[Update: this has been edited slightly since first publication due to changes from awarding Pat Gibson points for a question]
Game-week 6 ran from 4th to 11th September 2024. In this game-week, we did some serious cloud-watching (known as nephology), explored interesting creatures in the Eastern Seaboard through the works of Rachel Carson, learnt about the interesting history behind the discovery of fundamental particles, orbited alongside artificial satellites, and did some R&D for Batman’s tech.
An interesting thing that happened this game-week - a player informed me that the image of the Planck telescope (model) was credited to longtime and prolific Wikimedia contributor Mike Peel who also happened to be a member of the Planck Collaboration. He happens to be a colleague of the player, and the player has used Planck data extensively in his work. Wikimedia (from where we get most of the images/animations) contributors upload their images/GIFs without expecting to earn any money out of it. We ALWAYS credit images/GIFs/videos taken from the internet for a reason. Not because because we fear legal action if we don’t. It’s the decent thing to do. These contributors are not going to sue you if you’re not attributing their name, but it is unethical to use their contributions without even acknowledging them.
There are two exceptions to this: 1) Public domain content - some of them waive their attribution, and make their content free to use without any attribution. This saves us some time as we don’t have to copy-paste the attribution. These contributors are simply amazing, and we can’t thank them enough. 2) Corporations like media corporations who owns rights to movies/series try to sue or gag people even if they use 5-20 second clips from their movies/series. We will not give attribution to these greedy bullies. We use those clips under the Fair Use act (which again has shady clauses thanks to these corporations).
I would also like to point out a minor issue with my following question this week:
Q: Due to anti-nuclear paranoia, people often make this false claim about nuclear plants. This is physically impossible because the fuel does not have enough uranium and reactors are designed with lots of contingencies including automatic shutdown capabilities. Identify this paranoid claim.
A: That nuclear power plants can explode like a nuclear weapon
Tilman Thiry gave the answer China Syndrome, which is “a nuclear reactor operations accident characterized by the severe meltdown of the core components of the reactor, which then burn through the containment vessel and the housing building, then (figuratively) through the crust and body of the Earth until reaching the opposite end, presumed to be in China” (Link).
Update: After reading this, Pat Gibson and Sandeep Hari have also informed us that they had answered China Syndrome, which means that we have to update the scores (it will have little to no impact on the leaderboard or any stats, except for Pat and Sandeep. So, no need to worry).
I had come across the China Syndrome movie (which inspired the name of this hypothetical accident) while writing this quad. The paranoia this movie caused was one of the reasons behind the misinformation during and after the Three Mile Accident which happened in the same year the movie was released (just 12 days before the Accident, in 1979). The paranoia was restricted largely to the USA and largely during that time. The idea of the core melting into the Earth thousands of kilometres deep was found to be too silly later on.
The distinction between the given answer and other answers like China Syndrome was supposed to be "people often make this false claim", which is in reference to recent claims, like claims made politicians that the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) can be converted into a nuclear bomb, which is often puppeted in media adding to the anti-nuclear energy paranoia.
The paranoia about the China Syndrome is not seen that often. However, I awarded Tilman the point (post-game) since the question does look a bit ambiguous.
Here are the quads and their creators:
Bird beaks | Math references in movies | Technology in Batman Begins | Web architecture | Myths regarding nuclear power | Misogyny in evolutionary psychology - Paul Pop
This week, Shankha was back with one of his signature quads on elementary/fundamental particles. It’s always great when a quad is made by an expert in that field. This week, his “Discovery of fundamental particles” was liked by the most number of players (or readers) (4 votes). For a change, it’s not a math quad that is the most liked, but a physics quad. This was followed by Ronak’s “Wildlife conservationists ” and my quad - “Bird beaks” (all with 3 votes each). Several other quads had one or two votes each.
Some interesting things about our questions in GW6: The quad of Batman Begins was inevitable as I am one of the biggest fans of the trilogy, and this is possibly my favourite movie, and it is the only quad from which one question went unanswered (more on that later). This means that people learnt something they had not known about the technology depicted in this movie. My ornithological quad for this week featured an ‘Easter Egg’ - my WhatsApp name. I am surprised that 8 people bothered to look up what a ‘tomial tooth’ is and got it right! Proof that curiosity is very rewarding. Also, I loved the surprised faces when players learnt that the ‘irregular sheet’ webs that the spiders of the Theridiidae family construct are called ‘cobwebs’!
I had fun writing the “Misogyny in evolutionary psychology” quad as debunking the misuse of science to promote pseudoscience, which is quite common in the field of social sciences and psychology, is one thing I really enjoying. I would highly recommend watching münecat’s video on the same (which inspired this quad).
There were many EMUverse portals from this week to the last season:
For starters, Röntgen Satellite/ROSAT was featured in Rutvik’s ‘Artificial Satellites’ quad this week. Röntgen appeared in a question of X-ray crystallography from my ‘molecular music’ quad from last season (game-week three). Another answer from the ‘Artificial Satellites’ quad - Planck - appears in my quad on ‘fundamental constants’ in game-week 6 of season 1 (but as Planck’s constant, not as Planck satellite).
Jane Goodall had been featured in Season 1 in my quad “Ethical questions in conservation” (game-week 4). There, the answer was “Roots and Shoots” a programme started by Jane Goodall. In Ronak’s quad on “Wildlife conservationists” this week, Jane Goodall herself came as an answer.
This week’s question:
Q: In 1962, wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick was sent by National Geographic to photograph proceedings at the Gombe Stream National Park. In 2014, Nat Geo rediscovered the archived and forgotten footage and based on it, released BLANK - a documentary based on the life of, and taking the first name of which wildlife conservationist (full name or the surname)?
A: Jane Morris Goodall
Last season’s question:
Q: Kopnina talks about a successful example of conservation program that combines social and ecological objectives, founded by Jane Goodall. This program aims to help young people to play an active role in conservation efforts like fuel-efficient stoves and tree nurseries, as well as social issues like poverty alleviation and family planning. It’s rhyming name (5, 3, 6) refers to two parts of a plant, usually found under andabove the ground respectively.
A: Roots and Shoots
Sanat’s quad this week - “Creatures of the Eastern Seaboard in Rachel Carson's works” featured Rachel Carson. I had referenced her in a question on DDT in my chemistry quad on “Environmental toxicology involving birds” (Season 1, game-week 5).
There was one unanswered question this game-week, which was the same as the HiQ question. The HiQ question was the one with Electrostatic flocking as the answer. Batman’s cape is so cool because of this! The question was:
In Batman Begins, Lucius Fox introduces 'memory cloth' to Bruce Wayne, which becomes his cape. This 'memory cloth' is based on a real technology/principle. It immobilises electrical charges to the surface of microfibres from a high voltage-connected electrode and utilises Coulombic forces to propel microfibres toward an adhesive-coated substrate, leaving a forest of aligned fibers. Identify this two-word principle. The latter word is also observed in bird migrations.
Besides the HiQ, the other least correct answers of GW6 were Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds, Sea Cucumber, Interkosmos, and Cobweb/Combfoot web. Only one person each got these right. Both Kelvin-Helmholtz and Sea Cucumber were answered by Krishna Girish; Interkosmos by Subrat M; and Cobweb/combfoot web by Suvajit Chakraborty. Congrats to all of them for cracking some of the hardest questions of the sets. Cobweb is a googly - a very familiar word, but one that players would be unlikely to give as an answer.
Note that there was one additional spare game this game-week since two players who missed their games wanted to play another game. So, stats will be a bit different. The most answered questions were 3 this game-week (i.e. answered in every one of the 27 games played). That means only ~6.25% of the questions in the set were answered in every single game without fail. The average number of unanswered questions/per game went increased from 13.58 in GW5 to 20.58 in GW6 (ignoring the extra game).
In terms of quads, the toughest quad was 'Artificial satellites’ with an answer rate of 11.05%, a 6.65% decrease from last week's toughest quad (corrects/opportunities). The most answered quad was 'Wildlife conservationists'. It had an answer % of 38.89, a 9.35% decrease from the easiest quad of the fifth week.
There was a somewhat high wildlife bias in GW6 with four quads having Wildlife as primary or secondary themes, followed by Biology (3 quads), and then by History & Literature, Chemistry, Engineering & Technology, and Mythbusting (2 two quads each).
The maximum ADS by an individual for GW6 was scored by Achyuth Sanjay - 9.23
Here are the other top ranking players of GW6 (ADS in brackets):
Krishna Girish (8.47)
Ananth Kachroo (8.06)
Suresh Vishnu (7.9225)
Daniel K Lee (7.8675)
Players with the highest ADS, in their respective seats were (and their corresponding points) [fixed some errors here]:
We had no musketeers in GW6. Musketeers will be rare since only one question per quad is direct to a person.
Themewise (T) and quad (Q, primary quad relating to a theme) leaders for game-week 6 are (note that there were some errors in the quad-wise toppers on first publication, which has been rectified):
1) Physical Geography - Cloudy with a chance of clouds (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Achyuth Sanjay
2T) History and Literature (max = 3/8 (37.5%)) - manoj saranathan, Aditya Gangrade, Akshay Surendra, Wesley Morgan, Rehmat Singh Chawla, Sandeep Hari
2Q) Creatures of the Eastern Seaboard in Rachel Carson's works (max = 2/4 (50%)) - manoj saranathan, Aditya Gangrade, Daniel K Lee, Akshay Surendra, Aditya Sankaran, Anirudh Shastry, Aditi Surendra
