MCQs on Inventions & Discoveries (GK) for Govt. Exams

• Swedish scientist, Alfred Bernhard Nobel who also founded the Nobel Prize invented Dynamite in 1867.
• Dynamite is based on Nitro-glycerine in which wood pulp is used as absorbent and sodium nitrate is added to increase the strength of explosive.
• Use of Dynamite:
  • Construction, Mining, and Demolition
  • Underwater Blasting
• Dynamite is generally sold as a cylindrical stick that produces 1 Mega Joule of energy.
• The maximum shelf life of Dynamite is 1 year.

Inventions by –

• Thomas Alva Edison: Bulb, Gramophone, Electric Pen, etc.
• Rudolf Diesel: Diesel Engine
• Benjamin Franklin: Lightning rod, Bifocals, Glass Harmonica

Mistake Points

• Dynamite and TNT (2, 4, 6 – Trinitrotoluene) are not the same things.
• Earlier, TNT was used as a chemical inside dynamite.
• Nitro-glycerine can be detonated easily which is not the case with TNT.
• Chemical Formula –
  • Nitro-glycerine: C₃H₅(ONO₂)­₃
  • TNT: C₇H₅N₃O_6​​

• Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician-scientist who discovered penicillin in 1928.
• Penicillin sometimes abbreviated PCN is an antibiotic, that is derived from Penicillium fungi, also known asPenicillium notatum.
• Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases.

• James Watson and Francis Crick, in 1953 discovered the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the substance that is the basis of heredity.
• Henery Moseley, in 1913 used self-built equipment to prove that every element's identity is uniquely determined by its atomic number. His discovery revealed the true basis of the periodic table.

• Penicillin was the first antibiotic that was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming.
• Penicillins are a group of antibacterial drugs that attack a wide range of bacteria.
• It works by interfering with bacteria's cell walls.
• It is still the first-line antibiotic drug in many western countries.
• This antibiotic was extensively used to treat American soldiers wounded in World War II.
• In India, it gradually went out of the markets because of unrealistic price control measures of the government.
• The prices of the drug were kept so low that the manufacturers stopped making the drug and Penicillin went out of production.
• Although some of its more expensive derivatives continued to be prescribed.

• In 1930, Karl Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize for describing the human ABO blood group system

• Karl Landsteiner discovered human blood groups in the year 1900.
• The discovery laid the foundation for the modern medical practice of blood transfusion.
• Karl Landsteiner​ himself considered it an accidental discovery.
• On the basis of the presence of Antigen or Glycoprotein, there are four groups of blood in human:
  • That contains Antigen A–Blood Group A.
  • That contains Antigen B–Blood Group B.
  • That contains both the Antigens A and B–Blood Group AB.
  • That contains neither of the Antigens– Blood Group O.
• Blood Group O is called the Universal Donor.
• Blood Group AB is called Universal Receptor.​

• The Nobel Prize in Medicine 1974 was awarded jointly to Albert Claude, Christian de Duve and George E. Palade "for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell."
• George Wald with Haldan K. Hartline and Ragnar Granit of Sweden received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1967 for his work on the chemistry of vision.
• Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1977 for their work on neurohormones.

• In 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson first described the molecular structure of DNA, which they called a "double helix," in the journal Nature.
  • For this breakthrough discovery, Watson, Crick, and their colleague Maurice Wilkins won a Nobel Prize in Physiology, or Medicine, in 1962.
  • However, a crucial contribution that enabled this discovery was made by Rosalind Franklin, who was not acknowledged at that time.
  • After her death, Crick said that his contribution had been critical.

• The double helix describes the appearance of double-stranded DNA, which is composed of two linear strands that run opposite to each other, or anti-parallel, and twist together.
• Each DNA strand within the double helix is a long, linear molecule made of smaller units called nucleotides that form a chain.
• The chemical backbones of the double helix are made up of sugar and phosphate molecules that are connected by chemical bonds, known as sugar-phosphate backbones.
• The two helical strands are connected through interactions between pairs of nucleotides, also called base pairs.
• Two types of base pairing occur nucleotide A pairs with T, and nucleotide C pairs with G.

• Har Gobind Khorana:
  • He was born in 1922.
  • He obtained his M.Sc. degree from Punjab University in Lahore.
  • He worked with Professor Vladimir Prelog, who moulded Khorana’s thought and philosophy towards science, work, and effort.
  • After a brief stay in India in 1949, Khorana went back to England and worked with Professor G.W. Kenner and Professor A.R.Todd. It was at Cambridge, the U.K. that he got interested in both proteins and nucleic acids.
  • The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1968 was awarded jointly to Robert W. Holley, Hargobind Khorana, and Marshall W. Nirenberg "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis."

• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1980 was divided, one half awarded to Paul Berg "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA", the other half jointly to Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids."

Link: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1968/summary/

• Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German mechanical engineer and physicist born in 27^th March 1845.
• In 1901, he awarded the first Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of X-Rays.
• This X-ray tube became a frequently used instrument in medicine after this discovery.

• Thomas Alva Edison invented Electric Bulb and Gramophone.
• Sadi Carnot is the father of Thermodynamics.
  • Thermodynamics is the branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, radiation, and physical properties of matter.
  • The four laws of Thermodynamics are; Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, First Law of Thermodynamics, Second Law of Thermodynamics and Third Law of Thermodynamics.
• Conservation of Electric Charge: Charge is neither created nor destroyed, it can only be transferred from one system to another.
• Unit of charge is Coulomb.

Explanation:

• Theory of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the nineteenth century.
• The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859.
• Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, in Shrewsbury, and died 19 April 1882.

About other options:

• Johann Mendel:
  • Gregor Mendel, in full Gregor Johann Mendel, was born on 22 July 1822 and died on 6 January 1884.
  • He was botanist, teacher, and Augustinian prelate, the first person to lay the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics, in what came to be called Mendelism.
• Johann Dobereiner:
  • Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner was born on 13 December 1780 and died on 24 March 1849.
  • He was the German chemist whose observation of similarities among certain elements anticipated the development of the periodic system of elements.
• John Dalton:
  • John Dalton was born on September 5 or 6, 1766, and died on 27 July 1844.
  • He was an English meteorologist and chemist, a pioneer in the development of modern atomic theory.

Mistake Points

• The question is asking about the discovery made by Robert Brown, So according to the option, the correct answer will be Nucleus (Nucleus of the cell).
• Whereas Ernest Rutherford was the discoverer of Nucleus of Atom.

Concept:

• The term cell was first described by Robert Hooke in the year 1665 in his book called 'Micrographic'.

• A cell is a basic structural & functional unit of life of all existing living organisms.
• A cell consists of different cell organelles like mitochondria, chloroplasts, endoplasmic reticulum, nucleus, etc.
• Every organelle performs a specific function that is required for the proper functioning of the cell.

Explanation:

• Robert Brown, a British Biologist discovered the nucleus in the year 1831.
• This cell organelle was named nucleus according to the Latin word nucleus/ nucleus meaning a seed.
• The study of the nucleus is called Karyology.
• The nucleus is a double membrane-bound dense protoplasmic body, which controls all the cellular metabolism and encloses the genetic information of the cell.
• The nucleus is considered the controller or director of the cell.

• Golgi complex was discovered by Camillo Golgi in the year 1898. He saw a densely stained reticular structure close to the nucleus.
• These were named Golgy bodies after him.
• Mitochondria were first observed by Kolliker as cytoplasmic granules in stripped muscles of insects.
• Chloroplast was discovered by Hugo von Mohl in 1837, it was named by combining Greek words Chloros (Green) & Plastes ( producer)

Option 4 is the correct answer: Ronald Ross proved that mosquitoes spread malaria.

• Ronald Ross was an English Scientist born on May 13, 1857.
• He established the fact that malarial parasite is present in the gastrointestinal tract of mosquitoes in 1897.
• He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1902.

• An inactivated (killed) polio vaccine (IPV) was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and was first used in 1955.
• A live attenuated (weakened) oral polio vaccine (OPV) developed by Dr. Albert Sabin and first used in 1961.

• The smallpox vaccine, introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796, was the first successful vaccine to be developed.

• Sir Ronald Ross is famous for being the discoverer of the mosquito transmission of malaria and the first Briton to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
• Robert Koch discovered the anthrax disease cycle and the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis and cholera. He received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905 for his research on tuberculosis.
• Alexander Fleming was a doctor and bacteriologist who discovered penicillin, receiving the Nobel Prize in 1945.

• Vinod Dham (born 1950 in Pune, Maharashtra, India) is an Indian investor and venture capitalist.
• Vinod Dham is known as the Father of the Pentium processor.
• After completing his master's degree in 1977, he joined NCR Corporation at Dayton, Ohio.
• He then joined Intel and started working on the Pentium chip.
• He is also one of the co-inventor of non-volatile flash memory.

• The person who discovered that the earth is spherical in shape was Ptolemy
• Nicolaus Copernicus formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at the centre of the universe.
• Christopher Columbus completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that opened the New World for conquest and permanent European colonization of the Americas.
• Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, and astronomer.​

Laws of Motion given by Newton are as follows:

Joseph Black discovered the theory of latent heat.

• He was a Scottish physicist and chemist, known for his discoveries of magnesium, latent heat, carbon dioxide and specific heat.
• In 1761, he deduced that the addition of heat to the ice at its freezing point did not induce a change in the temperature of the combination of ice and water, but only an increase in the volume of water in the mixture.
• The theory of latent heat was the starting point for thermodynamics.
• The theory eventually proved to be significant not only in the advancement of theoretical research but also in the advancement of a steam engine.

• Vitamin A was discovered in 1912.

• Funk coined the term vitamin from vital amines or vitamin that means vita- life and amine- essential nitrogenous substances for life.
• He isolated the materials from all nutritional values that are essential for life considering the entire vitamin as amine and given the name vitamin.
• He proposed the four vitamins are Vitamin B1, Vitamin C, vitamin D, and Vitamin B3 that prevent the disorders beriberi, scurvy, rickets, and pellagra respectively.
• Casimir Funk was also known as the father of vitamin therapy.
• Vitamins are very essential nutrients needed in very small quantities and also not synthesized in the body or may present in very small quantities hence taken through diet.

• A US team of scientists has found that the mechanism responsible for the aging process is located in the hypothalamus inside the brain.
  • The experiment was conducted using mice.
  • Scientists proved that they could make fine adjustments to shorten or lengthen the lives of animals.
  • The experiment shows that a chemical called NF-kB became more active in the hypothalamus of mice as they got older.
• The brain is the center of the nervous system in the human body.
  • The average weight if the brain in adults is about 1400 grams.
  • Meninges is the protective membrane that envelops the brain.
• Hypothalamus is a part of the brain that helps to maintain the normal constitution of the blood.
  • Hypothalamus is the center for hunger, thirst, sleep, temperature, love, and hate.
  • The hypothalamus helps for the secretion of pituitary hormones.
  • Oxytocin and Vasopressin are the hormones produced by the hypothalamus.

Vitamin D-Paul Mulleris not correct.

• Paul Muller is not related to Vitamin D.
• He is known for the discovery of DDT.
• Hence ​Vitamin D - Paul Muller is not correctly matched.