A nice distinction.

I had to create some science questions for a quiz night (as well as some general knowledge ones). They had to vary in difficulty for a sort of knock-out towards the end, which the teams were aware of. For near the end I came up with: does the Moon orbit the Earth or the Earth orbit the Moon. The answer was, of course, neither, their common centre of gravity having a lot to do with it. I thought it clever but one bloke, who thought he was cleverer, said that the answer was that the Moon orbited the Earth as the CSG was below the surface of the Moon so by any sensible definition the Moon orbited the Earth.

Just 'cause someone's got a Phd they think they know it all.

Here was another two for a Sunday morning hangover cure. This was in general knowledge and not in the maths bit.

Next one in the sequence:

11 - 8 - 16 - 7 - ?

and

32 - 22 - 16 - 11 - 8 - ?

Well done.

The first one I thought would be easy as there was a dartboard right behind me and the second I thought would give two teams an advantage because they were all from a camera club. When I said 5.6 I was told that I was wrong. Som out of the teams only one got both and only one other got one. I was not popular, but that's normal.

Here's another... what's the final number in the sequence?

0.39 - 0.72 - 1.00 - 1.52 - 5.20 - 9.58 - 19.23 - ???

a clue... we're back on topic!

Liked the AU question. I'll nick that one.

Other ones that caused problems.

First English captain to tour Australia? Clue: from Yorkshire.

What was Instanbul originally called?

Instantbul?

Sounds like a good description of anything spoken by Ed Balls.

I have a question relating to the previous pages questions (and appreciating this is way off topic).

What's the difference between Geo-stationary and geo-synchronous?

As I understand it, Geo-Stationary means the satellite remains fixed above a specific point on Earth, does geo-Synchronous means it orbits at the same rate the Earth spins? If so, then surely, by default, it'll stay above the same point on Earth and there be Geo-Stationary or does it mean the lat stays the same, but the Longitude "wobbles"?

Good explanation here.

It's interesting their definition of geosynchronous specifies a low inclination orbit, I think in theory you could also have a polar geosynchronous orbit at 90 degrees, but I guess it wouldn't be very useful to spy satellites.

Thank you, so my guess was right (except I got my Lat/Long mixed up).

Longitude, wrongitude.

A polar synchronous orbit wouldn't stay in one spot in the sky, but would pass over the same lines of longitude each orbit ( if it didn't hit any of the equatorial synchronous orbit satellites as it crossed their path twice each orbit ).

Spy satellites in polar orbit tend to be in a sun synchronous orbit, so they pass over at the same time every day - as it removes the possibility of different lighting conditions as the sun will always be in the same place, it makes it easier to spot anything that has chaged on the ground