24 Winter ADD Trivia Answers
Thank you for playing our trivia game during All District Day. Here are the correct answers and our reasoning and sources to show how we found answers.
Question 1
Camera obscura, the forerunner of the modern-day camera, uses a pinhole or lens to focus rays of light to project an upside-down image onto a wall or surface. Who first described the concept of camera obscura:
- Daniele Barbaro, a Venetian nobleman in 1568
- Chinese philosopher Mo-tzu in 400 BC
- Leonardo da Vinci in 1502
- Johannes Kepler in 1604
- Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 4th Century
- Ibn al-Haytham in the 11th Century
Answer
2. Chinese philosopher Mo-tzu described light from an illuminated object that passed through a pinhole in a dark room projected an inverted image of the object on the wall of the dark room. [Sources: Camera Obscura & A World of Illusions: Camera Obscuras Through Time (2020) and History of Camera Obscura: Photography History Facts.]
Question 2
Where did the formula originate?
- Greece
- Egypt
- China
- South America
- No one knows for sure, it appears in many ancient cultures
Answer
5. While this formula is called Pythagorean Theorem, and is named after Greek philosopher Pythagoras, it is likely that Pythagoras learned the theorem while studying in Egypt. (NASA). “While Pythagoras lived and wrote from 569–475 BCE, the result that now bears his name appeared as early as 1800 BCE in surviving clay Babylonian tablets. The Pythagorean theorem was also known to early Chinese scholars and appeared in the sacred texts of ancient India related to altar building” [(History of Mathematics Project).]
Question 3
What form did the first evidence of credit take?
- Letters of credit used in the 1800s for people who traveled
- 1930s Charga-Plate (a metal dog-tag style plaste with a customer’s name and city imprinted on it. They were used for store credit for specific retailers.
- Clay tablets were found in ancient Mesopotamia showing agreements between merchants and traders from other regions agreeing to pay for goods.
- “Metal Money” from Western Union in 1914, an early form of the modern credit card
Answer
3. [Sources: History of Credit Cards: A Brief Overview, Holly Johnson, Time Stamped, (2024). When Were Credit Cards Invented?: The History of Credit Cards, Robin Saks Frankel, Forbes Advisor, (2021). The Mesopotamian Merchant Files, Eric A. Powell, Archaeology, (2018).]
Question 4
Where was the evidence of the roots of the modern alphabet found?
- Egypt
- Greece
- Russia
- Chile
Answer
1 The temple complex that was found on the Sinai Peninsula in a place called Serabit el-Khadim (a remote plateau) included the roots of the alphabet we use today. The alphabet seems to be developed based on shortening a hieroglyph into a letter. For example, the letter A comes from the hieroglyph for an ox or aleph. The letter B derived for the hieroglyph for house, bêt. [Source: Who Invented the Alphabet, Lydia Wilson, Smithsonian Magazine (2021)]
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