Holidays Around the World
This annual festival was founded to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ.
What is Christmas?
This patron saint known for the habit of secret gift-giving is the real person who Santa Claus is based on.
Who is Saint Nicholas (of Myra)?
Statistically, the average amount of water molecules in this form of precipitation is ten quintillion.
What are snowflakes?
Glass is made of this granular material by heating to temperatures above 3090 degrees Fahrenheit until it melts into a clear liquid, and then cooled and undergoes a transformation that doesn't allow it to fully turn to a solid.
What is (quartz/silica) sand?
This Scottish mathematical physicist is responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon.
Who is (James) Maxwell?
This Jewish festival commemorates the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt.
What is Hanukkah?
In 1951, this president became the first U.S. president to celebrate Hanukkah at the White House.
Who is President Harry Truman?
This phenomenon is caused by disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere caused by the solar wind.
What are the northern/southern lights (or aurora borealis/australis)?
This functional imaging technique uses radiotracers to visualize and measure changes in metabolic processes and in other physiological activities including blood flow, regional chemical composition and absorption.
What is PET (Positron Emission Tomography)?
This French physicist postulated the wave nature of electrons and suggested that all matter has wave properties.
Who is (Louis) de Broglie?
This annual celebration of African-American culture culminates in a communal feast called Karamu.
What is Kwanzaa?
This Black nationalist founded Kwanzaa as a way of uniting and empowering the African American community after the Watts Rebellion.
Who is Maulana Karenga?
Double Jeopardy: Closest Guess Wins
What percentage of icebergs are underwater?
What is 90%?
The loudest recorded sound is the result of volcano eruptions.
What are volcano eruptions?
This Irish mathematical physicist contributed heavily to the founding of three formulations of classical mechanics, as well as the invention of quaternions.
Who is (William) Hamilton?
This annual festival takes place in Japan on January 1st every year.
What is Shōgatsu (正月) or Oshōgatsu?
This poet is responsible for writing the lyrics of "Auld Lang Syne," a song to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.
Who is Robert Burns?
This phenomenon is where the date of maximum average air temperature at a geographical location on a planet is delayed until some time after the date of maximum daylight.
What is seasonal lag?
These two elements are the only elements that assume liquid form at room temperature.
What are bromine and mercury?
This German mathematician proved that every continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces have a corresponding conservation law.
Who is (Emmy) Noether?
Although historically this winter festival was observed by the Germanic peoples until its incorporation into Christmas during the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples, some new religious movements (such as Modern Germanic paganism) celebrate this winter festival independently of the Christian festival.
What is Yule?
This ancient Roman festival and holiday is in honor of the god Saturn and is believed by some historians to be the root of winter gift-giving.
What is Saturnalia?
This rare phenomenon is a storm in which snow falls as the primary precipitation instead of rain.
What is Thundersnow?
This engineering discipline is concerned with designing and applying systems that utilize the energy released by nuclear processes.
What is nuclear engineering?
This English mathematical physicist created a famous equation describing the behavior of fermions and predicting the existence of antimatter. He made many fundamental contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, coining the later. He also wrote one of the most influential texts on quantum mechanics"
Who is (Paul) Dirac?