This is from Learned League’s one day challenges. I’ll give the answers tomorrow. Please don’t give the answers away, just comment until tomorrow 7AM Eastern Daylight Time!
There is only one rule in Learned League. DO NOT CHEAT. No googling, no asking your honey. From the rules: “If you cheat, you are a scumbag.”
I got 10 of 12. There are two parts to the scoring: the first part is 15 points for each correct answer. The second part is that you get to assign check marks to 5 questions. For each one of those that you got right, 15 points are assigned, then those answers are rated inversely by the % of players who also got it right. The better you did, the higher that question’s value, to a maximum of 75. I finished 63rd out of 2172. There were 5 players with perfect scores.
1. What chemical element, with a boiling point of 77 Kelvin, has found modern culinary use in rapidly cooling ice cream as a tableside trick? Chilling the ice cream faster than conventional methods allows for smaller ice crystals to form, leading to a smoother texture.
2. Spiciness is measured by the concentration of what compound (or group of compounds) within a pepper body? Wilbur Scoville, an American pharmacist, first developed the test and eponymous scale for this measurement in 1912.
3. Give the trade name of the Corning Inc. product trademarked in uppercase and made of borosilicate glass, a material with a particularly low coefficient of thermal expansion which allows for safe oven use. Corning later made a similar product (using soda-lime glass) with an even more similar name: the same as the product in question but in lowercase. Fear not, proper capitalization is not required here.
4. A popular science experiment in primary school involves making a non-Newtonian fluid (one whose viscosity depends on stress) using two common kitchen ingredients: 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water. What 7-letter, Seuss-inspired name does this concoction go by?
5. The botanical definition of a berry is "a fleshy fruit without a drupe (pit) produced from a single flower containing one ovary." Which one of these is NOT a botanical berry: cranberry, grape, strawberry, banana? The outlier is technically a pseudocarp (or accessory fruit or false fruit) as the edible flesh is the swollen receptacle of the flower.
6. What product is often applied to wooden goods such as cutting boards and salad bowls to prevent water absorption and preserve their lifetimes? A distillate of petroleum, a highly refined form of the product used in cosmetics and medicine also goes by liquid paraffin.
7. What is the name of the process that converts animal products into more stable materials? Culinarily, this involves slowly heating animal fat to separate the lipids from other solid materials, such as turning butter into clarified butter or pork fat into lard.
8. The infamous Diet Coke and Mentos reaction is, perhaps surprisingly, a physical one (as opposed to chemical). Microscopic pores on the surface of a Mentos allow for the rapid formation of bubbles of carbon dioxide found in the soda, catalyzing the triggering event of effervesence also known by what word?
9. Stainless steel is an alloy of iron with primarily what other metal (in concentration of at least 10.5%)? This additional component has natural self-healing properties and forms a passive film on the stainless steel that provides rust and corrosion resistance?
10. The calorie has historically been defined in terms of the energy required to raise 1 liter of water by 1 degree Celsius. However, this definition led to confusion since what numerical property of water varies with current temperature and pressure, thus giving a nonconstant numerical value? The thermochemical calorie, in contrast, is simply defined as 4.184 joules.
11. Wheat gluten is not actually a single molecule, but rather a complex of two different proteins. One of those is glutenin, which provides elasticity to dough. Name the other, which contributes extensibility to dough and is the primary protein responsible for autoimmune reactions like celiac disease.
12. You can make a simple battery by inserting a copper cathode and a zinc anode into a lemon to allow for the flow of current through citric acid. You can do the same with a potato with what acid instead acting as the electrolyte?
There is only one rule in Learned League. DO NOT CHEAT. No googling, no asking your honey. From the rules: “If you cheat, you are a scumbag.”
I got 10 of 12. There are two parts to the scoring: the first part is 15 points for each correct answer. The second part is that you get to assign check marks to 5 questions. For each one of those that you got right, 15 points are assigned, then those answers are rated inversely by the % of players who also got it right. The better you did, the higher that question’s value, to a maximum of 75. I finished 63rd out of 2172. There were 5 players with perfect scores.
1. What chemical element, with a boiling point of 77 Kelvin, has found modern culinary use in rapidly cooling ice cream as a tableside trick? Chilling the ice cream faster than conventional methods allows for smaller ice crystals to form, leading to a smoother texture.
2. Spiciness is measured by the concentration of what compound (or group of compounds) within a pepper body? Wilbur Scoville, an American pharmacist, first developed the test and eponymous scale for this measurement in 1912.
3. Give the trade name of the Corning Inc. product trademarked in uppercase and made of borosilicate glass, a material with a particularly low coefficient of thermal expansion which allows for safe oven use. Corning later made a similar product (using soda-lime glass) with an even more similar name: the same as the product in question but in lowercase. Fear not, proper capitalization is not required here.
4. A popular science experiment in primary school involves making a non-Newtonian fluid (one whose viscosity depends on stress) using two common kitchen ingredients: 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water. What 7-letter, Seuss-inspired name does this concoction go by?
5. The botanical definition of a berry is "a fleshy fruit without a drupe (pit) produced from a single flower containing one ovary." Which one of these is NOT a botanical berry: cranberry, grape, strawberry, banana? The outlier is technically a pseudocarp (or accessory fruit or false fruit) as the edible flesh is the swollen receptacle of the flower.
6. What product is often applied to wooden goods such as cutting boards and salad bowls to prevent water absorption and preserve their lifetimes? A distillate of petroleum, a highly refined form of the product used in cosmetics and medicine also goes by liquid paraffin.
7. What is the name of the process that converts animal products into more stable materials? Culinarily, this involves slowly heating animal fat to separate the lipids from other solid materials, such as turning butter into clarified butter or pork fat into lard.
8. The infamous Diet Coke and Mentos reaction is, perhaps surprisingly, a physical one (as opposed to chemical). Microscopic pores on the surface of a Mentos allow for the rapid formation of bubbles of carbon dioxide found in the soda, catalyzing the triggering event of effervesence also known by what word?
9. Stainless steel is an alloy of iron with primarily what other metal (in concentration of at least 10.5%)? This additional component has natural self-healing properties and forms a passive film on the stainless steel that provides rust and corrosion resistance?
10. The calorie has historically been defined in terms of the energy required to raise 1 liter of water by 1 degree Celsius. However, this definition led to confusion since what numerical property of water varies with current temperature and pressure, thus giving a nonconstant numerical value? The thermochemical calorie, in contrast, is simply defined as 4.184 joules.
11. Wheat gluten is not actually a single molecule, but rather a complex of two different proteins. One of those is glutenin, which provides elasticity to dough. Name the other, which contributes extensibility to dough and is the primary protein responsible for autoimmune reactions like celiac disease.
12. You can make a simple battery by inserting a copper cathode and a zinc anode into a lemon to allow for the flow of current through citric acid. You can do the same with a potato with what acid instead acting as the electrolyte?
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