AVOGADRO'S NUMBER Question-Specific Discussion

[Brian McPeak]

Here you can ask about or point out errors in specific questions

[Sima Guang Hater]

The Arc Hammer is apparently not a Super Star Destroyer, and may not be classed as a Star Destroyer at all:

The Arc Hammer was a factory ship of a unique design...The inside of the Arc Hammer was a large maze and was very similar to that of other Star Destroyer designs.

(From: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Arc_Hammer)

[Mewto55555]

The Arc Hammer is apparently not a Super Star Destroyer, and may not be classed as a Star Destroyer at all:

The Arc Hammer was a factory ship of a unique design...The inside of the Arc Hammer was a large maze and was very similar to that of other Star Destroyer designs.

(From: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Arc_Hammer)

You'll note that that same article includes it in the categories section as a Super Star Destroyer, mentions that it's classified as a dreadnought, notes that in Dark Forces it's half the size of the Executor (making it approximately 10km long, in contrast to the 1600 meter length of an Imperial Star Destroyer), etc. Sure, it's of unique design, but so were a bunch of other SSDs -- no one "Super-class" Star Destroyer wasn't ever actually constructed (see here); it's just a catch-all term for really big imperial ships (which is why the answerline directs acceptance of any specific class of such ships).

I guess "factory ships" should probably be accepted too, and it's confusing because the Arc Hammer doesn't really "look" like a conventional SSD (in that everyone who attempts to picture a SSD invariably calls to mind the Executor crashing into the DS2), but it's definitely a SSD by any reasonable definition of that term.

[Judson Laipply]

My "Personal Knowledge" question which got (wisely) turned into a Michael Polanyi question, still retained some of the original pronounage, i.e. the original clues referred to Polanyi as "this book" while the new clues used "this man."

[Muriel Axon]

My "Personal Knowledge" question which got (wisely) turned into a Michael Polanyi question, still retained some of the original pronounage, i.e. the original clues referred to Polanyi as "this book" while the new clues used "this man."

Yeah, there was one "this book" remaining, which was due to my sloppiness. Thanks for catching that.

[Galadedrid Damodred]

The lead-in to the question on [REDACTED due to it apparently relating to a set that isn't clear yet-PM me if you want to know, Brian] is apparently a very well-known chestnut. This was the most egregious misplaced early clue that I remember people talking about. There were some other questions that were just very easy to fraud and/or narrowed down the answer space to the point that the answer would pop into your head without actually knowing any of the clues. A few examples of this were exponentials, ITCZ, inflation, CMB, and symmetry.

On the plus side, there were a lot of questions that I thought were pretty neat. Some of my favorites were topological insulators, Ed Witten, dwarf galaxies, black hole mergers, and remote sensing. Pokérus was the best, of course, because I powered it and that gives me nerd cred. /semi-sarcasm

The second line of the tossup on photomultiplier tubes mentions the number 1.24 being in the denominator of an equation. I don't know whether the overall sentence is uniquely identifying, but I wanted to point out that this number comes up all the time in equations describing a wide variety of photonic devices, because it is a very good approximation for the result of multiplying a photon's energy in electron-volts by its wavelength in microns, thus allowing easy conversion between the two units. For this reason, it's not a good idea to use for clues in quizbowl, but I hope that this fact will prove useful to someone in his/her studies.

[Cheynem]

I edited the above post to make it a little less specific about an unclear tournament.

[Galadedrid Damodred]

So sorry, I had no idea - thought it was a set from a previous year! I self-edited even further than you did, Mike, just to be on the safe side.

[Cheynem]

No problem, and I doubt it's that big a deal but just to be safe.

[touchpack]

The second line of the tossup on photomultiplier tubes mentions the number 1.24 being in the denominator of an equation. I don't know whether the overall sentence is uniquely identifying, but I wanted to point out that this number comes up all the time in equations describing a wide variety of photonic devices, because it is a very good approximation for the result of multiplying a photon's energy in electron-volts by its wavelength in microns, thus allowing easy conversion between the two units. For this reason, it's not a good idea to use for clues in quizbowl, but I hope that this fact will prove useful to someone in his/her studies.

Damn, I totally didn't recognize that, since in my physics classes we used 1240, and converted to nm. I'm gonna disagree with you here, this seems like a pretty good clue to drop as CONTEXT, provided it appears in a full sentence which is unique and isn't too early in the question. I've actually clued it before, in a question that Brian edited! (below)

edit: I looked back at the PMT question, and I agree with Austin that the execution of the clue seems to be suboptimal.

18. The translational partition function of a single particle in a container is equal to the volume of the container divided by the cube of this quantity. The Sackur–Tetrode equation only applies when the density of particles times this quantity cubed is much less than one. For an ideal gas, one form of this quantity is equal to Planck’s constant divided by the square root of quantity two pi times mass times Boltzmann’s constant times temperature. (*) The energy of a particle is equal to 1240 electron volt-nanometers divided by this quantity for the particle. The existence of this quantity was confirmed by an experiment which fired electrons at a nickel target and observed a Bragg diffraction pattern; that experiment was conducted by Davisson and Germer. For 10 points, name this quantity equal to Planck’s constant divided by momentum which represents the wavelength of a particle’s matter wave.
ANSWER: de Broglie wavelength