THE SCIENCE OF CHRISTMAS QUIZ

1. THE SCIENCE OF CHRISTMAS QUIZ

2. ROUND 1 SUPER SANTA Just how brilliant is Father Christmas?!

3. Super Santa How many children does Father Christmas have to deliver presents to? • 378 million children • 3 billion children • 6 million children • 3 children (all the rest haven’t been good)

4. a) I have to deliver to 378 million children!

5. Super Santa If each present on Santa’s sleigh has a mass of 1kg, how much does he have to carry? • 350 tons (58 elephants) • 1000 tons (15 Abrams Battle tanks) • 350,000 tons (4 QE2s) • 5.9736×1021 tons (1 Earth)

6. c) 350,000 tons (4 QE2s)

7. Super Santa How fast would Santa have to go in order to deliver all the presents in one night? • 90 miles per hour • 60 metres a second • 1000 miles per hour • 650 miles per second

8. d) 650 miles per second Chewy! Is that Santa?!

9. ROUND 2 RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER Reindeers have very wet and warm noses. It is likely that Rudolph's nose was red due to a parasitic infection. Nice.

10. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer…. Another name for a reindeer is a: • Hart • Pudu • Caribou • Muntjac

11. c) I’m a caribou!

12. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer…. How far do reindeer migrate every year? • 500 km • 5000 km • 100,000 km • They don’t migrate

13. b) And I would walk 5000km….

14. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer…. Which of the following statements is NOT true: • A reindeer grows a new set of antlers every year • Reindeers have a poisonous spine on their back legs • The reindeer is the only species where the males AND females grow antlers • A reindeer’s antlers can grow up to 1.3m long

15. b) I got no poison spine, fool!

16. ROUND 3 STAR OF WONDER, STAR OF LIGHT... The Christmas star is likely to have been a star dying, a comet, or the conjunction of a planet with a constellation.

17. Star of wonder, star of light…. A star is NOT: • a massive, luminous ball of plasma • another planet far away • a celestial body of hot gases • a thermonuclear reaction

18. b) A star is a star NOT a planet

19. Star of wonder, star of light…. A comet is: • a ball of ice, dust and rock particles that glows • a ball of rock from space that enters a planet’s atmosphere • a ball of rock from space that hits a planet’s surface • a large mass of rock with a high metal content

20. a) a ball of ice, dust and rock particles that glows

21. Star of wonder, star of light…. How much mass is added to the Earth every year from meteorites? • 100 kg • 2000 kg • 50,000 kg • 10 billion (10,000,000,000) kg

22. d) 10 billion kg

23. Star of wonder, star of light…. A meteorite hits the Earth with the energy of a Hiroshima nuclear bomb once every: • year • 5000 years • 500,000 years • 10,000,000 years

24. a) once every year

25. ROUND 4 LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW! Christmas just isn’t the same without snow!

26. Let it snow… Snow flakes are formed when: • Angel tears freeze on the way down from Heaven • Space dust freezes upon entering our atmosphere • Cloud temperatures reach freezing point allowing ice crystals to form around dust particles. • The wind blows sea salt into the upper atmosphere

27. c) Cloud temperatures reach freezing point allowing ice crystals to form around dust particles

28. Let it snow… Snow flakes are symmetrical because: • They’re good like that • Of the crystalline structure of ice • Dust is symmetrical too • Bacteria in the air eats away at them

29. b) the crystalline structure of ice

30. Let it snow… What is “Snowball Earth”? • A type of frost in Alaska • A frozen chocolate pudding • A dirty lump of snow • A period in Earth’s history when the entire planet was frozen over

31. d) the whole planet was frozen from 790 to 630 million years ago

32. Let it snow… What colour is snow? • Transparent • Blue • Yellow • White

33. a) Transparent - it appears white because the crystals act as prisms breaking up light into the entire colour spectrum.