Turn Away Trivia Quiz

Answer: Revolver

The cylinder which revolves has separate chambers into which the bullets are placed. The revolver has a mechanism that makes the cylinder move the next bullet in line for firing when you cock the hammer. Most early revolvers had six chambers in the cylinder, leading to them being called six-shooters. Have you ever played the game of counting how many shots television action scenes can show characters producing from a single weapon, without having any time to reload?

Answer: Spinning wheel

Both spin and wheel can be used as synonyms for turn, so this one is a double-header! Before the development of the spinning wheel, fibres (wool cotton, silk, etc.) were spun into thread or yarn with a hand-held spindle and distaff. Spinning wheels started the mechanisation of weaving, replacing the distaff with a wheel that could be turned around to form the thread while the raw fibre was fed into it. Adding a treadle to rotate the wheel and setting it up to accept feeds from multiple spindles were steps along the way to the development of the spinning jenny, one of the key inventions leading to the Industrial Revolution. (A revolution is also a kind of turn, so there's a third synonym for you.)

Answer: Bread roll

A bread roll is simply a small loaf of bread, often small enough to provide a single serving. They may be served as an accompaniment to a meal (as is the case for the dinner roll, often served with a portion of butter) or they may be sliced in half and used to hold fillings. Bread rolls come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Long rolls are used to make sandwiches known variously as submarines, hoagies, heroes, grinders, etc.

Answer: Circle

Locus is a word that means a group of points that satisfy a given condition. For a circle, they are all the same distance (called the radius of the circle) away from a fixed point, called its centre. The Cartesian equation of a circle with radius r and centre at the point (h,k) is given by: (x-h)^2 + (y-k)^2 = r^2. Locus definitions can be given for many different shapes, including these alternative definitions for conic sections: a parabola is the locus of points for which the distance to a fixed point (called the focus) is equal to the distance to a fixed line (called the directrix); an ellipse is the locus of points for which the sum of the distances to two fixed points (the focii of the ellipse) has a constant value; a hyperbola is the locus of points for which the difference between the distances to two fixed points has a constant magnitude.

Answer: Ferris wheel

The original Ferris wheel had 36 cars, each of which held up to 60 people, 40 seated and 20 standing. For a 50-cent ticket, passengers got a 20 minute ride that took them through two complete turns of the wheel. Every second rotation was non-stop; the alternate ones involving stops to drop off the passengers who were finishing their second circuit, and replace them with more.

It was developed in an attempt to produce a more spectacular feat of engineering than the Eiffel Tower, which had been unveiled in 1889 at the Paris International Exposition, and was a stunning success, despite the original fears (shared by many acrophobes, including myself, contemplating it and/or its successors) as to its safety. Over 2.5 million passengers had a ride before it was demolished in 1906.

Answer: Curdle

Milk that goes sour because you didn't get around to drinking it in time is often said to have turned - it smells sour, and can often be seen to have curdled. When you are making cheese, however, the souring process is necessary to make the milk protein coagulate and produce the curds that will be used for the cheese.

This can be done using an acid (such as lemon juice or vinegar) or an enzyme, such as is found in rennet. After this first step, the cheese-making process can proceed in many different ways, which is why there are so many varieties of cheese available (unless you happen to visit the cheese chop in the Monty Python skit).

Answer: Spiral

As can be seen, a spiral is formed as the shell grows, with each chamber being formed after an angular turn that makes them lie along a circular path of increasing radius. This shape, called a whorl, is commonly found in the shells of molluscs, especially snails, whose shells gain layers due to growth.

The nautilus is a cephalopod (same class as the octopus and squid) with many tentacles - often nearly a hundred of them. The nautilus is the only cephalopod currently known which has an external shell; the rest have internal shells.

Answer: Swivel chair

As well as being able to swivel around, most office chairs have vertical adjustments so that the person using it can have their legs in an optimal position for work that involves extended periods of sitting. Better ones also have adjustable backs, allowing the desired amount of support in the right part of the back when in a working position. Getting your new chair properly adjusted can take a lot of fiddling, but it is well worth it if you will be spending your entire working day there!

Answer: Hairpin bend

The term hairpin bend is sometimes used loosely in reference to any sharp bend, but it technically means one which involves a complete reversal of direction (turning through 180 degrees or very close to that much). This makes the two stretches of road have a physical relationship similar to that of the two arms of a hairpin.

They are most commonly found in roads which are located on very steep slopes - the road goes across the face at a slight incline, reverses direction to travel back at a slightly higher (or lower, depending on whether you are going up or down) level, and repeating until the top (or bottom) is reached.

They are also called switchbacks in some parts of the world.

Answer: Rotation

Rotation is one of the types of transformation processes which shapes may undergo in which their actual shape and size is not changed. Others include translation (sliding, or movement in a given direction with no change in shape or orientation) and reflection (flipping, or reversing its orientation with respect to a fixed line or plane).

The final shape is said to be congruent to the original one. Other transformations can change the shape - dilation makes it uniformly larger, compression makes it smaller. If the final shape is the same as the original one except for being a different size, the two are said to be similar.

Here endeth the geometry lesson.