The Great White Part 10: Neutral Noise Quiz

Answer: Blue and Red

Kieslowski's "Three Colours" trilogy was themed around the ideals of the French Revolution. The first installment, "Blue" was about liberty, the second, "White" about equality and finally "Red" was about fraternity. In each case, the topic is approached from a very unusual angle - in particular, "White"'s protagonist is promoting equality through deception and revenge.

Question submitted by WesleyCrusher.

Answer: Rafting

White water rafting generally includes a bunch of people in an inflatable boat trying to navigate a rushing waterway with paddles in their hands. There are six grades of difficulty in white water rafting, ranging from Class 1 (a bit rough every now and again) to Class 6 (there's a possibility of death or major injury). Safety equipment usually includes a helmet and life vest.

Question submitted by Lones78.

Answer: Bianca

The name Bianca is Italian in origin and means white. Shakespeare used this name in two of his plays. In "The Taming of the Shrew", the younger sister of the "shrew" is named Bianca. There is also a relatively minor character named Bianca in the play "Othello". She is the lover of Cassio, and unwittingly leads Othello to suspect that his wife, Desdemona, and Cassio are having an affair.

The other three names also mean "white" but were not used by Shakespeare.

Question submitted by zorba_scank.

Answer: Sailplane

From the first balsa/glass fibre 'sandwich' experimental sailplane, the 'Phoenix', which was designed and built at Akaflieg Stuttgart in the 1950s, fibreglass and related composites have been used to transform the performance of sailplanes. In the thirty years to the 1980s the performance of sailplanes more than doubled due to the new construction methods enabling higher aspect ratio wings and flaps capable of withstanding rough conditions at high speeds. In the 201's experimental sailplanes were achieving L/Ds of in excess of 70 - that is, if a sailplane was launched to the height of one kilometer in still, stable air, it would arrive on the ground 70 km away. Why are most sailplanes white? It was soon discovered that it was best to prevent overheating of the sailplane to preserve its structural integrity, although it's doubtful that with modern materials and curing techniques, whether that is still necessary. Certainly a thermal containing in excess of 30 - 50 all white sailplanes on a misty or cloudy day can keep the adrenaline levels high, maintaining a good lookout and separation.

Question submitted by windrush

Answer: Ghost Gum

The Ghost Gum (Corymbia aparrerinja) grows up to 20 meters (65 ft) and is an evergreen tree that is native to Central Australia. The ghost gum's white trunk stands out on the red soil plains that surround it. On moonlight nights the Ghost Gums seem to glow. The tree features in Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and gained prominence with the wider public in the 20th Century through the work of famous aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira. In 1891 in Barcaldine, Queensland, a gathering of sheep shearers was held at a Ghost Gum, known as the "Tree of Knowledge". This was the place where the striking sheep shearers voted for representation, leading to the creation of the Australian Labour Party.

Question submitted by em1958

Answer: A Crave Case

White Castle is a popular American fast food chain known for its small hamburger sliders. A Crave Case is a box of 30 sliders and a Crave Crate contains 100. The company was founded in Witchita, Kansas in 1921. The White Castle motif was to create a clean and sanitary atmosphere as many Americans considered ground beef to be unsanitary and unsafe to eat at the time.

Question submitted by Joepetz.

Answer: Valentine's Day

White Day is a follow up to Valentine's Day in a range of countries in the Far East, including China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and occurs on March 14 each year. While Valentine's Day in these countries is usually associated with women giving gifts of chocolate to men, White Day is supposed to be the occasion on which those men give gifts back in return.

The "tradition" only dates back to the late 1970s and was largely developed by the chocolate industry. Popular White Day gifts include marshmallows, white chocolate and cookies, but can be more expensive options, such as jewellery.

Question submitted by Fifiona81.

Answer: South Africa

Witwatersrand (translated from Dutch or Afrikaans as "White Water Edge" or "White Water Ridge") is a relatively long slope in South-Africa, on a part of which the city of Johannesburg has been built. The slope and the adjacent valleys consist of a thick layer of various hard sedimentary rocks: quartzite, iron deposits and lava residues, as well as softer rocks such as shale. South of Johannesburg the Witwatersrand contains rich gold ore sources.

Question submitted by JanIQ.

Answer: Painted a sample of the trees brown

The bark of paper birches has a high concentration of betulin, a plant substance occurring in a crystalline form, similar to that of snowflakes, which gives the bark its white appearance. Trees with white-coloured bark reflect most of the sun's rays, unlike trees with dark-coloured bark which absorb most of the sunlight. One would think that trees living in the coldest climates would want to absorb as much warmth as possible, but the opposite is true. There is a thin layer between the bark and the wood, the cambium, which contains regenerative cells essential to the trees' survival. Constant day-light warming and night-time cooling can damage this layer. The white-coloured bark helps the birches to maintain a more even temperature. Scientists testing the effect of white bark on the temperature of the cambium layer painted a sample of the trees brown and found that the trees painted brown had greater temperature variation and more damage.


Question submitted by pitegny.

Answer: Red, Green and Blue

All four of these color triplets are a set of primary colors: Red, blue and yellow are the artist's primary colors; cyan, magenta and yellow are the primaries for subtractive color mixing as used in printing and the seemingly strange triad of yellow, green and indigo is the closest approximation for the absorption maxima of human cones, the cells that provide us with color vision. However, the set the question was looking for is red, green and blue - the additive color set used to build display screens and digital projectors.

Question submitted by WesleyCrusher.