets?

A - A bulk
B - A band
C - A business 

Kit - Well, I think I know this one.

Bill - Oh great. Well you were on University challenge so I'll let you make the decision.

Kit - Oh don't say that now. What were you going to go for?

Bill - I've no idea. Probably the last one.

Kit - I think it is a business of ferrets.

Izzie - Well very well done. It is indeed.

We had a lot of fun in the office exploring this.. You can also have a conspiracy of lemurs, a smack of jellyfish, a kaleidoscope of butterflies, a leap of leopards - but I digress…

Round three - true or false?

All to play for on this round

Team 1 - Ben and Howard

Q5: There are more people that have lived on the International Space Station than there are elements in the periodic table?

Ben - Okay. That's a great question. I was going to say ‘The International Space Station, there's not that many’ - but there's also not that many elements - it's like 100 and something and change

Howard - About 170, 120 is it? Hmm.

Ben - I would think there haven't been that many people living on the ISS.

Howard -  Yeah. I would imagine because they tend to stay there for quite a long time. Once they've been put up into orbit and they've had a limited number of shuttles that have been able to deliver them and bring them back, so shall we go for less?

Ben  - Yeah. Less ISS than elements in the periodic table. Yeah, let's go for it.

Howard - Yeah, yeah.

Ben. That’s false.

Izzie - Very well done.

A: False. There are 118 elements in the periodic table but only 109 people have lived on the international space station. 

Izzie -I was hoping to catch you out with that one!

Team 2 - Kit and Bill - True or False?

Q6: The total length of blood vessels from the average person is enough to go around the world two and a half times

Kit - What do you think.

Bill - You're looking at me right.

Kit - I'm absolutely looking at you as the physiologist.

Bill - This is like watching a penalty shootout isn't it? There are a lot of blood vessels. Okay I'm going to have a guess - I think it's true.

Izzie - It is true.

A: True - An average human has 100,000km of blood vessels and the Earth’s circumference is 40,000km

Izzie - Right so that means it’s over to a tiebreaker, closest wins.

Q: How many patents did Thomas Edison get in the US?

All - *whispering*

Izzie - Team 1, have you got an answer do you think?

Ben - We're going to guess 175.

Izzie - 175. Team two?

Kit - Shall we go 176?

Bill - Let's go higher.

Kit - 400?

Bill - 402.

Izzie - Well, I can announce that team 2 are the winners. But you are quite far off.

A: 1093. He had 512 worldwide patents, but over a thousand in the US. Shunpei Yamazaki has over 5000 patents in the US!

Congratulations team 2. You are our big brains of the month.

Kit, you didn’t do the best on University Challenge but you’ve won our monthly quiz.

Ben - A much higher prize.