NRMjobs Quiz answers 25-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Auto-’

(1) What is an automaton?

Answer: A self-operating machine.

(2) What is autotomy?

Answer: Casting off a body part when under threat (eg lizard’s tail).

(3) What is an autotroph?

Answer: A ‘primary producer’ organism - which can produce its own food using light (usually), water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals.

(4) What does someone who supports autogeny believe?

Answer: That living organisms can be created from non-living matter.

(5) What is a word meaning to eat or otherwise consume one’s own body?

Answer: Autophagy.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 18-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Budgies’

(1) What are budgerigars called in the US?

Answer: Parakeets.

(2) What UK celebrity wrote the children’s books series featuring ‘Budgie the Little Helicopter’?

Answer: Sarah Ferguson.

(3) Which one of the following did not have pet budgerigars? (a) Joseph Stalin (b) Adolph Hitler (c) Winston Churchill (d) John F Kennedy.

Answer: (b) Adolph Hitler.

(4) What Guinness World Record is still held by Puck, a male budgerigar which died in California in 1994?

Answer: Largest vocabulary of any bird (1,728 words).

(5) Best known for his 1970s hit ‘The Newcastle Song’, which Australian singer, broadcaster and archaeologist also recorded the comic song ‘Jonathon Livingston Budgerigar’

Answer: Dr Bob Hudson.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 11-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Worms’

(1) The world’s largest earthworm, Megascolides australis (aka karmai) can reportedly grow up to three metres long. Where in Australia would you find it?

Answer: Gippsland, Victoria.

(2) Who spent 40 years studying the role of earthworms in soil formation, and published his findings in a book titled The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms?

Answer: Charles Darwin.

(3) Where would you find the giant, fictional worm known reverentially as Shai-Hulud?

Answer: On the planet Arrakis (aka Dune).

(4) Hypolimnus pedderensis was the first species of earthworm recorded to have been sent extinct by human activities. Where did it live?

Answer: Lake Pedder, Tasmania.

(5) What is the missing word in William Blake’s famous short poem: “O Rose thou art sick / The … worm / That flies in the night / In the howling storm / Has found out thy bed / Of crimson joy / And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy.”

Answer: Invisible.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 04-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Rattle’

(1) What happens to a rattlesnake’s tail each time it sheds its skin?

Answer: A new segment is added to the rattle.

(2) What does it mean in Australia when someone tells you to “rattle your dags”?

Answer: Hurry up.

(3) What is the common name for plants of the Crotalaria genus?

Answer: Rattlepods.

(4) What does it mean to “ride the rattler”?

Answer: Jump onto a moving freight train to avoid paying for a ticket.

(5) In what series does the fictional character mockingly known as Rattleshirt appear? (bonus: what is his own preferred name?).

Answer: Game of Thrones (bonus: Lord of Bones).

NRMjobs Quiz answers 25-Feb-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Sap’

(1) Vascular plants have two types of sap: xylem sap and phloem sap. Which one carries water from the roots up to the leaves?

Answer: Xylem sap.

(2) Which of the following is not a meaning for ‘sap’? (a) Vigour (b) To weaken (c) A club (d) A trench (e) A gullible fool (f) A small tree.

Answer: (f) A small tree.

(3) True or false: Amber is formed from fossilised tree sap?

Answer: False: Amber is formed from fossilised tree resin.

(4) What is a sapper?

Answer: A soldier responsible for tasks such as building and repairing roads and bridges, laying and clearing mines, etc.

(5) What common food product is made from the sap of the north American tree, Acer saccharum?

Answer: Maple syrup.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 18-Feb-2021

This week’s theme: ‘-icles’

(1) What are spikes of ice formed when dripping water freezes?

Answer: Icicles.

(2) What is the collective name for the three middle ear bones found in all mammals?

Answer: Ossicles.

(3) What are multi-branched clusters of flowers, especially in grasses?

Answer: Panicles.

(4) What are small secretory cavities, sacs or glands – such as the pits in the skin from which hairs grow on mammals?

Answer: Follicles.

(5) What are small, fluid filled organelles which store and transport materials within cells?

Answer: Vesicles.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 11-Feb-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Sixty’

(1) What is 60 degrees Celsius in Farenheit? (bonus: what is 60 degrees Farenheit in Celsius?)

Answer: 140 Farenheit (bonus 15.56 Celsius).

(2) Sexaginta means ‘sixty’ in what language?

Answer: Latin.

(3) How bright (in lumens) is a standard 60-watt incandescent bulb? (a) 60 lumens (b) 800 lumens (c) 10,000 lumens (d) 120,000 lumens?

Answer: (b) 800 lumens.

(4) In what year did the Australian TV program 60 Minutes first go to air in Australia?

Answer: 1979.

(5) If a triangle has two 60-degree corners, what angle is the third corner?

Answer: 60 degrees.

Bonus question: On what day was the NRMjobs quizmaster born?

Answer: 11 February, 1961 (Yep, it’s my 60th today. Hope you are enjoying the quizzes).

NRMjobs Quiz answers 4-Feb-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Sharks’

(1) What is a baby shark called?

Answer: A pup.

(2) How many bones are there in a shark’s skeleton?

Answer: None.

(3) What did carpenters traditionally use sharkskin for?

Answer: Sand paper.

(4) True or false?: Baby sharks sometimes prey on their siblings whilst still inside the womb.

Answer: True.

(5) Which English sea captain gave the name ‘Shark Bay’ in 1699 to the natural feature, 800km north of Perth, known by Aboriginal people as Gutharraguda?

Answer: William Dampier.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 28-Jan-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Channels’

(1) What are the three major rivers which flow through Queensland’s Channel Country and drain into Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre)?

Answer: Cooper Creek, Diamantina River and Georgina River.

(2) What is the difference between a canal and a channel?

Answer: A canal is always artificial; a channel is (usually) natural.

(3) What Australian scientific body has its headquarters at 203 Channel Highway, Kingston, Tasmania?

Answer: Australian Antarctic Division.

(4) In Australia, Channel 5 and Channel 35 are legally reserved for emergency use only on what radio network?

Answer: UHF CB.

(5) The D'Entrecasteaux Channel lies between Tasmania and what offshore island?

Answer: Bruny Island.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 21-Jan-2021

(1) Where on a plant would you find apical meristems? (bonus: where would you find intercalary meristems?).

Answer: Tips of roots and shoots (bonus: Nodes between leaves, or at the base of leaves).

(2) What does the acronym STEM stand for?

Answer: Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics.

(3) Which of the following is not a stem vegetable: (a) Asparagus (b) Broccoli (c) Celery (d) Kohlrabi (e) Rhubarb?

Answer: (b) Broccoli.

(4) Where does this lyric come from? - “Long stem roses are the way to your heart, but he needs to start with your head” (one point each for the artist and the song).

Answer: Madonna / Express Yourself.

(5) What is the main difference between a human stem cell and any other kind of human cell?

Answer: Stem cells are undifferentiated (ie they are ‘blanks’, with the potential to turn into many different cell types). Other human cells are differentiated, with their cell type already determined.