How it works
Seventy-four questions pitched at a sophomore year: world history from the Enlightenment to 1914, geometry, biology, chemistry, and the plays and novels often set in tenth grade. Each answer links the article it was checked in.
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Five subject rounds
World history (14 questions) runs from the Peace of Westphalia to the Boxer Rebellion. Geometry (16) is theorems, not sums: Thales, tangents, the centers of a triangle. Biology (12) has meiosis, enzymes and food chains. Chemistry (14) covers the gas laws, ions and the mole. Literature and language (18) asks about Antigone, Julius Caesar, Things Fall Apart and the appeals of rhetoric.
Review game or bell ringer
For a review game, split the class in two and let each side answer in turn; the quiz stops for a score after every ten questions. One question on the board makes a bell ringer.
- Biology is the gentlest round by our estimate, and Geometry the hardest: four of its sixteen questions are hard.
- Hand out scratch paper for Geometry. A sketch settles most of its questions faster than a debate.
Questions and answers
What is the sum of the interior angles of an octagon?
1,080 degrees. Any polygon of n sides can be cut into n − 2 triangles of 180 degrees each, so an octagon gives 6 × 180. Its exterior angles, like those of every convex polygon, add up to 360 degrees.
What are ethos, pathos and logos?
The three appeals of Aristotle's Rhetoric. Ethos is an appeal to the speaker's credibility, pathos an appeal to the audience's emotions, and logos an appeal to reasoning.
What ended the Thirty Years' War?
The Peace of Westphalia: two treaties signed in October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. The war had begun in 1618, and the treaties brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire.