•February 6, 2010 •
4 Comments
For the uninitiated – “How Things Work” is a hard core sci-tech quiz @ IITM in which questions revolve around – you guessed it – how things work. Now I’ve been in love with this particular brand of quizzing (even more so than your usual sci-tech quizzing) ever since I was exposed to it as a fresher.
Well, this (academic) year, I was one of the coordinators (along with Sanjay “Service” BJ and another lazy fellow who put only one question for the techsoc HTW) for Shaastra HTW (October 2009) and Techsoc (inter-hostel technical competition) HTW (which was held last weekend). Personally, in spite of a few hiccups during the prelims, overall I was more satisfied with the Techsoc HTW than with the Shaastra one. The finals were easier in my opinion, but, what is more important, all of us (Me, Sanjay, the finalists and the small but enthusiastic audience) enjoyed the same.
Now I could describe the event in glorious detail over here – but that would be boring. Instead – to give the uninitiated a taste of HTW and to give the NED junta a feel for what they missed – here are a few of my favorites from the set of questions I’d framed for Techsoc. (Please try thinking about the answer, before clicking on the link to the same – HTW is about figuring stuff out, not about knowing stuff beforehand…)
Click Fraud 2.0
We all know of click fraud. Traditionally it’s detected/rooted out by
-
Checking for bunched clicks on ads – large number of clicks over short time periods
-
A sudden decrease in conversion ratio associated with a sudden increase in volume of clicks on the ads.
Or other similar means (Statistical analysis of clicking behaviour or comparision of clicking volume with sales volume)
Recently a group of people have come up with a new variation of click fraud which is hard (if not impossible) to detect via traditional means. How ?
Answer
RFID Sponge
During a surgery sponges are used to absorb the blood while making the incisions and during the operations – recently a company has come up with sponges with RFID tags – Rationale ??
Answer
Empty ships – a pain to many…
A simple question – short and sweet – Large container ships sailing empty are a major concern to marine biologists. Why ??
Answer – couldn’t find a single simple reference for this one – highlight (select the text of) the answer below to read – when ships sail empty they fill up their ballasts (in order to maintain stability) with water from port of departure and empty it at the destination port when they are loaded up – species sucked into the ballast at one end of the world and released at the other end are a major source of bio-invasion of marine habitats by foreign species.
Bluetooth Brilliance
Bluetooth headsets suffer from very poor sound quality i.e. if you’re using a bluetooth headphone in a crowded room, then your voice would be hardly audible to the person you’re talking to. This here is the Motorola Endevour HX1 which solves this problem and gives crystal clear voice quality. How ?
Answer
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P.S. – Interested in more questions ? Let me know about the same via comments on this post…
Posted in quizzing, technology
Tags: Click Fraud, Container ships, How things work, HTW, HX1, IIT, IIT Madras, IITM, Motorola endeavor, quiz, RFID, RFID sponge, sponge, technology, Techsoc
Recent Comments