2006 UIUC ABT High School Solo Round 5
Questions by Donald Taylor, Sudheer Potru, Mike Sorice
1. A bank in this town is putting a time capsule into its cornerstone, so people a thousand years from now will know what life there was like. This small town is home to people such as Simon Stimson, the church organist who grumbles about how ignorant humans are. For ten points, identify the hometown of George Gibbs and Emily Webb, the setting for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.
ANSWER: Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire
2. Calculation: 20 seconds. Find the period of the following function: y=-3cos(πx+4π).
ANSWER: 2
3. His father was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in 1984, his favorite team as a child. He was the only player under 18 selected to play for the Canadian Junior Hockey Team, and was the youngest player ever to score for them at just over 16. Wayne Gretzky said that he was the best player he’d seen since Mario Lemieux. For ten points, name this top pick by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2005 NHL Draft.
ANSWER: Sidney Crosby
4. Even though they can be hydrophilic, these compounds with long hydrocarbon chains tend, instead, to dissolve poorly in water. They can be classified as primary, secondary, or tertiary, depending on how many alkyl substituents are attached to the C-OH unit. For ten points, identify this class of organic compounds of which many have the general formula C-n-H-2n+1-OH.
ANSWER: alcohols
5. He was nominated for President only after his party had eliminated 48 other candidates. His Secretary of War Jefferson Davis organized the Gadsden Purchase in order to build a railroad down there to get to California. Even though he could claim "a peaceful condition of things in Kansas", he was not nominated for a second term. For ten points, name this President who completes the phrase “we Polked ‘em in ’44, we’ll (blank) them in ’52.”
ANSWER: Franklin Pierce
6. Calculation: 20 seconds. Solve the following equation for x: 3/x + 1/4 = 4/x.
ANSWER: x=4
7. In this work, happiness derives from consuming mass-produced goods and sports such as Obstacle Golf and Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. It opens in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the Director of the Hatchery is giving a tour of the factory. Set in the year 632 AF, everyone is placed into a certain class; Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. Everyone takes soma, and it ends up killing the mother of John the Savage. For ten points, name this most famous work of Aldous Huxley.
ANSWER: Brave New World
8. This vector field is always divergence free because no single sources for it exist, and it can be stated as the curl of the vector potential. Incapable of doing net work on a body, this field is crossed with its counterpart to yield the Poynting vector. Generated by a current distribution, this field can be determined by the Biot-Savart law. For ten points, identify this physical field symbolized B and having the SI unit Tesla; the companion of the electric field.
ANSWER: magnetic field (prompt on “B”)
9. He began playing in bands in Kansas City in 1935, and from there joined the band of pianist Jay McShann. He later teamed up with Dizzy Gillespie on several occasions, and they gradually developed what is now known as bebop. Suffering a nervous breakdown in 1946, his last performance was in 1955 at Birdland, which was renamed in his honor. For ten points, name the famous saxophonist known as “Yardbird” or “Birdman”.
ANSWER: Charlie Parker (prompt if nickname given)
10. He volunteered for WWI, being wounded twice, and joined the Freikorps afterwards. When at the University of Munich, he became part of the Thule Society and became the sixteenth member of the Nazi Party in 1920. As a Nazi, he went from being Hitler’s personal secretary to Deputy Fuhrer. His attempt to prevent the German invasion of the Soviet Union actually led his capture. For ten points, identify this underling of Hitler who fled to Scotland on May 10, 1941.
ANSWER: Rudolf Hess
11. Only about 2% of those created actually mature and differentiate, and their receptors are constantly searching for fragments of the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC. Divided into three major types, they maintain homeostasis, activate cytokines, and destroy certain antigens. For 10 points, name these lymphocytes, which can exist in the suppressor, helper, or cytotoxic varieties.
ANSWER: T cells [prompt on “lymphocyte” prior to TCR]
12. This place is removed from all light and warmth and has three or six members, depending on whether you count actual beings or just heads. Also known as Cocytus, sinners here are frozen deep in ice, faces out, with eyes and mouths frozen shut. Other than Satan, its three famous occupants are Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. For ten points, identify this location found in the Inferno by Dante.
ANSWER: 9th circle of Hell (accept Cocytus before it is read and similar answers, prompt on 9th circle or Hell)
13. After being trapped in a coffin by Set, he was thrown into the Nile, and his wife found his body at Byblos. Set then found the body again and tore it into pieces before throwing it in the Nile. All save one of his body parts was found again, and after being put back together, he became the first mummy and transformed an akh into the form he is best known as. For ten points, name this Egyptian god of the dead and husband of Isis.
ANSWER: Osiris
14. Calculation: 20 seconds. Find the limit as x approaches infinity of the equation x2/ex [x squared over e to the x].
ANSWER: 0
15. It is located in Clearwater County and has an average depth of 20-35 feet, and General Lewis Cass used a spliced form of the Latin for “true head” for its current name. Some have challenged its claim to fame, stating that it should belong to Elk Lake, but research has found that theoretically it belongs to Morrison Lake and Hernando de Soto Lake. For ten points, name the generally accepted source for the Mississippi River.
ANSWER: Lake Itasca
16. He rejected a single unifying style for his works, instead he fed off of each project’s unique “site, program, and spirit”. This is captured in the exterior brick walls of the GM building, and for the John Deere headquarters he used Cor-ten steel to capture ruggedness. Unfortunately, he died from a brain tumor before his major works could be completed. For ten points, name the Finnish-American architect of Dulles International Airport and the Gateway Arch.
ANSWER: Eero Saarinen
17. Calculation: 20 seconds. Convert 0.916, with the 6 repeating, to a fraction in lowest terms.
ANSWER: 11/12
18. After returning from fighting, he swears that he will never marry, an oath he breaks at the end. In the middle of the play, he actually would rather be sent to the Antipodes than have to spend one more minute with his future wife. After Claudio accuses Hero of unchaste behavior, he challenges his friend Hero to a duel at the request of Beatrice. For ten points, name this arch-rival turned husband of Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing.
ANSWER: Benedick
19. First discovered by Pierre Berthier, this sedimentary rock is found mostly in subtropical or tropical conditions. It comes in three varieties: gibbsite, bohmite, and diaspore, depending on the number of water molecules of hydration. Extraction of the metal contained in it is done through a bath in sodium hydroxide, where the unwanted metals are removed, and then the remaining solution is precipitated out. For ten points, name the ore that is the primary source of aluminum.
ANSWER: bauxite
20. The first one of these granted independence to the Transvaal, which ended with the end of the second one. The latter of the two was precipitated by Cecil Rhodes, leader of the Jameson Raid, and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging. For ten points, give the general name for these wars between the Dutch settlers and the British whose name comes from the Afrikaans word for farmer.
ANSWER: Boer Wars