h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Less is more, more or less.

It's been a bit quiet QI-wise so perhaps now is a good time for me to take a crack at it. Here's your clue:

"I am the smallest of my kind, but I can be evenly divided for up to ten."

There was only going to be one klaxon, a general term that would have covered a whole category of stuff, but it got so broad in scope it would have included virtually all the likely wrong answers - and that wouldn't be fair to anyone would it.
So feel free to speculate.

~jwf~

Anything to do with money? Or mathematics?

>>>"I am the smallest of my kind, but I can be evenly divided for up to ten."<<<

For up to ten, implies (to me) that it can be divided to be used/eaten by up to ten things/people....

I would hazard a guess that it is eaten...

Evenly divided... At a guess something with ten parts to it - maybe legs: a squid? Or a Starfish (cut each "leg" in half)...

But smallest of kind... not an atom... or is it - maybe a Hydrogen Atom... Can be divided up into 10 subatomic particles?

Electron,
Proton
Gluon (does H have a gluon if its only one proton?)
Quarks (6 flavours - Up/Down, Left/Right, Strange/Charm?)
= 9 so far...
+ Boson (?)

(if there were Klaxon's sure this would get one).

Ah, or Boron, smallest possible configuration = 5 Protons and 5 electrons - but they are not equal..

Interesting thing Boron - VEry difficult to get in pure form. Diamond recently in Metro had a bluish colour because of Boron impurity. Very weird element - only just worked out its phase diagram, and (uniquely) created an ionic crystal consisting of Just Boron atoms ... THere is more, e.g. its known as the graveyard of scientists - having ruined the reputation of more than one....

(info here is thanks to reading a conversation in Orcus' space about Boron...)

For an atom to be split equally into 10 pieces it'd have to have 10 Protons and 10 electrons - Atomic No. 10 = NEON (B5, c6, o8, f9, ne10?).

But then they wouldn't be equal pieces.

Plus wouldn't you need neutrons in there too?

An orange has ten segments, soo a small orange would be a tangerene?

Yes I was wondering about Neutrons, but not all elements have to have them.... But.... I think the larger ones do - not sure though if the "noble Gases" do have neutrons or not...

ooooh quite interesting factlet - the largest atomic no. element has recently (after a fair few years) been named as... Copernicium - Atomic no. 112... The researchers reckon they can make atomic no. 120...

"I am the smallest of my kind, but I can be evenly divided for up to ten."

The way I'm reading it, it can be divided by
1 or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8 or 9 (had enough yet?)
without leaving a remainder.

That seems to take it out of the realm of maths, towards

Are you 2520?

The smallest of your kind, namely integers divisible by 2520

Of course, toybox.

I'm RodthePrat,
RodthePrat Iam,Iam - again.

So, 2520 - just too easy, eh?

You lost me here. And you are not a prat

So if it's not 2520, maybe it is 42?

~jwf~ set the question, not Rod, so wait for his answer. 2520 does seem to fit the bill being the smallest number divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, but QI questions are usually more obscure.

Well I was Vipped at post#2
Money I hadn't even thought of.
And yeah Mathematics it is.
That must be worth a point. Right.

I almost threw in the

But sure enough, the 'foodstuffs' category opened up and I was curious to see
how many possible answers there were. Tangerines popped up quickly.

No one mentioned pie or pi.


Then RobtheBrit found the rabbit hole but couldn't believe what he was seeing.

But I'd definitely award a point for narrowing the field of mathematics to the
basics of the question. Stopped short at 9.

So toybox wins the big points for the correct answer!

And there's a bonus for mentioning 42 because whether you realised it or not
(I assume you did divide 2520 by every number from 1 up to and including 10)
the answer to 2520 divided by 6 is 420.


~jwf~

PS: There woulda been a QI for this:
Word History: The name tangerine comes from Tangier, Morocco, the port from which the first tangerines were shipped to Europe in 1841. The adjective tangerine, from Tangier or Tanger, was already an English word (first recorded in 1710), meaning "of or pertaining to Tangier." This adjective had been formed with the suffix -ine, as in Florentine. The fruit was first called a tangerine orange, later reduced simply to tangerine. Confusion exists between the name tangerine and the name mandarin, and with good reason. The tangerine is a type of mandarin orange, so the oranges shipped from Tangier could also accurately have been called mandarins. However, although the two names can be used interchangeably in a general sense, there is now a particular type of orange called tangerine, which is different from another type now called mandarin. The mandarin orange, which is native to China, is thought probably to have received its name because of its resemblance in color to the robes of a mandarin.

I hope I got this right.

Vip for maths - 1
RodtheBrit for restructuring the question - 1
toybox correct answer - 3
toybox bonus for 42 - ?

Oh and Bagpuss ahould get a point for stating the obvious that QI questions usually are more 'obscure'.

Can someone post these scores to the score board for me once you guys figger out if the numbers above are correct, please.

I'm off to suck my thumb and sulk a lot.

~jwf~

I just took the smallest common multiple of 1,2,3,...,10 (that is, 8*9*5*7), but I really didn't think that would be the answer

Actually, I thought the answer had nothing to do with maths -- hence the 42, which I give when I don't know what else to say.

Err, polite cough, who mentioned oranges?

bloody mathematicians.

The answer should really have been 1. Because in my mind it's obvious

Hey, don't complain. Think of how life is for us mathematicians: we are really like this everyday, it comes naturally to us

I'm just ous. Very.