VCU Open discussion

[Ondes Martenot]

Disclaimer: all questions I post may or may not have been edited by Dwight, so what appears in the packet could look different

In general these questions seemed fine. The Henry's law part seemed a little weird; could you post it? I think Sine-Gordon would be a fine hard part for that bonus, with Frenkel-Kontorova pushing it. I think Jones calculus is possibly on the easy side as a hard part, and I think Brewster's angle is definitely on the easy side as a medium part.

This quantity was first introduced in the paper “The osmotic pressure of concentrated solutions, and the laws of the perfect solution”. For 10 points each:
A. Name this “corrected pressure” which is equivalent to pressure for an ideal gas.
Answer: Fugacity
B. This rule states the fugacity of a component in an ideal mixture is equal to its fugacity as a pure component multiplied by its mole fraction.
Answer: Lewis-Randall rule
C. While the Lewis-Randall rule is useful at high concentrations, this other law is typically used to find the fugacity at low concentrations.
Answer: Henry’s law

Aaron, can you post the Woodward-Hoffman and the cyclohexene tossups?

They are exemplified in a reaction that uses a strong Bronsted or Lewis acid to convert divinyl ketones to a form of pentenone. Taking into account frontier orbitals, they classify certain systems as “symmetry allowed” and are supported by extended Huckel theory. They note that the reaction of compounds containing 4n+2 pi electrons will be a disrotatory process, while those containing 4n pi electrons will undergo a conrotatory process. This can be seen in the reaction of butadiene to cyclobutene, an electrocyclic process. For 10 points, identify this set of rules used for predicting the stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions.
Answer: Woodward-Hoffmann rules

CeNA oligonucleotides are characterized by the presence of this compound, which can be added by syringe to Wilkinson’s catalyst to form an addition product. This compound’s ketone derivative is produced in the aldol condensation step of the Robinson annulations and can be synthesized from phenol in a variant of the Birch reduction. It is typically synthesized in beginner chemistry labs by dehydrating a closely related alcohol compound with a phosphoric or sulfuric acid catalyst and it is also the final product in a reaction that prefers an endo product. For 10 points, identify this compound that results from the reaction of 1,3 butadiene and ethane in the Diels-Alder, a six carbon ring with one double bond.
Answer: Cyclohexene

Wow, Gran plots are really hard. I'm not sure how much they're actually used either - if you have firsthand experience with it feel free to dispute me.

Well, I wrote the Gran plot tu specifically for the finals packet, where it seemed appropriate. Seeing that this did not happen, I will agree that it was too difficult for a regular packet.

There are some pretty crazy hard parts here, like rhenium, Clementi/Raimondi, Ugi reaction, and Frenkel-Kontorova (though you could argue that last one is important).

I specifically wrote the hard parts to be hard, but answerable, but perhaps I missed my mark. I thought the discovery of the quadruple bond in rhenium was a pretty big deal, but maybe I was wrong. Clementi and Raimondi came up a lot on university pages and seemed like a natural third part for the bonus. Ugi reaction is definitely hard, but this was intended for the finals packet. Frenkel-Kontorova was given to me by Dwight, so I really can't comment on that.

[icarium]

So, if my questions hosed anyone this past weekend, I apologize. I did send them to Matt with the caveat that what I had was a mishmash (with regards to difficulty and hopefully not quality) and that some editing might have to be done to get to his intended targets. In addition, the great majority of what I sent him, with the exception of the religion that he asked me to write, was written 3-4 years ago and I'm not sure if those clues have become overused and outdated.

Here's what I was responsible for -

TUs: Count of Monte Cristo, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, The Awakening, Li Po, Blood Wedding, Lucy (as in various literary Lucys), George Willard, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Mckinely Tariff, Wat Tyler, Scottsboro Boys, Denmark Vesey, Michaelis-Menten, Alzheimers, lens, clotting factors, tympanic membrane, vasopressin, Tower of Babel (the Bruegel painting), hell (various ones in myth), Hanuman, On Crimes and Punishments, Dreams From my Father, To Catch a Thief

Bonuses: RL Stevens/Heaney/Akhmatova (poetic Requiems), Great American Novel/Pearl of Orr's Island/Simms, Last Days of Pompeii/Unaccustomed Earth/Blindness, Andersonville/Warren/The Unvanquished, Annie John/Alvarez/Wide Sargasso Sea, Two Gentlemen of Verona/Prospero/Massinger, Stalwarts/Conkling/Cornell, Gouges/Wollstonecraft/Macaulay, Phillippines/Huerta/La Follette, Francis I/Charles V/Pavia/Cambrai, July 14/9 Thermidor/18 Brumaire, Paine/Sieyes/Carroll, prions/CJD/fatal familial insomnia, operons/beta-galactosidase/trp, Bramante's Tempietto/Pinturicchio/Raphael, Fuseli/Hogarth/Alma-Tadema, Uccello/Gozzoli/Donatello, Bacon/Velazquez/Van Gogh, Szymanowski/Stabat Mater/Scriabin, Clouzot/Dassin/Melville, Volpone/Dulcamara/Swinburne/, Eli Stone/Hackers/Mansfield Park

I want to reiterate that these were not all written at the same intended level of difficulty and were mostly just questions that I had left over from writing for various things.

In addition to the above, Matt asked me to write some religion and I wrote the following (with answers provided by Matt):

TUs: John Knox, Holi, Adi Granth, Upanishads, Council of Chalcedon, Urizen (yes this counted as religion)

Bonuses: Cain/serpent seed/Christian Identity, Vendidad/Avesta/Yasna, candomble/orishas, Bab/Letters of the Living/Universal House of Justice

Anyway, I hope people enjoyed the questions and I plead no contest if they are not up to the standards of the current game, standards with which I'm unacquainted.

Subash

[cdcarter]

http://collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com/archive/09vcu.zip

[Mechanical Beasts]

They are exemplified in a reaction that uses a strong Bronsted or Lewis acid to convert divinyl ketones to a form of pentenone. Taking into account frontier orbitals, they classify certain systems as “symmetry allowed” and are supported by extended Huckel theory. They note that the reaction of compounds containing 4n+2 pi electrons will be a disrotatory process, while those containing 4n pi electrons will undergo a conrotatory process. This can be seen in the reaction of butadiene to cyclobutene, an electrocyclic process. For 10 points, identify this set of rules used for predicting the stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions.
Answer: Woodward-Hoffmann rules

Okay, so the first sentence is a little hard to buzz on. I figured out that you were talking about the Nazarov cyclization, but I didn't realize what "they are exemplified" means--obviously, that the Nazarov cyclization obeys them (which it sure should, being a pericyclic). Subsequent clues get too easy too fast, basically defining the rules, before giving a trivial application of them. This could be done better.

CeNA oligonucleotides are characterized by the presence of this compound, which can be added by syringe to Wilkinson’s catalyst to form an addition product. This compound’s ketone derivative is produced in the aldol condensation step of the Robinson annulations and can be synthesized from phenol in a variant of the Birch reduction. It is typically synthesized in beginner chemistry labs by dehydrating a closely related alcohol compound with a phosphoric or sulfuric acid catalyst and it is also the final product in a reaction that prefers an endo product. For 10 points, identify this compound that results from the reaction of 1,3 butadiene and ethane in the Diels-Alder, a six carbon ring with one double bond.
Answer: Cyclohexene

CeNA oligonucleotides don't have this compound present; rather, a cyclohexene group replaces the sugar. The group/compound distinction is important, since I didn't get what you meant there. The next clue, that it can be added to Wilkinson's catalyst, just means that it is an alkene. The next clue is weird, because cyclohexene doesn't have just one ketone derivative and there are sure more Robinson annulations than the trivial one--that confused me. The next clue I believe but I haven't encountered it before (and I can't find anything about this quickly; could you point me towards this?). It does tell me that it is a six-carbon ring with zero or one oxygen and two or fewer double bonds in some position. The next clue tells me that it is an alkene again--dehydrating an alcohol, yeah, pretty much gives you an alkene--but we knew that already. The fact that it's the final product in an endo-favoring reaction tells me that it's a cyclic alkene, probably one with not too much going on, but it still could be an aza- or oxo- variant and I could be screwed.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Subash, I enjoyed your questions for the most part - the Scottsboro boys seems the narrow down fast, but browsing your answers there that was the only one that I didn't think was so hot, so very good work. I hope to see more in the future.

[setht]

Disclaimer: all questions I post may or may not have been edited by Dwight, so what appears in the packet could look different

This quantity was first introduced in the paper “The osmotic pressure of concentrated solutions, and the laws of the perfect solution”. For 10 points each:
A. Name this “corrected pressure” which is equivalent to pressure for an ideal gas.
Answer: Fugacity
B. This rule states the fugacity of a component in an ideal mixture is equal to its fugacity as a pure component multiplied by its mole fraction.
Answer: Lewis-Randall rule
C. While the Lewis-Randall rule is useful at high concentrations, this other law is typically used to find the fugacity at low concentrations.
Answer: Henry’s law

I think the third part went in as is--what you've posted is pretty much what I remember hearing, in any case. I think that prompt is nowhere near uniquely identifying; presumably any other law that could play a role in calculating fugacities for low concentrations would be a valid answer. As far as I can tell I wouldn't even need to name a law directly involving fugacity--I could claim that some equation of state is "typically" assumed to hold at low concentrations, with the fugacity derived from that equation of state.

In general, I think "this relation is used to do ___" clues are fine for getting people situated, but they're almost never unique by themselves. Writers have to add in some material on the content of the relation (or anything else that will help people narrow things down to the specific relation the writer has in mind), or the question is really testing players' mind-reading abilities.

-Seth