Dan Tilque wrote:
> Welcome to RQ #296. Sorry for the delay.
>
> In each of the questions you will be asked to name the best 5 (largest,
> longest, nearest) of some type of object. You do not have to give them
> in any order; if any answer you give is one of the 5 asked for, you get
> the point. No penalty for wrong answers, so guesses are encouraged.
>
> This quiz will run until Monday, 09 July 2018 in the evening my time
> (time zone -7 UTC).
>
>
> 1. What are the 5 largest countries? (by area, not population)
Russia
Canada
USA
China
Brazil
>
> 2. What are the 5 longest rivers in the world?
Amazon
Nile
Yangtze
Huang He (Yellow River)
Paraná
Wikipedia only lists longest rivers by combined main+tributary, so I had
to compile this list myself. See below for full list.
>
> 3. What are the 5 largest islands in the world? (not Australia)
Greenland
New Guinea
Borneo
Madagascar
Baffin
Mark gets credit for being the only one to name Baffin.
>
> 4. What are the 5 largest planets in the solar system?
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Earth
>
> 5. What are the 5 nearest star systems to the sun? (not brown dwarfs)
Alpha Centauri
Barnard's Star
Wolf 359
Lalande 21185
Sirius
Didn't really expect anyone to get #4, although Mark knew the name of
the astronomer/catalog that its name comes from. As for Proxima, there
was a paper earlier this year that strongly supported it being part of
the Alpha C system, so I'm going with that. If you include brown dwarfs,
there are two systems that fit in between Barnard's and Wolf 359: Luhman
16 and WISE 0855. I didn't expect anyone to know those, so I excluded them.
>
> 6. What are the 5 largest first level administrative subdivisions of the
> various countries? (by area, not population)
Sakha Republic (Russia)
Western Australia
Krasnoyarsk Krai (Russia)
Greenland
Nunavut
Erland is the only one to get Sakha. Also see below for full list.
Scores:
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 T
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
Mark 5 2 4 5 4 2 22
Dan Blum 4 3 4 5 4 1 21
Calvin 5 3 4 5 3 1 21
Erland 5 3 4 5 2 1 20
Peter Smyth 5 3 3 4 1 2 18
So Mark edges out Dan and Calvin, so it's back to him for RQ #297.
Congratulations, Mark.
Besides the list of rivers, I also had to compile a list of internal
regions. Here are the two lists. I may have missed a river or two, but
I'm fairly certain not among the top five.
Rivers length (km)
====== ===========
Amazon 6992.6
Nile 6853
Yangtze 6357
Huang He 5464
Paraná 4880
Lena 4400
Congo 4370
Missouri 3767
Mississippi 3734
Ob 3650
Volga 3530
Yenisei 3438
Internal subdivisions size (sq km)
===================== ============
Sakha Republic (Russia) 3,103,200
Western Australia 2,645,615
Krasnoyarsk Krai (Russia) 2,339,700
Greenland 2,166,086
Nunavut 2,038,722
Queensland 1,852,642
Alaska 1,717,856
Xinjiang (China) 1,664,897
Amazonas (Brazil) 1,570,745.7
Quebec 1,542,056
Tyumen Oblast (Russia) 1,435,200
Northwest Territories 1,346,106
Pará (Brazil) 1,247,689.5
Tibet 1,228,400
Inner Mongolia 1,183,000
Ontario 1,076,395
These were all that I could find with at least 1,000,000 sq km.
--
Dan Tilque