I’m happy to announce some winners to our last How Did You Know trivia hunt. Peter Dapier and Patrick Corrado scored the big prizes by sending in all the correct answers, nearly two hours after the final puzzle posted. I’ll post their pic and bios below, and their answers after the jump. We had a lot of almosts this time around. Seems the big stumbling block for most of you was the final puzzle where I asked about the connection between ringtone and one of the atoms. Ringtone and nitrogen are anagrams! (It’s always so easy in retrospect, right?)

See everyone back for another round on the 24th of February when Peter and Patrick will be looking to defend the title.

Peter Dapier and Patrick Corrado are lawyers from Chicago who find Mental Floss a wellspring of interesting trivia to complement the otherwise routine trivialities of their days. In humbly accepting the prestige and fame that will doubtlessly flow from winning this month’s installment of How Did You Know?, Peter and Patrick feel obliged to thank Andrew Glennon for his boundless knowledge of all matters sport for his invaluable help in naming the athletes. In closing, the two would also like to add that given the wide-ranging subject matter of this quiz, they cannot believe that the trickiest stumbling block was a silly anagram.

Final Answer

The only temperature that’s equal in both Celsius and Farenheit is: -40 on both scales.

Day 1

No. Diagram Atom A.K.A. Description
1. 16 N, 15e 31P Phosphorus-31 Only stable isotope of Phosphorus
2. 2N, 2e 4He Helium-4 More abundant (>99%) of the two stable isotopes of Helium
3. 7N, 7e 4N Nitrogen-14 More abundant (>99%) of the two stable isotopes of Nitrogen
4. 20N, 19e 39K Potassium-39 More abundant (>93%) of the two stable isotopes of Potassium
5. 39N, 31e 70Ga Gallium-70 Unstable isotope of Gallium*
6. 12N, 12e 24Mg Magnesium-24 Most abundant (>78%) of the 3 stable isotopes of Magnesium
7. 5N, 4e 9Be Beryllium-9 Only stable isotope of Beryllium

* A close approximation of the standard atomic weight of Gallium, 69.723, derived from an average of the two stable isotopes, 69Ga and 71Ga, which are found in an approximate ratio of 3:2, respectively.

The atoms/isotopes were found by first assuming the number electrons in the diagrams was equal to the number of protons in the nucleus (i.e., that the atoms were not ions), then identifying the element on a periodic table by its atomic number (i.e, the number of protons), and finally using a reference (okay, Wikipedia) to identify the specific isotope at issue by adding the protons and neutrons.

Day 2

No. Athlete
1. Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns
2. Nigel Dawes of the New York Rangers
3. Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles
4. Bernie Williams, formerly of the New York Yankees
5. Jimmy Connors former U.S. international tennis champion
6. Marion Jones, former U.S. track and field athlete (and performance-enhancing drug-user)
7. Evonne Goolagong Cawley, former Australian international tennis champion

The names of the athletes were determined, in the main, by asking my good friend Andrew Glennon to look at the pictures. He recognized all but Ms. Goolagong on sight. As for the mysterious tennis champion, resort was made to an online compilation of tennis greats and a search was made for all women champions from the seventies after a Google search for tennis players who look like Kerri Russell yielded no results. (The time limitation was based on assumption derived from the photograph’s quality and the player’s dress.) Ms. Cawley finally appeared as the likely culprit, and once we discovered she was born Evonne Goolagong, the picture used in the clue was found using Google Image Search for confirmation.

Day 3

No. Clue Answer Home to…
1. SOFTLAPEGGSTATESTUFF FLAGSTAFF (AZ) Lowell et al. Observatories
2. EGGPLOWSPANAGESLICES LOS ANGELES (CA) Griffith Observatory
3. PIGPRATEENSOBCRANKY GREEN BANK (WV) Nat. Radio Astronomy Observatory
4. MANTRAUNDERLAKEAPE MAUNA KEA (HI) Keck et al. Observatories
5. STRANDOFHAIRBANJOSET SAN JOSE* (CA) Lick Observatory
6. PALEOFMARTSUMFOUNTAIN PALOMAR MOUNTAIN (CA) Palomar Observatory
7. IFORANGETIMEDSAVEUSPIS FORT DAVIS (TX) McDonald Observatory

* The observatory is actually on Mount Hamilton, just outside San Jose, California.

The city names were fairly easy to spot, save for Green Bank and Mauna Kea, but an online listing of observatories in the U.S. quickly revealed the likely culprits and confirmed the other guesses.

Day 4

No. Equation Name
1. E = mc2 The Mass-Energy Equivalence Formula
2. a2 + b2 = c2 The Pythagorean Theorem
3. π = c/d Definition of π
4. F = Gm1m2/d2 Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation
5. dU = δQ – δW First Law of Thermodynamics

Several of the equations were recognized instantly due to high school and college science classes. The others were found quite readily simply by performing a Google search.

Day 5

Day 4: On Friday you were asked to name five different famous equations. One of these has something to do with a certain law of thermodynamics. Another law of thermodynamics states:
As a system approaches absolute zero, all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value.
Question: Absolute zero of what?
Answer: Absolute zero in terms of temperature. (0 on the Kelvin scale, -273.15-degrees Celsius.

Day 1: On Tuesday you were asked to name seven atoms. Only one of the atoms has something in common with your cell phone’s ringtone. What’s the connection?
The atom in question is made up of how many electrons? How many protons? How many neutrons? Compared one to the other, each number is exactly ________ what? This is your answer for Day 1.

Answer: Ringtone is an anagram of nitrogen. It has 7 electrons, 7 protons, and 7 neutrons. Thus, each number is exactly equal to the others.

Day 2: On Wednesday you were asked to name seven athletes. One of the sports represented is played on a surface of water cooled below 0º on what temperature scale?

Answer: Hockey is played on an ice rink. Water freezes to ice at/below 0-degrees Celsius.

Day 3: Part of your challenge on Thursday was to uncover the names of seven U.S. locations home to major astronomical observatories
Only one location both begins and ends with the same letter. That letter stands for a certain temperature scale named after a German physicist. What is his last name?

Answer: Flagstaff. “F” is for Farenheit.