-"and" Trivia Quiz

Humans are special among animals in that they walk on only two feet, which allowed the upper limbs to develop into agile hands to hold and manipulate things with. How you hold your hand can also indicate an intention - you could greet someone, warn someone, or, as shown in this picture, show you are ready to receive an object.

You can even speak a full language with your hands - sign Language, a way to communicate with people who would be unable to hear what you are saying.

To stand means to be at rest in an upright position. In many cases, a standing object or person can be toppled to a different position we then call lying down.

Standing in the middle of the road like the man in this picture does is very dangerous unless you know for certain no cars can be coming because the road is closed. Don't do it - if you wish to stand and look around, do so in a safe place!

A band is a group of musicians playing instruments together to play popular music.

Most bands in pop and rock music include at least one drummer, one bassist and one person playing an electric guitar. Often, there will also be a keyboarder. Some bands - such as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones - do their own singing while playing, while others perform for a solo vocalist.

The equivalent for classical music would be an orchestra or, in the case of smaller groups, there are names that refer to the number of instruments involved, such as a string quartet, which consists of four instruments.

The surface of the Earth is composed of sea and land, with the sea covering a little more than two thirds and land being only the last third. Humans, like most air-breathing animals, live on the land and depend on it for food.

One great problem that our generation and the coming ones need to address is to better manage the use and conservation of land as a space to live: Our lives and that of most animals and plants on this planet depend on a careful balance of taking and giving back and humans have taken and destroyed far more than their fair share.

You have probably heard of wands in the Harry Potter books, but their use in rituals, both religious and mundane, is almost as old as human culture itself. A wand is, at its most basic, a stick held in one hand, but is usually specially prepared, for example with aromatic oils, or, as shown here, attaching a crystal to the tip.

Wands are also one of the four suits of the tarot, from which our playing cards evolved. They represent the classical element of fire and their modern equivalent is the suit of clubs.

This was probably a bit more difficult: the Rand is the currency of South Africa. One Rand is significantly less than a dollar: it was worth about five cents in 2023 which makes it similar to many currencies where the unit is worth about one small piece of hard candy.

More famous than the Rand itself however is the pictured Krugerrand. A full Krugerrand is a gold coin containing one ounce of pure gold. In the 1970s it was the first such coin and more or less became the standard for gold coins. Today, people who want to buy gold coins have various choices, among them the Canadian Maple Leaf and the US Gold Eagle.

Another slightly difficult one although this is a rather well-known picture: Among the many things called "grand", the Grand Canyon is probably the most famous one. The picture shows the famous Horseshoe Bend, a place where the Colorado River makes a full U-turn between the well-known sandstone rocks.

Today, the term "brand" is usually associated with goods being sold, but that term directly derives from the brands farmers used (and sometimes still use) to mark their livestock.

Branding is a very painful procedure where a red hot iron bearing a unique mark is pressed to the animal's skin, causing a deep burn wound in the shape of the branding iron. When that wound heals, it leaves a permanent, often blackened, scar on the skin, thus identifying the animal's owner. There are more humane and more reliable methods available for animal identification today, particularly the small computer chips you can implant with a simple syringe (a common method to mark pets), but branding is still being practiced.

You may think of sand as very common, but that is only partially true. In fact, high quality sand is a very precious and limited resource needed to produce glass and computer chips and sand of sufficient quality and purity is becoming scarce.

This is one of many examples where humans have once thought of a natural resource as almost infinite only to painfully realize it is anything but that.

If you associated the word "strand" with the picture of sand and seashells, you'd not be entirely wrong, because "strand" can also mean a beach or coastline. However, in this case, I was looking for the strands of hair (and you need the oceanside picture to cover "sand").

Besides hair, another thing that comes in strands is called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) - now there's a big word. What that means is a special molecule in every cell of your body that makes you just as you are: your genetic code.