Biology  by Bradford
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The No-Projector Pub Quiz

A whole quiz from paper: the quizmaster reads it out and teams write on answer sheets. Print the pack, shut the laptop, run it anywhere.

Print teacher pagesPrint student pagesOpen in the builder to change it

Teacher pages are the quizmaster script and tally sheet. Student pages are the team answer sheet, handout and picture sheet. Both open ready to print, on A4 or US Letter.

The rounds

Fact or fiction, Who am I? Scientists, Animal kingdom, General science, Missing vowels: science, Connections, Films in science-speak, Closest wins, and a handout of riddles. 69 questions in all, about 60 minutes. Every answer is on this page, folded under its round.

Round 1Fact 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.
Answers
  1. Fiction. Studies have found no link between the habit and arthritis.
  2. Fact. It holds so little water, and is so acidic, that microbes cannot grow in it.
  3. Fact. Balance, temperature, pain and body position are all sensed too.
  4. Fiction. All bats can see, and many also use echolocation.
  5. Fiction. Controlled trials have found no effect on behaviour.
  6. Fiction. Most formed deep in the mantle, long before land plants, so long before coal.
  7. Fact. The shape comes from how their intestine stretches, and it stops the droppings rolling away.
  8. Fact. Estimates run from 96% to 99%, depending on how the comparison is counted.
  9. Fiction. Colour change is mostly signalling to other chameleons, plus temperature and mood.
  10. Fact. Venus turns once in about 243 Earth days and orbits the Sun in about 225.

Round 2Who 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.
Answers
  1. Louis Pasteur
  2. Alexander Fleming
  3. Jane Goodall
  4. Galileo Galilei
  5. Ada Lovelace
  6. Dmitri Mendeleev

Round 3Animal kingdom

Quickfire natural-history trivia. ten questions.

  1. What is the largest living species of big cat?
  2. What is a baby kangaroo called?
  3. Which is the only bird that can fly backwards?
  4. What type of animal is a Komodo dragon?
  5. What is the tallest land animal?
  6. Which sea creature has three hearts and blue blood?
  7. What is a group of flamingos called?
  8. Which continent has no native ants?
  9. Which mammal is the slowest-moving?
  10. Which animal has fingerprints almost identical to a human's?
Answers
  1. Tiger
  2. A joey
  3. Hummingbird
  4. A lizard (the largest living lizard)
  5. Giraffe
  6. Octopus
  7. A flamboyance
  8. Antarctica
  9. Sloth
  10. Koala

Round 4General science

A classic general-knowledge science round. ten questions.

  1. Roughly how fast does light travel, in km per second?
  2. What is the most abundant element in the universe?
  3. Which vitamin does skin make in sunlight?
  4. What is the smallest bone in the human body?
  5. What type of rock forms when lava cools?
  6. What is the common name for H₂O₂?
  7. Which blood cells fight infection?
  8. Which planet is closest to the Sun?
  9. What is the loss of water vapour from plant leaves called?
  10. Which instrument measures atmospheric pressure?
Answers
  1. About 300,000 km/s
  2. Hydrogen
  3. Vitamin D
  4. The stapes
  5. Igneous
  6. Hydrogen peroxide
  7. White blood cells
  8. Mercury
  9. Transpiration
  10. Barometer

Round 5Missing vowels: science

Vowels removed, spaces moved. Name the science word. eight questions.

  1. MT BLS M
  2. CT LYS T
  3. HM SPH R
  4. NT RNT
  5. VC CNT N
  6. PR DTR
  7. CR BHY DRT
  8. XY GN
Answers
  1. Metabolism
  2. Catalyst
  3. Hemisphere
  4. Nutrient
  5. Vaccination
  6. Predator
  7. Carbohydrate
  8. Oxygen

Round 6Connections

Four things. What links them? five questions.

  1. Golgi, Krebs, Mendel, Hooke
  2. Gold, Iron, Lead, Mercury
  3. Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea
  4. Emerald, Lime, Olive, Jade
  5. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium
Answers
  1. Scientists with something in science named after them (Golgi apparatus, Krebs cycle, Mendel's laws, Hooke's law)
  2. Element symbols from Latin names (Au, Fe, Pb, Hg)
  3. Dwarf planets
  4. Shades of green
  5. The first four elements

Round 7Films in science-speak

A film plot, described like a research abstract. Name the film. eight questions.

  1. A teenager gains arachnid-like traits after a bite from a genetically modified spider.
  2. An oxygen tank ruptures on the way to the Moon, and ground staff must improvise a carbon dioxide scrubber from spare parts.
  3. A population of blue humanoids shares a neural link with the root network of its forest.
  4. A lone waste-compacting robot finds a seedling, the first sign of plant life on Earth for centuries.
  5. A burglar shrinks to insect size by reducing the distance between his atoms.
  6. A virus spread by respiratory droplets and contaminated surfaces outpaces a global response.
  7. An Alzheimer's drug trialled on chimpanzees produces a dramatic rise in intelligence.
  8. A synthetic drug leaks into a woman's bloodstream and rapidly expands her cognitive ability.
Answers
  1. Spider-Man
  2. Apollo 13
  3. Avatar
  4. WALL-E
  5. Ant-Man
  6. Contagion
  7. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
  8. Lucy

Round 8Closest wins

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

  1. How many litres of blood does an average adult have?
  2. How deep is the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, in metres?
  3. How many days does the Moon take to orbit the Earth once?
  4. How long can a blue whale grow, in metres?
Answers
  1. About 5 litres
  2. About 10,935 m
  3. About 27.3 days
  4. Up to about 30 m

HandoutRiddles and puzzles

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

  1. I fly without wings and cry without eyes. What am I?
  2. What gets wetter the more it dries?
  3. Which weighs more: a kilogram of iron or a kilogram of feathers?
  4. I am tall when I am young and short when I am old. What am I?
  5. A cell divides in two every hour. Starting from one cell, how many hours until there are 64?
  6. What has hands but cannot clap?
  7. What can travel round the world while staying in a corner?
  8. I have keys but no locks and space but no room. What am I?
Answers
  1. A cloud
  2. A towel
  3. Neither: they weigh the same
  4. A candle
  5. 6 hours (2⁶ = 64)
  6. A clock
  7. A stamp
  8. A keyboard

How it runs

  1. Open it in the builder. The running order loads ready to go. Swap, add or drop rounds, or draw a round's questions again.
  2. Present it or print it. Present puts each round on the projector in 16:9 with quizmaster notes. Print gives the script, team answer sheets, a picture sheet and a tally sheet on A4 or US Letter, with no projector needed.
  3. Score it. Teams swap sheets, mark, and each plays one joker to double a round. The scores page reveals the leaderboard from last place up.

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