The Science Quiz | Numbers have celebrities, too

Vasudevan Mukunth Vasudevan Mukunth | 06-19 16:11

Questions:

1. What is the lowest whole number whose name, when spelt out in English, contains the letter ‘a’?

2. This six digit number is sometimes called by the name given to a famous fiery bird because its first six multiples (1 to 6) contain the same digits as this number does. Its seventh multiple has six digits of the same number. What is this number?

3. The taxicab numbers are so named because Srinivasa Ramanujan once noticed the number 1,729 — apparently the number of the cab G.H. Hardy had taken to visit Ramanujan — can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. As it stands, 1,729 is the second taxicab number. What’s the first?

4. The number 9 appears in a large variety of mythological and cultural contexts across time — from the nine worlds of Norse mythology to the navarasa of Indian performing arts — yet we haven’t been able to find causal links between them. What’s the term analytical psychologist Carl Jung used to describe such occurrences?

5. The numbers 30, 42, 66, 70, 78, and 102 are the first six _______ numbers. All these numbers have eight divisors each, and are not divisible by any square number. Fill in the blank.

Visual:

Name this warrior who also appears in Homer’s ‘Iliad’. His name is used to describe numbers that are powerful but not perfect powers — just like him.

Answers:

1. 101

2. 142,857

3. 2

4. Synchronicity

5. Sphenic

Visual: Achilles

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