The Nerd Herd Trivia Quiz

Answer: Francis Beaufort

Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857) developed the "Beaufort wind force scale" around 1830. As Britain became the preeminent sea power in the world it became desirable to have as much standardization as possible in several key areas. One such area was the description of weather conditions: upon entering a new geographic area one sea captain might describe the wind as 'a strong breeze' where another captain might call it 'a driving gale'. Beaufort, building on the work of others, devised a 13-class scale (0 to 12) of wind and sea conditions.

It has been tinkered with over the years but retains the basic elements Beaufort set forth.

Answer: Stephen Hawking

Theoretical physics involves predictions of physical events which we are, at least currently, unable to see or measure, such as a black hole. Stephen Hawking was a leading theoretical physicist and in many of his books tried to explain some of these fantastic ideas in layman's terms. Hawking had a progressive motor neuron disease, was almost completely paralyzed and communicated through a speech-generating device.

He died in 2018 at the age of 76.

Answer: Werner Heisenberg

All four of these physicists worked on quantum mechanics. (Planck is credited with originating the theory) but Werner Heisenberg published the 'uncertainty principle'. To try to explain it simply, it says you can't measure an atomic particle's position and momentum at the same time. It's also a stumbling block with matter transportation, which is why in "Star Trek" the transporter mechanisms have a 'Heisenberg Compensator': it allows atoms to be returned to their original position after transport. Got that?

Answer: Marie Curie

Marie Sklodowska-Curie coined the term while she was working with uranium rays for a possible thesis subject. Her work led her to consider the use of radioactive isotopes to treat abnormal cell growth. She, her husband Pierre and Henri Becquerel shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work in identifying the elements radium and polonium.

Answer: Alan Turing

Alan Turing spent the war years at Bletchley Park in England, decoding Axis transmissions. After the war he, alone and with others, developed designs of what would become stored-program computers. He was instrumental in developing algorithms and artificial intelligence. He developed the "Turing test" - a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. By using the test, one might be able to determine if they were interacting with a human being or a computer.

Answer: Tetsuya Fujita

The Fujita scale, or Fujita-Pearson scale, was developed in 1971 by Tetsuya Fujita and Allen Pearson. It established six categories (0 to 5) according to wind speed and damage. It was revised in 1973, and in 2007 the Enhanced Fujita Scale started to replace it, taking into account wind, damage, tornado path length and other variables.

Answer: Erwin Schrödinger

No, it wasn't Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat", it was Dr. Schrödinger's cat in the box. (Note that it was a hypothetical, 'mental' experiment and did not need carrying out for real). This is much too complicated to discuss in a Fun Trivia quiz, but here we go: Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist who had his own interpretation of quantum theory, the quantum theory of superposition.

In 1935 he proposed a so-called 'thought' experiment to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter on the microscopic level and what is visible to the naked eye.

In the hypothetical experiment a cat, a vial of poison, a spring-loaded hammer and a radioactive source were placed in a box. If an internal monitor detected radioactivity (i.e. even a single atom decaying), the hammer broke the vial, released the poison and killed the cat.

The theory posits that the cat might be alive and dead simultaneously and our observation of it by opening the box changes the outcome.

The term paradox is often used in regards to the experiment. No doubt some of you will grasp the idea immediately; for those who don't, you're in good company, Einstein thought it was a poor analogy. In fact, Einstein suggested polemically (and probably tauntingly) that Schrödinger replace the vial of poison with a container of gunpowder.

Answer: Edwin Hubble

American Edwin Hubble, while working at the Mount Wilson observatory in California in the early 1920s, theorized and then proved that distant objects were separate galaxies. He also noticed that the universe seemed to be expanding. Looking at his theory in reverse indicated that the universe began at a single point: the "Big Bang Theory".

Answer: Alessandro Volta

Working with principles discovered by Luigi Galvani and others, Alessandro Volta designed a 'voltaic pile', an early electric battery, at the end of the 18th century. It used copper and zinc electrodes and either sulfuric acid or saltwater brine as electrolyte. Current automotive batteries are of a lead-acid type but essentially the same as Volta's design.

Answer: Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton was a 17th and 18th century English physicist and mathematician whose book "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" set the path to modern physics, dealing primarily with large objects that were not moving close to the speed of light (a man born in Germany would address that in the 20th century). He defined the laws of gravity, and with Gottfried Leibniz invented calculus. Yes, blame those guys!