Evolutionary Biology
Charles Darwin is the scientist most commonly associated with the discovery of evolutionary processes in biological systems. Most of his data was collected on a famous trip to which remote location?
A) Greenland
B) Lesser Sunda Islands
C) New Zealand's North Island
D) Galapagos Islands
D) Galapagos Islands
Neutrinos are one of the building blocks of the universe and to date, there are three known types of neutrinos. What is the technical name for these different neutrino types?
A) Flavors
B) Colors
C) Families
D) Classes
A) Flavors
Most of the terrestrial surface of the Earth is best classified as:
A) Lakes
B) Floodplains
C) Hillslopes
D) Ridges
C) Hillslopes
All brains communicate through a complicated network of connected cells called neurons. Each individual neuron has a fatty sheath that wraps around it to improve the transmission of electrical signals in the network. What is this sheath called?
A) Dendrite
B) Myelin
C) Axon
D) Soma
B) Myelin
As the universe expands, the light traveling through it gets “shifted” or changed. What is the name of the predominant shift caused by the expanding universe?
A) One shift
B) Two shift
C) Red shift
D) Blue shift
C) Red shift
This smallest biological unit is the one proposed by some to be the only unit that matters to evolution?
A) Cells
B) Proteins
C) Genes
D) Molecules
C) Genes
In nature there are four fundamental forces. Every interaction between objects can be described by a combination of these different forces. Which one of these forces primarily interact with neutrinos?
A) Strong nuclear force
B) Weak nuclear force
C) Electromagnetic force
D) Jedi mind tricks
B) Weak nuclear force
Which of these mountain ranges is the oldest range in the world?
A) Barberton Makhonjwa mountains
B) Andes mountains
C) Blue Ridge mountains
D) Himalayas
A) Barberton Makhonjwa mountains
What sense is most closely linked to memory?
A) Smell
B) Sound
C) Sight
D) Taste
A) Smell
Video!
According to these measurements, approximately how old is the universe?
A) ~14 million years
B) ~140 million years
C) ~1.4 billion years
D) ~14 billion years
D) ~14 billion years
Evolution is commonly described as "survival of the fittest", SoT! guest scientist Dr. Gates' corrected this to be "survival of the ____". Fill in this blank.
Survival of the good enough
Fundamental particles are the smallest known building blocks of the universe. Including neutrinos, how many fundamental particles are in the standard model of particle physics? (For the experts, we're not counting antiparticles.)
17
Rounded to the nearest 10%, glaciers contain approximately what percent of the Earth’s freshwater?
What is approx 70%?
Zebrafish are a very good “model organism” for studying human neural systems. Dr. Kurt Marsden discussed how his lab uses zebrafish to study a disorder that afflicts humans. What is that disorder? (Hint: its common name is something strongly associated with a later SoT! event.)
ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease
What is the name of the American female astronomer whose discoveries were crucial evidence for the existence of dark matter? She also is the first woman to have a large observatory named after her.
Vera Rubin