The quiz thread. Test your knowledge.

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
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So the quiz thread I started a while back turned out to be quite fun so I thought I'd try something like it again. This time I'm not asking people to give me questions so much as just post and answer questions in general. I know it's impossible to police but please try to refrain from using Google when answering anything in this thread, otherwise what's the point. Though you can use the net to come up with your questions. I'll start off with a small batch off the top of my head:

In astronomy what is an asterism?

In physics the standard model breaks all known particles down into 3 major categories, or they are composed of particles from these, based on quantum mechanical properties. What are the names of the 3 categories of particles.

In biology insects breath through these on the sides of their bodies.

In geography. There are 2 land locked countries that lie between India and China. Name both these countries.

Name the crater that was found under the Yucatán Peninsula that is believed to have been formed by the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs. You don't have to get the spelling correct.

Name one deadly type of mushroom. Doesn't have to be a specific species name.
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
40,870
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Mushroom: You don't want to eat an Amanita Phalloides. That one will kill you. Amanitas in general are poisonous but at least one species is psychedelic, though somewhat poisonous. In general, you don't want to eat wild mushrooms unless you know what you are doing.
 

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
22,205
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Mushroom: You don't want to eat an Amanita Phalloides. That one will kill you. Amanitas in general are poisonous but at least one species is psychedelic, though somewhat poisonous. In general, you don't want to eat wild mushrooms unless you know what you are doing.

Good one. The psychedelic but also poisonous one you are thinking of is Amanita muscaria.
 

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
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Crater: Chicuxulb (yeah spelling)

Yup good one. I was hoping people would try to answer all of the questions even if they didn't know the answer as in the previous thread. You guys can just saw I don't know or posting a funny answer.

Anyone want to ask questions of their own?
 

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
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What kind of compression technique(A transformation function) is used to convert a lossless image into a JPEG image?

I want to say lycoss or lancoss or something like it but that's probably wrong.
 
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DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
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In physics the standard model breaks all known particles down into 3 major categories, or they are composed of particles from these, based on quantum mechanical properties. What are the names of the 3 categories of particles.

Quarks, leptons, and... gluons?

In biology insects breath through these on the sides of their bodies.

Spir...somethingorother.
 

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
22,205
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What is the circumference of Uranus?

I see what you did there. Well this is going to be a REALLY rough calculation as I don't really know a lot of these numbers. I can't remember how much larger Uranus is than earth but I think it's about 5-10 times larger. I'm going to use 10 times. Let's see, I think earth's diameter is about 8000 miles. So that would make Uranus diameter 80,000 miles. Circumferential is pi*d. So... 251,000 miles? Probably WAY off. Let's Google it to see...

99,000 miles.

Well that's off by more than twice. lol.
 

xanis

Lifer
Sep 11, 2005
17,571
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In geography. There are 2 land locked countries that lie between India and China. Name both these countries.

I know one of them is Nepal, I forget the other one though.
 

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
22,205
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Hmmm. IIRC Jupiter is a bit under 100k miles, so I'll guess that Uranus is 80k, putting the circumference at 251k miles.

Edit: shit, same guess as Locut0s.

Well I was very close on earth's diameter at least. Just way off on how many times larger Uranus is :p
 

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
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In physics the standard model breaks all known particles down into 3 major categories, or they are composed of particles from these, based on quantum mechanical properties. What are the names of the 3 categories of particles.
Quarks, leptons, and bosons?



Wow was I off lol. I was thinking of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanczos_algorithm

No idea why as it has nothing to do with that and I don't even know what that's used for really.
(Didn't click the link)
I see that used with image resizing if you want good quality resizing at the expense of processing time. But now that we've got processors that can push out 1.21 jiggaFLOPS per second, that's not such a big deal.
 
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Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
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Huh.
The weird part is...I don't know why I know that.:|


(Well, ok, I do have an idea: I probably spend a little bit too much time reading interesting things on Wikipedia. Apparently particle physics falls under that category.
It's nothing new either. During library periods in elementary school, I'd usually just read encyclopedia entries. :D)
 

Cogman

Lifer
Sep 19, 2000
10,286
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What kind of compression technique(A transformation function) is used to convert a lossless image into a JPEG image?

Discrete Cosign Transform. The brother of the Fourier Transform. (ah, looks like someone else got it.)