The Famous Scientists Pub Quiz

Round 1Who am I? Scientists

Three clues, hardest first. 3 points after clue 1, 2 after clue 2, 1 after clue 3. six questions.

1. Clue 1: I discovered two elements, and one is named after my homeland. Clue 2: I was the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Clue 3: I worked on radioactivity with my husband, Pierre.
2. Clue 1: I spent eight years studying barnacles. Clue 2: I sailed round the world on HMS Beagle. Clue 3: I wrote On the Origin of Species.
3. Clue 1: I also studied the structure of coal and of viruses. Clue 2: An X-ray image from my lab, Photo 51, was key to a famous discovery. Clue 3: My X-ray work helped reveal the double helix of DNA.
4. Clue 1: I was Master of the Royal Mint and chased forgers. Clue 2: I split white light into a spectrum with a prism. Clue 3: A falling apple is said to have inspired my theory of gravity.
5. Clue 1: I was an abbot in Brno. Clue 2: My work was ignored until it was rediscovered in 1900. Clue 3: I bred pea plants and worked out the laws of inheritance.
6. Clue 1: I was offered the presidency of Israel and turned it down. Clue 2: I won my Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect. Clue 3: E = mc².

Round 2Cartoon scientists

A cartoon portrait with a clue in its hands. Name the scientist. six questions.

six cartoon portraits on screen, each holding a clue to the scientist.

Round 3Fact or fiction

Myths and true-but-weird facts. Teams write Fact or Fiction. ten questions.

1. Cracking your knuckles gives you arthritis.
2. Sealed honey can stay edible for thousands of years.
3. Humans have more than five senses.
4. Bats are blind.
5. Sugar makes children hyperactive.
6. Diamonds form from compressed coal.
7. Wombats produce cube-shaped droppings.
8. Humans and chimpanzees share about 98% of their DNA.
9. Chameleons change colour mainly to blend into the background.
10. A day on Venus is longer than its year.

Round 4Who am I? Scientists

Three clues, hardest first. 3 points after clue 1, 2 after clue 2, 1 after clue 3. six questions.

1. Clue 1: I studied the shape of crystals before I studied microbes. Clue 2: My rabies vaccine was first given to a boy bitten by a rabid dog. Clue 3: A heat treatment that makes milk safe carries my name.
2. Clue 1: I served in a field hospital in World War One and saw infected wounds kill. Clue 2: A clear ring round a mould on an agar plate caught my eye in 1928. Clue 3: I discovered penicillin.
3. Clue 1: I first travelled to Tanzania in 1960 with my mother as a chaperone. Clue 2: I watched chimpanzees strip twigs to fish termites out of mounds. Clue 3: I studied the chimpanzees of Gombe for decades.
4. Clue 1: I was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633. Clue 2: My improved telescope showed four moons circling Jupiter. Clue 3: Legend says I dropped objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
5. Clue 1: My father was a famous poet, though I barely knew him. Clue 2: My notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine included an algorithm for Bernoulli numbers. Clue 3: I am often called the first computer programmer.
6. Clue 1: I was the youngest of a very large family from Siberia. Clue 2: I left gaps in my table for elements not yet discovered, and predicted their properties. Clue 3: I arranged the elements by atomic mass into the periodic table.

Round 5Cartoon scientists

A cartoon portrait with a clue in its hands. Name the scientist. six questions.

six cartoon portraits on screen, each holding a clue to the scientist.

Round 6Connections

Four things. What links them? five questions.

1. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn
2. Femur, Tibia, Ulna, Radius
3. Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Jaguar
4. Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, Nimbus
5. Sucrose, Glucose, Fructose, Lactose

Round 7General science

A classic general-knowledge science round. ten questions.

1. What is the chemical symbol for gold?
2. Which planet has the most known moons?
3. What is the hardest natural substance?
4. Which gas do plants take in for photosynthesis?
5. What is the largest organ of the human body?
6. How many legs does a spider have?
7. Which blood group is the universal red-cell donor?
8. What is the most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere?
9. What force keeps the planets in orbit around the Sun?
10. What is the closest star to Earth?

Round 8Closest wins

Estimation questions. Nearest team wins the point. Doubles as the tiebreaker. four questions.

1. How far is the Sun from Earth, on average, in millions of kilometres?
2. How many teeth does an adult human have, wisdom teeth included?
3. How long is the Great Barrier Reef, in kilometres?
4. How old is the Earth, in billions of years?

HandoutRiddles and puzzles

Little brain-teasers. Best as the handout teams chip away at all quiz long. eight questions.

1. The more of me you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?
2. I have cities but no houses, mountains but no trees and water but no fish. What am I?
3. A pond weed doubles its area every week and covers the whole pond after 10 weeks. In which week was it half covered?
4. What has a heart that doesn't beat?
5. I am an odd number. Take away one letter and I become even. What number am I?
6. What can you hold in your left hand but never in your right?
7. What goes up when the rain comes down?
8. What has teeth but cannot bite?