hi guys

just found this on the internet and felt the urge to share it with you

Cheers!!!



Questions

1. Yeasts have been around much longer than humans and although we are pleased to have them make alcohol for us, we may not be so pleased to have others as 'house guests' (along with bacteria, fungi, parasitic worms etc.) What percentage of your cells are human? (a) 90% ( 50% © 30% or (d) 10%


2. Put a handful of ice cubes in a pint glass. Add water till the ice floats. Wait until the ice melts. Will the level of the water (a) rise ( fall or © stay the same?


3. Alcohol is made by fermenting grapes, barley malt, sugar etc. from plants. But where do plants get most of their food? (a) out of the soil ( out of manure © out of chemical fertilisers (d) out of thin air?


4. Time, ladies and gentlemen, please! If you took a grandfather (pendulum) clock to your favourite pub on the moon ('The Half Earth Tavern'?) would it (a) gain ( lose or © keep the same time?


5. According to Isaac Walton (`The Compleat Angler', 1653) "Hops and turkeys, carps and beer, Came into England all in a year". Hops are used (a) to make beer bitter ( to increase its alcohol content or © to preserve it?


6. In the bar of 'The Jolly Sailor' the patrons know very well that about 75% of our planet's surface is covered by oceans and seas. These produce vast quantities of seaweed and microscopic plants (phytoplankton). How much of the world's vegetation? (a) three quarters ( one third or © one tenth ?


7. "Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink." It is thought, by some, but maybe not the Ancient Mariner, that Neptune provided us with more water than our local water company does. Might they be right? Yes or no?


8. Back in the bar of 'The Jolly Sailor' a cry went up- "Up spirits, hands of the mess for grog" Like naval rum, all spirits are diluted with water before they are dispensed or sold. Is 'proof' spirit (a) 100% alcohol ( 60% or © less than 60%?


9. What weighs 10 tonnes, covers 36 acres and has lived for 1,500 years?

(a) The roots of a Giant Redwood tree ( Prickly Pear, an Australian cactus used to make a drink called 'Southern Cross' © a recently studied 'toadstool'.


10. Beer mats, such as these, have six equal angles (i.e. they are hexagonal). They share this feature with a World Cup football and the Nobel Prize winning "Bucky Ball" (a form of carbon) both of which are structures based on a number hexagons and pentagons. How many hexagons?


11. Being a well run house, no-one who frequents 'The Jolly Sailor' has yet been subjected to genetic finger-printing. The DNA underlying this process is spiral in shape. What, in this regard, does DNA have more in common with hops and wood screws?


12. Merry Christmas!

If you could join two atoms of carbon together and add six atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. What might you get?

Answer: Lucky.


There are many alcohols but the one that you would buy in a pub or off-licence is ethyl alcohol (ethanol) and its chemical formula is CH3CH2OH. Cheers!


13. A Happy New Year to you!

Champagne is called 'bubbly' because it gives off so many bubbles of carbon dioxide (CO2) when opened. Would a bubble of CO2 weigh...

(a) the same as a bubble of oxygen of equal volume

( more or

© less? If you have drunk a glass or two by now you probably don't care but have a guess anyway!


14. Despite his famous green fingers, the landlord of 'The Jolly Sailor' hasn't had much luck growing (a) Agave tequilana ( Oryza sativa © Saccharum officinarum (d) Hordeum vulgare. Which spirits are made from these plants?


15. In 1847, at the age of 24, Louis Pasteur looked down his microscope at the crystalline material from the bottom of wine bottles. This lead him to one of the defining moments in science. What was it...


(a) pasteurisation

( "the germ theory"

© stereochemistry

(d) vaccination?


16. Not in the original quiz but added because of its topicality.

If you run a mile at ten miles an hour you 'burn' more calories than if you walk the same distance at 2 miles an hour. How much more?

a) about 15% more

( about 45% more

© about 75% more

Finally a thread for the ones missing all alcohol word chains in the "words, words, words" thread

tj are Brithish pubs that educational

as you can see, pubs are educational indeed

...hmm..there's really a lot of science there tj cos I failed abysmally...what a shame for the canucks...but then I don't drink either...the only alcohol I know is the one for disinfecting the hands in preparation for the flu season....really educational, hombre.....


Question: how much alchohol flows thru all the pubs in the UK...daily? and how much of this diverted to tj's veins?.......cheers.....

Rather silly stuff.

btw for #1 - yeasts ARE fungi and the answer is currently considered to be < 5%.

hi George,
precise and professional as usual, i didn't know the answer to that one, probably when this quiz was published (i'd say quite a few years ago) knowledge was not as advanced as today.... thanks for the observation. as you might deduce, english is not my first language, so i would appreciate if you could explain me where it says the opposite or where is the mistake.
regards.

Mistake - considering "yeasts" and fungi as separate groups. In fact, yeasts are not even a taxonomic group - the term refers to a fungal morphology found in many taxonomic groups from ascomycetes to basidiomycetes to zygomycetes and it's assumed by many mycologists that any fungus can grow as a yeast under the right conditions.

The < 5% is based on projected culturable and nonculturable and your point is a good one.

And while I'm being grumpily pedantic - the data for #9 being a huge fungus (if that's the answer) are overhyped. The fact that fungal tissue spread across a large area has the same genetic profile doesn't mean contiguous growth - it could well have come from dispersal of spores, soil particles bearing mycelium, etc.

i see now thanks, however (and this is just my assumption) there might be different kinds of fungi on humans, right? also, parasitic worms are not a taxonomic group either, and most importantly, i don't think people solving a pub quiz on a thursday night will be fussy about fungal taxonomy, particularly after a couple of pints

Gasp - a few pints would dull ones precision of fungal taxonomy?!! Not where I drink!!

But maybe I'm advised to seek better company. I've sadly noted that (my) consmuption of even a large number of pints does nothing to improve the looks of my taxonomically-correct distaff colleagues.