Albert Einstein’s riddle

ALBERT EINSTEIN WROTE THIS RIDDLE EARLY DURING THE 19th CENTURY. HE SAID THAT 98% OF THE WORLD POPULATION WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SOLVE IT.

ARE YOU IN THE TOP 2% OF INTELLIGENT PEOPLE IN THE WORLD? SOLVE THE RIDDLE AND FIND OUT.

There are no tricks, just pure logic, so good luck and don’t give up.

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

The Periodic Table gets a new element…

Element number 112 has just been discovered. See here for details. At the bottom of the webpage there is an opportunity for you to help name this new element. Have a go, please. Email me your ideas as well - each valid idea with a reasonable explanation wins one point.

For three points….

Which letter of the alphabet is used nowhere in the periodic table???

How experiments that don’t work can still be useful

The Shocking History of Phosphorus or Fire from Urine

More than 300 years ago, in 1669, Hennig Brand, a Hamburg alchemist, like most chemists of his day, was trying to make gold. He let urine stand for days in a tub until it putrified. Then he boiled it down to a paste, heated this paste to a high temperature, and drew the vapours into water where they could condense - to gold. To his surprise and disappointment, however, he obtained instead a white, waxy substance that glowed in the dark. Brand had discovered phosphorus, the first element isolated other than the metals and non-metals, such as gold, lead and sulphur, that were known to the ancient civilisations. The word phosphorus comes from the Greek and means light bearer.

9Joh on their invertebrate monitoring field trip

Sorry this has taken me so long. Here you are, specifically a hen-pecked Sam. Go Sam!

How well can you do on this quiz?

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Koura Kraze continued

I’m about to send in our entries. How about some things to add a bit of fun? One point each for:

  1. Best koura joke
  2. Weirdest koura fact
  3. Most intersting koura question
  4. Best koura haiku
  5. Best koura crossword clue

Why does ice float?

When a liquid freezes, the particles move closer together and the resulting solid becomes more dense. When water freezes, the opposite happens. Why? Earn some points.

iceberg.jpg

Mystery object

Iain’s latest post wins. When the ambient temperature changes, the density of the clear liquid in the cylinder changes - ie if the temperature increases, the particles in the clear liquid move further apart, reducing in density. The glass bulbs all have a different density. Those with a low density will move upwards when the density of the liquid around them decreases. Get it? I’ll show you with my Gallileo thermometer next week. In the meantime, you’ve all won points, both for first, second, and any other attempts. Well done! Check out the points table to see where you are at now.

 I’ll post another question sometime over the weekend.

Mystery object

See my comment. Two of you are so close, but not close enough. Come on the rest of you - let’s have some more involvement!