INTER-IIT ‘23-’24 PREP

SHUVRANEEL MITRA

SCI-TECH QUIZ
RULES
• Normal pounce and bounce
• 10 + 5 + 10
• Feels nice to be able to play god for two quiz sessions
 Q1.
• Neil Harbisson is a Spanish-raised British-Irish-American activist for
transspecies rights.
• Born with achromat vision, he has now got an antenna implanted and
osseointegrated into his occipital bone. It allows him to feel and hear
colors as audible vibrations inside his head, including infrareds and
ultraviolets. It can also send him phone calls, images and videos.
• He has pioneered many other such devices, including an orbiting point of
heat to tell the time and a tooth-to-tooth communication system.
• He is famously described as the world’s first _______ __________ ______,
after the UK Passport Office allowed inclusion of the antenna in his
official picture, upon him insisting that his antenna should be treated as
an organ and not a device.
SAFETY SLIDE
World’s first legally recognised cyborg
Q2.
• Operation _________ was a secret United States intelligence
program in which more than 1,600 German scientists and
engineers were taken from Nazi Germany to the U.S. for
government employment after the end of World War II in Europe. It
significantly boosted USA’s aeronautical and space advancements
in the backdrop of the cold war.
• Chief among the immigrants were Wernher von Braun, known for
developing the V-2 missile and the Saturn V rocket, which took
astronauts to the moon.
• Initially called Operation Overcast, it was renamed to Operation
_________ by Ordnance Corps officers, who would attach a
_________ to the folders of those rocket experts whom they
wished to employ in the United States.
SAFETY SLIDE
OPERATION
PAPERCLIP
Q3.
• Larry Tesler was an American computer scientist who worked in the field
of human–computer interaction.
• His work at Xerox PARC included Smalltalk, the first dynamic object-
oriented programming language, and Gypsy, the first word processor
with a GUI.
• However, his most important claim to fame is his invention of the X
functionality, which is now an integral part of our daily computing
experience.
• A Twitter joke started when Sky News tweeted an article with the
headline “X inventor Larry Tesler dies aged 74.“ Soon enough, other users
were quote tweeting the article and each other's tweets (after using the X
functionality on the tweets), resulting in multiple long tweet threads.
• X?
SAFETY SLIDE
CUT, COPY AND PASTE COMMANDS
Q4.
• The word X is an outdated English term meaning “to croak”. When
Murray Gell-Mann discovered X, he was undecided about naming it
when he found the word X in James Joyce's 1939 book Finnegans
Wake:
Three Xs for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
• He explains (the blanks are the way we now pronounce X):
In 1963, when I assigned the name X … I had the sound first, without the
spelling, which could have been _____. Then, in one of my occasional perusals of
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word X in the phrase "Three
Xs for Muster Mark". Since X (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was
clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I
had to find an excuse to pronounce it as _____.
SAFETY SLIDE
QUARKS
Q5.
• Known otherwise for his wonderful novels and short stories, R is
also one of the inventors of the modern ventricular catheters and
shunt valves.
• In 1960, while living in New York, his then 4-month-old son Theo
was hit by a taxi and suffered traumatic brain injury with multiple
skull fractures. Unfortunately, he suffered from hydrocephalus due
to multiple shunt obstructions during his treatment.
• He contacted Stanley Wade, a toymaker who specialized in
making small hydraulic pumps. Known as the Wade-____-Till
shunt, it was taken into production in 1962.
• Id R, who was ranked by Forbes as the highest-paid dead celebrity
in 2021.
SAFETY SLIDE
ROALD DAHL
 Q6.
• Apple’s early nineties project, the Power Macintosh 7100's internal code
name was X. The impetus behind the codename was a riff on X’s catchphrase
"billions and billions", the implication being that the 7100 would go on to
make Apple billions of dollars.
• X, worried that the public might interpret this as an endorsement which
sullied his name, reportedly contacted Apple and threatened to sue.
• Following the letter, Apple renamed the project to "BHA" (for Butt-Head
Astronomer). X then sued Apple for libel over the new name, but since the
new codename was a expression of opinion, he lost his case. X and Apple, not
wishing to engage in a series of lawsuits over the issue, came to an out-of-
court agreement, leading to Apple making a statement of apology. The
engineers on the project made a third and final name change to "LAW", short
for "Lawyers are Wimps".
• Id X.
SAFETY SLIDE
CARL SAGAN
Q7.
• The picture shown was taken by Viktor Bulla, a Soviet
photographer who was declared an enemy of the state shortly
after he took this photo.
• This photo, taken in 1937, depicts the Soviet youth group, the
Young Pioneers, which was the second stage of the 3-step national
program aimed at creating ideal Soviet citizens. The photo almost
epitomizes their slogan: “Always prepared!”
• What activity were the Pioneers engaged in at the time of the
photograph?
SAFETY SLIDE
Answer
Gas Defence Drill
 Q8.
• The X Y challenge, is an activity involving dumping an X Y on someone, to
promote awareness of the disease ALS, which has affected notable personalities
such as American baseball player Lou Gehrig as well as Stephen Hawking.
• The challenge went viral in 2014, with many people choosing to donate to the
cause. Several celebrities such as Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James
• However, meteorologist Jason Samenow estimated that during the peak of its
popularity, 5 million gallons of water would have been used for the challenge.
• The challenge raised enough money to drive research for a new drug that was
approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2022.
• XY ?
SAFETY SLIDE
Answer
Q9. ID The blanked-out part
SAFETY SLIDE
Answer
Ether
Q10.
• In motor racing, DRS is a form of driver-adjustable bodywork
aimed to increase top speed and promote overtaking.
• In Formula One, the DRS opens an adjustable flap on the rear wing
of the car, thus giving a pursuing car an overtaking advantage over
the car in front.
• With the help of the video on the next slide, expand DRS.
SAFETY SLIDE
Answer
Drag Reduction System
WRITTEN ROUND
• SIMPLE: IDENTIFY THE PERSONALITY
1.
2.

“No highs, no lows,

only Doge”

“One word: Doge”

3.
• “There may be babblers, wholly ignorant of
mathematics, who dare to condemn my
hypothesis, upon the authority of some part
of the Bible twisted to suit their purpose. I
value them not, and scorn their unfounded
judgment”
4.
• “I seem to have been only like a boy playing
on the seashore, and diverting myself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or
a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the
great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me.”
5.
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWERS
1.
Erwin Schrodinger
2.

“No highs, no lows,

only Doge”

“One word: Doge”

Elon Musk
3.
• “There may be babblers, wholly ignorant of
mathematics, who dare to condemn my
hypothesis, upon the authority of some part
of the Bible twisted to suit their purpose. I
value them not, and scorn their unfounded
judgment”
Nicolaus Copernicus
4.
• “I seem to have been only like a boy playing
on the seashore, and diverting myself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or
a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the
great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me.”
Isaac Newton
5.
Barry Marshall
Q1.
• The first people to use X were hackers, posting about sensitive topics
to Internet forums they thought were being automatically monitored
on keywords. To circumvent such filters, they replaced a word with
look-alike characters. HELLO could become |-|3|_|_() or )-(3££[], which
later became known as leetspeak.
• One of the earliest commercial uses of _______s was in the
Gausebeck–Levchin test. In 2001, PayPal used such tests as part of a
fraud prevention strategy which was described as “completely
automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart.”
• However with the rapid rise of Deep Learning, the future of Xs may be
in danger.
• Id X.
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWER
 Q2.
• ______ ____was developed in 1966 under a contract by NASA's Ames
Research Center to improve the safety of aircraft cushions. Created by
feeding gas into a polymer matrix, it had an open-cell solid structure that
matched pressure against it, yet slowly returned to its original shape.

• ______ ____was subsequently used in medical settings. For example, when

patients were required to lie immobile in bed, on a firm mattress, the
pressure on some of their body regions impaired blood flow, causing
pressure sores or gangrene. Mattresses using the ______ ____significantly
decreased such events. FITB.
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWER
Memory Foam
Q3.
• In this story, the narrator, having embarked on a journey, meets the
Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike humanoids. They live in
small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly
deteriorating buildings and adhere to a fruit-based diet. Later, he
encounters the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness
underground and surface only at night.
• As the story progresses, he comes across reddish, crab-like creatures
slowly wandering the blood-red beaches chasing enormous
butterflies, in a world covered in simple lichenoid vegetation.
• Name the story.
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWER
The Time Machine
Q4
• Neil Armstrong couldn’t afford to take out life insurance in case
anything went wrong on the mission. Seeing as that was the first
ever mission to put humans on the Moon, and understanding that
their lives may be at risk, he and his colleagues came up with a plan.
• As an alternative, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins left behind
hundreds of X so that Armstrong’s family could sell them in a worst
case scenario.
• Id X.
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWER
• Signed photographs
Q5.
• This instrument T was the product of Soviet government-sponsored research
into proximity sensors.
• The instrument's controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas
which work as position sensors. Each antenna forms one half of a capacitor with
each of the player’s hands as the other half of the capacitor. These antennas
capacitively sense the relative position of the hands and control oscillators for
frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric
signals from the T are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.
• The sound of the instrument is often associated with eerie situations. The First
T Concert for Extraterrestrials was the world's first musical METI broadcast
dispatched from the Evpatoria deep-space communications complex in Crimea,
and was sent seven years before NASA's Across the Universe message.
• T?
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWER
• Theremin
Q6.
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWER
• Apple Computer
Q7. • X was born in Almora, then in the North-Western Provinces of Company-ruled India, north west
of Nepal.
• in April he visited Sigur Ghat near the hill station of Ooty, where he noticed a mosquito on the wall
in a peculiar posture, and for this he called it "dappled-winged" mosquito, not knowing the
species. Soon, he confirmed the presence of the malarial parasite inside the gut of mosquito.
• In the evening he composed the following poem for his discovery :
This day relenting God
Hath placed within my hand
A wondrous thing; and God
Be praised. At His command,
Seeking His secret deeds
With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,
O million-murdering Death.
I know this little thing
A myriad men will save.
O Death, where is thy sting?
Thy victory, O Grave?
SAFETY SLIDE
ANSWER
• Sir Ronald Ross