Making Gold From Lead Trivia Quiz

Answer: Head

A head can also be the leader of an operation, and can often refer to the top or front of several objects (e.g. edge of a knife used for cutting, top of a page, or the top of a pillar).

Fun fact: A cockroach can live for up to a month after being decapitated. This is because, unlike humans who bleed profusely, cockroaches can quickly seal off the blood flow at the neck by clotting the blood. In addition, their breathing is not controlled by their brain, so they don't suffocate. Finally, being a cold-blooded creature, the hardy bugs require relatively little energy to live: one hearty meal can last weeks. Despite their hardiness, they won't do a whole lot without their head other than wait around aimlessly.

Answer: Herd

The verb 'to herd' can also connotate the control or collection of a group of animals of the same species. A naturally occurring herd does not necessarily form for any planned reason. It may be to serve as a risk-dilution factor against predators.

Answer: Hard

The hardest known natural substance in the world is diamond; in terms of scratch hardness at least, since it cannot be scratched by any other material. This is because the carbon atoms which form diamond are latticed together in an equidistant and consistent manner.

They are also tightly packed due to spending over a billion years deep under the earth. However, a diamond is brittle, because of the uniform lattice, and if struck along the grain, can easily shatter. So I guess diamonds aren't forever after all.

Answer: Hare

Although hares and rabbits look similar, they also have many differences. Rabbits are born naked and vulnerable, needing their mother to help protect them with foliage and their own hair to hide and keep them warm. Hares are born with a complete coat of fur and can live independently very soon after birth.

Typically, hares are larger than rabbits, especially their ears and hind legs. Unlike rabbits, a hare's hair (yay homophone) changes in colour seasonally, from brownish in summer to white in winter.

Rabbits typically live underground in burrows or tunnels, coming out to eat when it is safe. Hares, however, always stay on the surface and run from any predator it might meet.

Finally, rabbits are socially grouped animals living in colonies and the males can fight each other for dominance and to determine who gets to mate with the females. Meanwhile, hares rarely stick together other than for mating purposes. So, hopefully there are enough clues there to discern a hare from rabbit, should one be met.

Answer: Rare

Typically, whether something is rare or not is subjectively defined, and the proportions, quantities and so on vary for each object or event it's applied to. Rare items can be perceived positively or negatively; for example a rare disease is harmful and undesirable, but a rare gem like red beryl can be highly sought after.

Rare can also describe lightly cooked meat; although one has to be careful not to cook it 'too' lightly, lest they suffer food poisoning! In addition, 'Rare' was a British video game developer who made best-selling games like "Donkey Kong Country" and "Banjo-Kazooie", although they were bought out by Microsoft in 2002.

Answer: Mare

A female horse is termed a mare after her fourth birthday, except in thoroughbred racing, where it is after her fifth birthday. The mare has a gestation period of eleven months and gives birth to just one foal (or perhaps twins if she is 'lucky'!). However, the horse is not fertile in winter months therefore preventing conception. This is most likely to prevent giving birth during the harsh cold and risking the newborn foal's life.

When fermented, mare's milk is called kumis and has been a Mongol specialty for many years. The fermentation is necessary because the high lactose content makes mare's milk a laxative and therefore not too fun to drink, unsurprisingly! However, cow's milk is generally preferable as it has less lactose, and more fat and protein. Also, Holstein cows produce around 10,000 litres of milk in a year, compared to the 1,000 litres or so from horses, making it more commercially viable.

Answer: More

'More' is a quantifier that can be applied to one particular thing in comparison with itself, or with other(s). A more can also be a moral or socially defined standard of behaviour, and are strongly held like taboos: break a more, and people will not be happy. The term was brought to fruition by US sociologist William Graham Sumner in 1906.

Finally, Thomas More was a counsellor to Henry VIII and coined the term 'utopia' to describe an ideal society with a perfect legal system. One of its meanings can derive from Greek as 'no place', possibly suggesting that this place will never actually exist. He was beheaded when he would not agree to the act of signing Henry VIII's Act of Succession to make daughter Elizabeth next in line to the throne. This was largely because Henry also wanted to separate the Church of England from the Catholic Church, an act More strongly disagreed with.

Answer: Core

The core is generally thought of as consisting of two regions: the inner core and outer core. The outer core and inner core are both mostly made of iron (around 80%) and nickel, with small amounts of light elements present in the outer core as well. The outer core is liquid, whereas the inner core is solid. The outer core has a useful quality of creating the Earth's magnetic field through its fluid metal movements. It has been hypothesised that without the magnetic field, Earth would lose its atmosphere in the same way that Mars lost its atmosphere: to the solar wind of charged particles emitted by the sun.

The inner core is about 70% the size of the Moon and is estimated to be up to 7000C at the centre (compared with an estimate of 6100C at the hottest regions of the outer core). If, at the crust, we endure one atmospheric unit of pressure, the inner core endures 3 million units. That's a lot of pressure, and it's why the inner core is solid despite the huge temperatures.

Answer: Cord

A rope is a type of cord, and cord is also used in the wonderful world of sewing as a fastener or decoration of its own right. Other types of cord are the umbilical cord, used to ferry nutrients to a baby still in a human mother's womb, and the spinal cord, nervous tissue within the vertebrae in our back, particularly implicated in human movement, especially reflex movements.

A cord can also transfer electrical energy to an appliance, and can also refer to a bundle of firewood 4 by 4 by 8 feet long and totaling a volume of 128 cubic feet.

There are even more types of cord out there - it's a popular word!

Answer: Cold

Cold can describe a low temperature, either in comparison with something, or freestanding. Although it is a subjective descriptor in experiential terms, a colder object has less vibration of particles than a hotter object. This is one of the primary reasons we refrigerate food; as it will naturally decay over time, the reduction in particle speed will slow this process. Absolute zero refers to the theoretical temperature where there is no molecular movement: although this temperature has not yet been reached, scientists have come within a degree of the fabled number.