Rock On
Up in the Air
Textbook Tidbits
Larger Than Life
Cultural Connections
100
A chemical compound that is classified as a salt or halide, and can be used to preserve food or make a tasty meal.
What is NaCl?
100
The term for the maximum speed that a falling object can physically reach, at which it will stop accelerating.
What is terminal velocity?
100
The powerhouse of the cell.
What is mitochondria?
100
The only bear species that feeds exclusively on plant material. A vegan icon.
What is the giant panda?
100
The cetacean whose horn medieval Europeans added to their medicinal concoctions when the recipe called for "unicorn horn".
What is the narwhal?
200
The sedimentary rock that, when metamorphosed by heat and pressure, yields marble.
What is limestone?
200
A molecule that is highly toxic at ground level, but plays a crucial role in our atmosphere where it absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation. Worries about the depletion of this molecule led to bans of many types of aerosols.
What is ozone?
200
The creaturs that Hannibal of Carthage famously brought across the Alps in his invasion of Rome.
What are elephants?
200
The largest tree species in existence.
What is the giant sequoia?
200
The only food that silkworms will eat, so if you wanna make silk, you'd better have a lot of them.
What is a mulberry?
300
The mineral that defines value 1 on the Mohs’ scale of mineral hardness, and is easily scratchable with a fingernail.
What is talc(um)?
300
Warm atmospheric updrafts, sometimes exploited by birds in order to glide endlessly without expending any energy.
What are thermals?
300
The full words that make up the acronym "DNA".
What is deoxyribonucleic acid?
300
The fastest animal on two legs, clocking in at a wicked 60 miles per hour.
What is the ostrich?
300
The animal whose body fused with a human head results in the manticore, a mythological creature from Persia.
What is a lion?
400
The most abundant mineral in the world, making up a staggering 41% of earth’s continental crust.
What is feldspar?
400
Little birds that undertake the longest migration in the entire animal kingdom, travelling up to 90,000 kilometers annually.
What are artic terns?
400
A famous hypothesis, proposed by James Lovelock, which states that the whole biosphere functions as a single living organism.
What is the Gaia hypothesis?
400
An American vulture whose population, in a success story of conservation, has recovered from a cataclysmic crash that nearly wiped out the species.
What is the California condor?
400
Native to southeast Asia, this is the species from which the domesticated chicken is descended.
What is the red junglefowl?
500
The still existent, but very basal clade of vascular plants that dominated forests during the Carboniferous period, and are responsible for the world's modern coal deposits.
What are lycopods?
500
A type of cloud that is a symbol of bad weather and thunderstorms.
What is a cumulonimbus cloud?
500
The decade during which Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was published.
What is 1850-1860?
500
At an incredible 8 feet and 11 inches, he is the tallest man ever to have lived.
Who is Robert Wadlow?
500
The unusual mammal that surrealist artist Salvador Dali famously kept as a pet, walking it public on numerous occasions.
What is an anteater?