AP Biology Unit 1 Pub Quiz: Chemistry of Life

What it covers

AP Biology : Unit 1: Chemistry of Life.

The running order

nine rounds and a handout of riddles. Review rounds are drawn from this topic each time you open the quiz, so two classes never get the same paper, and every review round can be redrawn in a click.

1. Riddle me this review
   Course terms as riddles: "I have a head that loves water and two tails that hate it…" Teams write what it is.
2. Close-up fun
   A tiny zoomed-in patch. What's the full picture?
3. Fact or fiction fun
   Myths and true-but-weird facts. Teams write Fact or Fiction.
4. Think it through review
   Scenarios, odd ones out, true or false and why, puzzles: questions to reason through. Give teams a little longer.
5. Films in science-speak fun
   A film plot, described like a research abstract. Name the film.
6. Who am I? Scientists fun
   Three clues, hardest first. 3 points after clue 1, 2 after clue 2, 1 after clue 3.
7. Missing vowels: course terms review
   Your key terms with the vowels taken out.
8. Funny animal noises fun
   YouTube clips of animals making ridiculous noises. Screen off, listen, guess, then watch the reveal.
9. Closest wins fun
   Estimation questions. Nearest team wins the point. Doubles as the tiebreaker.

A taste of the questions

Think it through

Scenarios, odd ones out and true or false and why, from AP Biology.

1. A marathon runner is dripping with sweat on a hot day, yet her skin stays cooler than the air around her. What is the sweat doing, and why does it work?
2. San Francisco and Sacramento are about 90 miles apart, yet San Francisco has cooler summers and milder winters. Which property of the ocean's water explains it?
3. I lift water to the top of a 100-meter redwood with no pump at all. The leaves lose water at the top and the whole sticky column follows. What am I?
4. What would happen to a lake's fish in a hard winter if ice were denser than liquid water and sank to the bottom?
5. A sprinter's muscles need glucose within seconds of the gun. How does the shape of glycogen, her muscles' sugar store, let her release it so fast?
6. True or false, and why? To keep its cell membranes working at 0°C, an Arctic cod needs more saturated fat in them than a tropical fish does.

Riddle me this

Course terms as riddles. Teams write what it is.

1. I'm only a weak pull, a partial plus reaching for a partial minus. But billions of me hold water together and zip DNA shut. What am I?
2. I'm water clinging to water. Thanks to me, a whole column can be pulled up a tree trunk without snapping. What am I?
3. I'm the stretchy skin on top of a pond. A water strider skates across me without ever getting its feet wet. What am I?
4. I'm why the sea stays cool on a scorching afternoon: water soaks up a lot of energy before its temperature climbs even one degree. What am I?
5. Add H₂O and I snap a polymer apart, one monomer at a time. Your gut does me to every lunch you eat. What am I?

Quickfire

Short recall from the same topics.

1. Attraction of a δ+ H to a nearby δ− O
2. Electrons shared unequally, as in O−H
3. Electrons shared equally, as in C−C