Sample Questions

Test your wits with these sample questions and see if you'd like to be a Quiz Kid! These questions are tough!  If you can answer more than five, please come try out for the Quizbowl team!  To see the answer, point your mouse to the right of the question mark, or at the beginning of the next line.  Note:  you need to have Java enabled in order to see the answers.  If you cannot see the Java, use the text-only version of this page.

Fine arts, music and entertainment
1. This French Impressionist, whose trademark is the pointillist technique, is most famous for his painting “Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte”.
2. His statue stands on top of a column in London’s Trafalgar Square
3. After designing the Eiffel Tower, Gustave Eiffel next designed the iron framework for what New York landmark?
4.What country is the setting for the opera Madame Butterfly?
5. California's Bodega Bay was the setting for the 1963 movie The Birds directed by what Englishman who also directed Psycho?

Current events
1.What state was long represented in the US Senate by Jesse Helms until he recently retired?
2. More than 90 percent of the people who catch it now survive the respiratory paralysis it causes. What bacterial disease had its purified toxin approved by the FDA in 2002 as a wrinkle-smoother?  
3. What Mattel doll is Barbie’s boyfriend?
4. Who was the first African-American woman to win the Oscar for best actress?

Geography
1. The convention that discussed compensation for lost baggage on international airplane travel is named for what capital city of Poland?
2. What state contains the Craters of the Moon National Monument?
3. What type of tropical grasslands sounds like a city in Georgia?
4. What Midwestern city is generally nicknamed The Windy City?

History
1. According to the Constitution, what crime can a person not be convicted of except by testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or by confession in open court?
2. What British ship was sunk by a German U-boat, which was one of the provocations for starting a World War?
3. The 1494 Treaty of Tordicellos divided all non-Christian lands between what two Catholic countries?
4. What president was praised as "bringing American into the 20th century" by his last vice-president Harry Truman?

Language and Literature
1. One sentence that uses all 26 letters of the alphabet is "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." In grammatical terms, what word is the direct object in this sentence?
2. What classic novel begins with the death of the pirate Billy Bones at the Admiral Benbow Inn?
3. What Italian diplomat dedicated his book to Lorenzo di Medici and called it The Prince? 
4. Lenny Small and George Milton are migrant workers in what Steinbeck novel?

Math
1. Whose book, Principia Mathematica, was the first to introduce the concept of integrating equations to find the area under the curve?
2. For a Boy Scout to earn the Cycling merit badge, he must do two 10-mile rides, two 5 mile rides, two 25 mile rides and a 50-mile ride. How many miles in total?
3. What is the sum of the three angles of a triangle?
4. A sphere has surface area 4 pi square centimeters. What is its volume?

Science
1. A new study says MMR shots don't cause autism. What three disease have vaccines in a single MMR shot?
2. What Scottish inventor was living in Ontario Canada when he developed the telephone?
3. What letter of the Greek alphabet generally denotes the frictional coefficient in physics?
4. What is the atomic weight of the most common isotope of uranium?

Sports
1. What city, once the home of the Utah Jazz, is now the home of the former Charlotte Hornets?
2. What baseball pitcher holds the record for most walks and most strike-outs?
3. When playing standard American pool or billiards, how many balls are racked up?  
4. The type of Olympic gymnastics done by Mary Lou Retton is called artistic. What is the name of the other type done with a ball, hoop or ribbon, which originated in China?

More sample questions are posted on the Peninsula TV website