The Coffee Break Quiz - A challenging selection of General Engineering questions and answers 
sometimes you just don't know what you don't know, but you're sure that you did know or that you should know and when you see the answers you know that once upon a time you probably did know !

Challenge your colleagues - can they answer more than you ?

1. Hiroshima was the first city to be levelled by a plutonium-based atomic bomb - True or False
2. What is the artificial sweetener Saccharin derived from - a) Seaweed  b) Corn  c) Coal Tar  d) Palm Oil
3. What is the only metal that's not a solid at room temperature
4. Art Fry invented the 3M “Post It” notes after the scraps of paper he used to mark tunes in his hymnbook kept falling out - True or False
5. The Cotton Candy (also called fairy floss, candy floss) machine was invented by confectioner John C.Wharton and William James Morrison.  What was the profession of William James Morrison - a) Dentist  b) Surgeon  c) Pediatrist  d) Undertaker
6. What gas is released into the bloodstream when a diver suffers from the bends - a) Oxygen  b) Nitrogen  c) Hydrogen  d) Carbon Dioxide
7. The name KODAK was made up by George Eastman in 1888 because it was easy to memorize, pronounce, and spell - True or False
8. Alexander Cummings was issued the first patent for a flush toilet in which century - a) 17th  b) 18th c) 19th  d) 20th
9. The output of a system which depends not only its current input, but also its history of past inputs is called - a) Hysterectomy  b) Hysteria  c) Hysterical  d) Hysteresis
10. The worlds first successful heart transplant was performed in which country - a) USA  b) Russia  c) France  d) South Africa

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ANSWERS

1) False - Nagasaki  was the first city to be levelled by a plutonium-based atomic bomb  2) c) Coal Tar  3) Mercury  4) True  5) a) Dentist  6) b) Nitrogen  7) True  8) b) 18th - Cummings was a Scottish watchmaker who invented the S-shaped trap  in 1775 to prevent sewer gases from entering buildings  9) d) Hysteresis  10) d) South Africa - Performed by South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard in 1967 at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town