Aristotle's elements - 5: All Together Quiz

Answer: The Grapes of Wrath

Published in 1939, "The Grapes of Wrath" tells the story of the Joad family who joined many small farmers from the dust bowl states (they are from Oklahoma) in trying to make a new life in California. It is an intensely empathetic book which by implication is critical of banks and of existing farmers in California who are depicted as treating the newcomers badly. The book became one of the most controversial - and most popular - in American literature and gained a Pulitzer prize in 1940 before being cited by the Nobel prize committee as one of their reasons for awarding the Literature prize to Steinbeck in 1959.

Not surprisingly, Hollywood took an interest and in 1940 Henry Fonda portrayed the lead character, Tom Joad, in a film based on the novel. The novel has also inspired musicians from Woody Guthrie to Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Springsteen and Mumford and Sons as well as providing the material for an opera by Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie.

Answer: David Bowie

This film followed a couple of years after Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" period so he was already associated with the concept of extra-terrestrial life. In this film he is an alien who looks like a human and is seeking to transport water to his drought-stricken planet. The film has developed a cult following and has a reputation as making an important contribution to science fiction cinema.

Answer: iron and nickel

The earth's inner core, though at a temperature of 5,400 degrees Celsius, (Centigrade) is solid because of the intense pressure on it. The outer core contains mostly the same two metals - iron and nickel - but with lower pressure they are in liquid form. The rotation of this liquid as the earth spins creates the earth's magnetic field.

Above these two levels are the mantle and then the crust, which is a narrower layer at the surface.

Answer: The Hollies

This beautiful song took the Hollies, a close harmony vocal group from Manchester, England, to number two in the British charts, number six in the US Billboard Hot Hundred and to number one in the Netherlands, New Zealand and South Africa. Other hits by the Hollies included "I'm Alive", "Bus Stop", "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress".

By the time "The Air that I Breathe" was released one of the founder members, Graham Nash, had left the group and was working in the USA as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Answer: Air conditioning

There had been experiments with air cooling systems previously but Carrier developed a practical method which not only regulated the temperature of air in a building but also controlled its humidity. As well as making working conditions more comfortable for workers, it was beneficial in enabling the working of sensitive materials such as paper and some textiles where it helped to provide consistency and so prevent damage due to over stretching.

Answer: World War One

The music for the ballad style song was written in 1914 by Ivor Novello with lyrics by the American Lena Guilbert Ford.

The song became a feature of music hall performances during the war, often sung with great emotion by the families of serving soldiers. The lyrics encouraged those working in the Home Front to keep up their spirits during the tensions of wartime.

Answer: St. Elmo's Fire

Named for the patron saint of sailors (properly St. Erasmus but commonly called St. Elmo), this remarkable phenomenon is a continuous spark normally attached to an object like a ship's mast or an aircraft's wing. The technical term for this is a "glow discharge" and it is an impressive sight as it flickers in blue and violet light along the object it touches.

Sightings of St. Elmo's Fire have been reported in writings dating back to Roman times and are common in accounts of voyages in the Middle Ages.

Answer: Pacific Ocean

The Ring of Fire is shaped roughly like a horseshoe and runs right round the edge of the Pacific Ocean from New Zealand to Chile via Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and the West Coast of the USA and Central America. It is 40,000 kilometres in length and is home to three quarters of all the volcanoes on earth.

Answer: Ring of Bright Water

While this may seem an unlikely theme for a best selling book which became the inspiration for a film in 1969, the story of how the author brought Mijbil from Iran and raised it in a remote part of Lochaber caught the public imagination. The quality of Maxwell's writing and his obvious love of nature has led the book to be seen as one of the finest accounts of interaction between humans and nature.

It is appropriate that, discovering the otter to have been a member of a formerly uncatalogued subspecies, the subspecies was named after Gavin Maxwell.

Answer: Heavy Water

Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen which has a neutron as well as a proton in its nucleus. It is found naturally in extremely small quantities so for industrial purposes it is manufactured specially. Heavy water has industrial uses in the nuclear power industry, in some aspects of medicine and in scientific research.

It is also used in the process of extracting the plutonium used in nuclear weapons.