Category: Question of the Week

Question of the Week

B R Sitaram Here are the answers to last month’s questions! Q 1. Which of the following is the most important cause of stomach ulcers? i. Eating spicy food ii. Drinking excessive coffee iii. Infection by a bacterium iv. Less exercise v. Excessive use of oil A. The surprising answer is (iii). It was thought that bacteria cannot survive in the harsh environment of the stomach, but the bacterium Helicobacter pylori does survive and causes gastric ulcers! Q 2. In 1828, the German chemist Friedrich Wohler synthesized urea. Why is this considered to be such an important event in the history of science? A. Before this event, scientists distinguished between organic chemicals, which came from living organisms and inorganic chemicals, which were found in non-living objects. Urea is clearly organic but Wohler managed to synthesize it from inorganic substances, showing that there was nothing “living” about organic chemicals. Q 3. Worcester, Leicester, Cholmondeley and Warwick are the names of cities in England. In addition to this, however, these cities have something else in common. What is it? Hint: it has to do with the names of the cities. A. All these words have pronunciations very different from their spellings! Their phonetic spellings would be Wooster, Lester, Chumley and Warick! Q 4. Epimendes, the Cretan, said “All Cretans are liars”. Why is this statement so important in logic? A. This is a very early example of a self-referential statement, a statement that refers to itself. To see why it creates problems, imagine that the statement is true. Then Epimendes, being a Cretan, is lying, hence the statement is a lie. But that means that Epimendes is telling the truth, which means that the statement is true! So, was Epimendes right or wrong? You decide! Questions for this month How come we do not have 4 seasons (summer, autumn, winter and spring) in the tropics? Which months would be the hottest near the Equator? If someone tells you that a particular product is not made up of chemicals, what would your response be? Vehicle tyres, as you would have seen, have lots of treads. Obviously, treads increase friction. But you do not need fancy treads to do this, all you need is a rough surface. Why do tyres have such treads then? The other day, I was using an elevator when I caught sight of a notice, “Maximum 8 passengers, 544 kg”. Why this strange number, 544? Why not 550, 500 or 600 kg? Send in your

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Question of the Week

B R Sitaram

If you figured out what time of the day is right for having dinner, now find out what is the most important cause of a stomach ulcer.

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Question of the Week

B R Sitaram
Did you find out why the tanpura and not the harmonium maybe a better musical instrument to accompany Hindustani music? Why do you think peacocks dance in the rain? If you haven’t yet been able to figure out then we give you the answers here along with a few more questions to keep you thinking until next month.

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Question of the Week

B R Sitaram Here are the answers to last month’s questions! Q 1. Lunar calendars are based on 30-day months and 12 such months give you only 360 days. Does this create a problem? How is it solved? A. It does create a problem. If we do not do something about it, a lunar calendar will very quickly go out of step with the solar calendar. This will result in festivals that are celebrated according to the lunar calendar being held in the wrong season! This is corrected by adding an extra month (called an intercalary month) every few years, so that the lunar calendar is brought back in step with the solar calendar. In the Hindu calendar, these extra months are called “Adhik maas”; in 2018, for example, an extra month (adhik jyaishta) was added. In such years, there will be two months with same name, one with the qualification “adhik”. Q 2. A common claim on WhatsApp and Facebook is that ancient Indian Rishis knew about the existence of nine planets (nava gruha) for millennia, while European astronomers discovered them only after the discovery of the telescope in the 17th century. Why is this claim absurd? A. To see the absurdity of the claim, all you need to do is to list out the nava gruha. They are the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu. Of these, 4 are not planets! Only the remaining 5 (Mercury to Saturn) are planets! These were known to astronomers all over, including in Babylon, Greece, China and Egypt. What we knew was exactly what every one else knew! And, please note that the Earth was not considered a planet, neither in India nor anywhere else. Q 3. What is wrong with the phrase “burning calories”? A. Calories are a unit of energy! You cannot burn a unit, anymore than you can destroy a centimetre. What you can do is to convert energy from one form (in this case, chemical energy) into other forms (work and heat). And while this requires the oxidation of glucose, it is certainly not burnt! Q 4. We make it a point to make young children realize that left, right, front and back are all relative to the observer. For example, if I am standing facing you, my left is your right and vice versa. However, we rarely (if ever) talk about ‘up’ and ‘down’ in the same way. Are they relative or absolute? Is it OK never

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Question of the Week

B R Sitaram Here are the answers to last month’s questions! Q 1. The great Isaac Newton was born on Christmas day 1642 and the great Galileo Galilee died on Christmas day 1642. But the two events actually took place on different days. How come? A. When the calendar was changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, not all countries agreed to the change, especially countries which considered the Gregorian calendar a Popish invention. Italy changed over immediately, but England did not. There was a difference of about 11 days between the two calendars (because of the extra leap days every 100 years in the Julian calendar), which is the reason Newton’s birthday would today be reckoned as falling on 4th January, 1643. Q 2. I have three photos taken of the night sky taken on three consecutive nights. One of the objects in the photos is a planet. How do I make out which one? A. When you observe the night sky over a period of a few hours, you notice that the objects in the sky move from east to west. This motion of course is because of the rotation of the earth and has nothing to do with the motion of the celestial objects. When you look at stars, they move together, maintaining their relative shapes. However, planets have a separate motion of their own, relative to the stars. So, when I look at the three photos, I will see that while most of the objects will retain their positions with respect to each other, one of them, however, will move relative to the others. That’s the planet! Q 3. Most diets are based on the idea of the calorie and talk about consuming a certain number of calories (actually kilo calories) per day. What is fundamentally wrong with this approach? A. The number of calories is estimated by burning the food item and measuring the total heat generated. This pays no attention to whether the human body can actually digest the food or not! Q 4. Everyone knows that Christopher Columbus was not given funds by many kings and queens till he got funds from Spain. If everyone at that time believed the earth was round, why was he denied funds? A. No one believed his estimates of the radius (and hence circumference) of the earth! Most people were convinced that India was much further away from Europe (going westwards) than Columbus believed, and they were right! Questions for

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Question of the Week

B R Sitaram
If you thought every fourth year was a leap year or every year divisible by four was a leap year, you will be surprised to know that this is not always true. Find out the reason why to this and similar baffling questions in Question of the Week.

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Question of the Week

B R Sitaram

So how many of you have figured out the magic formula for instantly losing weight? Or did you manage to find out what that important discovery was that revolutionized the world of painting? If you haven’t, then we give you the answers in this month’s QOTW and leave you with a few more challenging questions for this month.

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Question of the Week

B R Sitaram Here are the answers to last month’s questions. Q 1. On WhatsApp, I got a message that March 2019 will be special, as for the first time in 560 years, there would be five Sundays in the month. Why should I dismiss this statement as hype? A. These statements come very often, with the first time in so many years, the only difference being in the number of years claimed! These statements are wrong when they state that such events are rare. In fact our calendar (the Gregorian one) is periodic. It repeats itself after 28 years, so the calendar for 2019 is the same as the calendar for 1991, 2047, 2075, etc. So any event connected with the Gregorian calendar has to repeat itself after 28 years! In fact, calendars can repeat after shorter time periods (6 years or 11 years), depending on the remainder you get when you divide the year by 4. For example, the calendar for 2019 will repeat in 2030 (after 11 years), again in 2036 (after 6 years) and again in 2047 (after 11 years). Q 2. How long is a day (in hours)? A. This is actually a tricky question. The word “day” is used in two different senses: the time when the sun is visible (day and night) and the duration from noon to noon. We use the second interpretation a lot. For example, the “day” in Monday, Tuesday, etc., the fact that we have 7 days in a week, 365 days in a year, etc. If I had intended the first meaning, the correct answer would have been, “varies from 0 hours to 6 months, depending on where you live.” If I had intended the second meaning, the correct answer would have been 24 hours! There are many similar words that we use in an ambiguous fashion: plant (think of plants, shrubs, grasses and trees vs. the plant kingdom), animal (are animals and nematodes different or are nematodes part of the animal kingdom?), man (as in man vs woman or as in ancient man), etc. Q 3. One of the persons referred to in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, who is credited with discovering the Sorcerer’s (or Philosopher’s) Stone is a historical figure. Who is he? A. The historical figure is Nicholas Flamel, who was a scribe during the 14th-15th Century. His name comes up repeatedly in the book. Two hundred years after his death, legends started appearing about his alchemy and

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