Washington #DC
The Mysteries of Corcoran Hall
Nuclear
Astro
Bio
100

The letter that is skipped in DC’s street name

(+50 if you know why)

J

(back in the eighteenth century, I and J were similar to write)

100

Name the GW alumn responsible for founding the grand annual physics department dodgeball tournament.

Who is Meghan Foster?

100

The famous name of J.J. Thompson’s model of the atom

what is the ‘plum pudding’ model

100

The name of the general trend line in the HR diagram 

main sequence 

100

The four nitrogenous bases that make up DNA (letters acceptable too)

A (stands for Adenine)

C (stands for Cytosine)

T (stands for Thymine)

G (stands for Guanine)

200

The name of the bridge that connects Georgetown to Rosslyn

key bridge

200

What does SCALE in SCALE-UP stand for?

Student Centered Active Learning Environment

200

The isospin of the lambda baryon

what is 0?

200

Name of the five positions in an orbital configuration where a small object affected only by gravity could be stationary relative to two larger bodies.

what are Lagrange points?

200

The type of chemical bond holding the two strands of the DNA double helix together, acting like a molecular zipper?

hydrogen bond

300

One of National Cathedral’s carved stone grotesques/gargoyles high on the northwest tower is actually this famous character.

Who is Darth Vader?
300

Our SPS advisor, Professor White, has done SO much for the physics world. Name six of his current or former positions (SPS advisor doesn’t count i just said it)

What are: Professor at GW, leader of JEDI, Editor of the Physics Teacher, National Director of SPS, Program Director at the NSF, Professor at Northwestern State University of Louisiana, nuclear theorist at Oak Ridge National Lab, graduate student at Texas A&M (..and so much more)?

300

the first-order Born approximation is used to calculate the scattering amplitude. Name the three primary physical variables or functions are explicitly integrated over to find this amplitude

Scattering potential, momentum transfer, position vector r

300

What is the maximum theoretical mass limit for a non-rotating neutron star, above which gravitational collapse into a black hole is inevitable?

what is the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) limit (approximately 2.1 to 2.3 solar masses)

300

This variable quantifies the overall compactness of a folded protein and represents the root-mean-square distance of its parts from its center of mass.

what is the radius of gyration?

400

The District of Columbia gets how many electoral votes for presidential elections?

3. VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!! #electionday

400

Niels Bohr famously announced the splitting of the atom here at GWU. Name the two chemists were the first to actually split the atom in 1938.

+50 name the institute in DC where the fission was replicated days after the GW conference.

Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann.


bonus: Carnegie Institution

400

1 barn = how many m^2?

what is 10^-28 m^2?

400

the name of this specific theoretical framework where magnetic energy is dissipatively released in a stripped-wind geometry.

What is the ICMART model or Magnetically Dominated Jet model?

400

The thermodynamic equation that describes the electrical potential across a semipermeable cell membrane at equilibrium when it is permeable to multiple different ionic species with varying concentrations

What is the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz (GHK) voltage equation?

500

Name one president that kept an alligator as a pet.

Who is 

John Quincy Adams?

Herbert Hoover?

500

Name ten former physics faculty members at GWU (who have not taught here in at least a decade). 

Who are:

Edward Teller, George Gamow, 



?

500

This thermal phenomenon widens neutron absorption peaks as a reactor heats up, acting as a natural safety brake to prevent meltdowns.

Doppler broadening

500

What pattern of polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background is hunted by cosmologists as evidence for primordial gravitational waves?

what is B-mode polarization



.

500

In cellular membranes, this is the phase-separation phenomenon occurs when specific lipids (like cholesterol and sphingolipids) dynamically aggregate into tightly packed, liquid-ordered microdomains to sequester specific signaling proteins.

What is lipid raft formation (or liquid-liquid phase separation).

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