Faculty Trivia
Who is the current chair of the Physics department?
Who is Dr. Magee
What layer of Earth is made mostly of solid rock beneath the crust?
What is The Mantle?
What is the closest star to Earth?
What is the Sun?
What is Newton's Third Law?
What is, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction?
What is a group of flamingos called?
What is a flamboyance?
Which faculty member has been here the longest?
Who is Dr. Ochoa?
What is the graph called that we measure earthquakes with?
What is a seismograph?
How many moons does Neptune have?
Imagine you're standing in a bus that suddenly accelerates forward. To avoid falling backward, you have to lean in this direction.
What is leaning forward?
What did Albert Einstein win his Nobel Prize for?
What is the photoelectric effect?
Which faculty member(s) got their doctorate from Penn State?
Who are Dr. Macdonald and Dr. Magee?
What is Pangea?
How long does it take light to travel from the sun to earth?
What is roughly 8 minutes and 20 seconds?
A feather and a hammer are dropped simultaneously on the Moon, where there is no air resistance. Which object hits the ground first?
What is, they hit the ground at the same time?
What is the world's largest desert?
What is Antartica?
Rank the four most senior members of the Physics Faculty. (From the most senior to the least senior)
Who are
1. Dr. Ochoa
2. Dr. Nesh
3. Dr. Wick
4. Dr. Magee
What is the scale that measures the hardness of minerals from 1 to 10?
Hint: The first two letters are MO.
What is the Moh's Scale?
How old is the universe?
Roughly 13.8 billion years old.
A perfectly smooth ball rolls on a perfectly flat surface. Assuming the entire Earth is a perfectly flat infinite surface with no imperfections, when does the ball stop rolling?
(Note: Assume friction and air resistance are zero.)
Answer: It never stops.
(via Newton's first law)
(Also, this is a theoretical world where air resistance and friction are nonexistent, so there is nothing slowing down the ball. Also, the kinetic energy of the ball stays as 1/2 mv^2; it doesn't convert to heat or sound. Thus, the KE remains.)
There is only one place in the world where the Venus Flytrap is native. What is this US state?
What is North Carolina?
Which current faculty members have held/currently holding the position of chair in the physics department?
Hint: There are multiple answers to this question.
1. Dr. Magee
2. Dr. Ochoa
3. Dr. Mcgee
What is the worst natural disaster?
Up to your interpretation!
How many suns can fit inside the largest star in the universe?
~~Roughly 10 billion suns
You're in a boat in a swimming pool, holding a large anchor. You throw the anchor overboard into the water, where it sinks to the bottom. Does the water level rise, fall, or remain constant?
What is the water level falls?
(When the anchor is in the boat, it displaces water equal to its weight. When it sinks to the bottom, it only displaces water equal to its volume. Since the anchor is denser than water, its weight displaces more water than its volume does, so the overall water level drops.)
Who is the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in different fields?
(Chemistry and Physics)