ACF Fall COmpetition

whaaaaaaaaaaa

A pre-Columbian civilization centered in Cuzco, Peru.
"Chew and spit" fermentation: Produces the purple drink chicha.

Inca Empire

Record-keeping: Uses knotted cords called quipus. Communication: Chasquis (messengers) utilized a massive road system.

Inca Empire

Ruler: Atahualpa; captured and ransomed at Cajamarca.Agriculture/Economy: Tiered farms in the Sacred Valley; ch’arki (dried alpaca meat).Capital: Cuzco (modern-day Peru).

Scottish Enlightenment empiricist who argued "reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions."

David Hume

The philosophical principle that one cannot derive an "ought" (moral statement) from an "is" (factual statement).

David Hume

Hume's argument where a character describes nature as a "great machine" and compares it to a house.

David Hume

Argued that there will always be more evidence for the laws of nature than for individual reports of miracles.

David Hume

A thought experiment in Hume's Enquiry used to test the limits of his theory that all ideas are derived from impressions.

David Hume

A region whose indigenous religion is Bön; also home to the Gelug school of Buddhism led by the Dalai Lama.

Tibet

Intermediate states that the soul passes through after death, described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead

Tibet

The 14th Dalai Lama and leader of the Gelug school; currently lives in exile in Dharamsala, India.

Tenzin Gyatso

A "treasure revealer" in Tibetan Buddhism who discovers "hidden treasures" (terma) such as sacred texts.

Tibet

Includes the use of prayer wheels with mantras and the creation of intricate sand mandalas.

Tibet

A Puccini opera set in Paris about poor artists, featuring the death of Mimi from tuberculosis.

La Bohème

Aria in which Rodolfo describes his love for spring, then sings to a woman about her "cold-handed" nature.

La Bohème

Aria in which a character bids farewell to his "trustworthy" coat before selling it to help a dying friend.

La Bohème

La Bohème character who pledges to part from her lover when the flowers bloom; dies of tuberculosis.

Mimi

Novels/Authors: Station Eleven (Mandel - King Lear/Georgia Flu); The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood - Aunt Lydia/Gilead); "The Moons of Jupiter" (Munro - Janet/Father).

Canadian Literature

Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood), and "The Moons of Jupiter" (Alice Munro).

Canadian Authors

Key clues for Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Canada).

"Georgia Flu" / King Lear on stage

Key clues for The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Canada).

Aunt Lydia / Republic of Gilead

Key clues for the short story by Alice Munro (Canada).

Janet / Moons of Jupiter / Hospita

Justinian I (Nika Riots/Belisarius); Theodora (Secret History anecdotes); Narses (bribed Blues); Alexios I Komnenos (father of Anna Komnene).

Byzantine Empire (Key Figures)

Historical work written by Anna Komnene; depicts the reign of her father, Alexios I Komnenos.

The Alexiad

Work by Procopius; known for "salacious anecdotes" about Theodora and scandalous claims about the imperial court.

Secret History

A massive, 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia compiled by an unknown author.

Suda

A major uprising in Constantinople during the reign of Justinian I; Narses reportedly bribed the "Blue" faction to stop it.

Nika Riot

General who served Justinian I; famous for reconquering North Africa and parts of Italy.

Belisarius

Subfield dealing with visual content; uses rasterization, shaders, and ray-tracing; involves GPUs and "cards."

Computer Graphics (General)

A standard test object used in computer graphics research to test rendering accuracy.

Cornell Box

An iconic 3D model (the "teapot") used as a standard benchmark for testing rendering algorithms.

Utah Teapot

Developed a lighting model for ambient, diffuse, and specular reflection; a pioneer in shading techniques.

Bui Tuong Phong

A sequence of operations, typically containing a rasterization step followed by programmable shaders.

Graphics Pipeline

Home to Diego Velázquez; genre of bodegón (still lifes/kitchen scenes) includes paintings of quinces and cabbage.

Spain (Art Category)

Painter of Las Meninas (features Infanta Margarita, a dog, and attendants) and the Rokeby Venus.

Diego Velázquez

Famous for his bodegón still lifes, specifically paintings of a quince and a cabbage suspended from a string.

Juan Sánchez Cotán

Baroque artist who depicted a peasant boy with a clubfoot; known for his gritty, realistic style.

Jusepe de Ribera

Included urban scenes like The Old Woman Frying Eggs and The Waterseller of Seville.

Velázquez's "Kitchen/Still Life" Period

The figure to whom a red cross was added on his chest (legendarily added by the King himself) in a painting of the artist who painted Las Meninas.

Santiago el Mayor (St. James)

The "Belle of Amherst"; wrote "‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers" and "Because I could not stop for Death."

Emily Dickinson

Dickinson poem; the speaker feels a service beating and eventually "drops down, and down" after a "Plank of Reason" breaks.

"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"

Dickinson poem; describes a figure that "never... asked a crumb of me" and "perches in the soul."

"‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers"

Dickinson poem; centers on a carriage ride with Immortality and Death, who "kindly [stops]" for the speaker.

"Because I could not stop for Death"

A figure described as never asking a crumb of the speaker; perches in the soul (Clue for: ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers).

"‘Hope’ / The Bird"

Poem where the speaker claims, "sore must be the storm / That could abash" the title bird/Hope.

"‘Hope’ / The Storm"

Lightest metalloid; hydride clusters inspired polyhedral skeletal electron pair theory (PSEPT); forms trigonal planar "electron-deficient" halides.

Boron (Element 5)

Compound of two boron atoms and six hydrogens; contains two "banana-shaped" three-center two-electron bonds.

Diborane

Hexagonal form has a structure analogous to graphene; often called "white graphite."

Boron Nitride

Trigonal planar compound that violates the octet rule due to electron deficiency.

Boron Trifluoride

Device consisting of a mass at the end of a rod; period depends on initial displacement; frequency approximates $\sqrt{g/L}$ under small-angle approximation.

Pendulum

Scientist who solved the tautochrone problem because he observed that pendulums are not isochronous (at large angles).

Christiaan Huygens

A specific type of pendulum used to demonstrate the Earth's rotation through the precession of its swing.

Foucault Pendulum

A classic example of a chaotic system; consists of two coupled pendulums.

Double Pendulum

The method used to linearize a pendulum's equation of motion, treating it as a simple harmonic oscillator.

Small-angle approximation

Stars Adam Scott; features the "innie"/"outie" procedure; set at Lumon Industries; features "Macrodata Refinement."

Severance (Apple TV+)

A mysterious, highly sought-after reward; features an interpretive dance of the "Four Tempers" and Kier Eagan; attended by Dylan.

Waffle Party

A morale-boosting session in the Macrodata Refinement office; involves "defiant jazz" and a maraca; participated in by Helly

Music Dance Experience

Song used in a video of a father-daughter performance; used to mask the sound of a bone drill during a funeral.

"Enter Sandman"

A specific event prop mentioned when a character complains about not playing the theremin.

Malaysian Watermelon

Edinburgh-based author; Twain joked he was responsible for the Civil War; known as the "Author of Waverley."

Sir Walter Scott

Novel featuring Robin Hood at the siege of Torquilstone; the Black Knight is revealed as Richard the Lionheart; Lady Rowena marries Wilfrid.

Ivanhoe

Novel where Edgar Ravenswood drowns in quicksand after his lover's wedding-day insanity; adapted into a Donizetti opera.

The Bride of Lammermoor

The pseudonym under which Scott published most of his novels.

"Author of Waverley"

Cnidarians that host 25% of marine life; reef types include "platform" and "fringing"; suffer from bleaching when temperatures rise.

Corals

Order of "hard" or "stony" corals; form tree-like growth rings of aragonite; possess a calcium carbonate coenosteum.

Scleractinia

The phenomenon where coral reefs flourish in nutrient-poor (oligotrophic) ocean waters

Darwin’s Paradox

Symbiotic algae expelled by corals during the "bleaching" process caused by thermal stress.

Zooxanthellae

Isotopic ratio measured in foraminifera and coral skeletons used to reconstruct historical ocean temperatures.

Delta-O-18 ($\delta^{18}O$)

Process that reduces the availability of carbonate ions, causing corals to absorb less calcium carbonate into their skeletons.

Ocean Acidification

Home to directors Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook; known for gritty thrillers and social critiques.

South Korean Cinema

Director of Parasite (infiltrating a rich family) and Memories of Murder (detective staring at a culvert).

Bong Joon-ho

Director of the original Oldboy (actor eats a live octopus and performs a hallway fight).

Park Chan-wook

Director of Poetry, featuring an elderly woman covering up her grandson's crime.

Lee Chang-dong

Film featuring a poor family using a peach allergy to get rid of a housekeeper and infiltrate a rich household.

Parasite

Film ending with a detective staring into the camera after a child fails to describe a killer; set in farmland.

Memories of Murder

Subatomic particle with no charge; mean lifetime of ~880s; degeneracy pressure prevents gravitational collapse in dense stars.

Neutron

Rapidly rotating, extremely dense star composed primarily of neutrons.

Pulsar

Nucleosynthesis reactions in AGB stars/supernovae differentiated by the timescale of neutron capture.

s-process vs. r-process

Nuclear fusion process in stars where a proton decays (via weak force) into a neutron to begin the sequence.

p-p chain

The mass limit ($\approx 1.44 M_{\odot}$) above which electron degeneracy pressure cannot support a star (leading to neutron stars).

Chandrasekhar Limit

The process where the neutron's 880s lifetime and the time until "freeze-out" allow for the calculation of primordial abundance ($Y$).

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN)

Early 2010s wave of unrest; saw the toppling of leaders like Ali Abdullah Saleh and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali; involved a "Facebook Revolution."

Arab Spring

Islamist group founded by Hassan al-Banna; lost Egyptian social media influence after the 2013 overthrow of Mohamed Morsi.

Muslim Brotherhood

Libyan dictator and author of The Green Book; famously shut off his country’s internet during the 2011 uprising.

Muammar Qaddafi

Long-time Tunisian leader toppled early in the Arab Spring; often cited alongside Saleh as a leader who fell to the movement.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

Leader who suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood after a 1954 assassination attempt against him.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Military force that included the Great White Fleet and USS Maine; subjects of Alfred Thayer Mahan's historical influence.

US Navy

Diplomatic crisis involving US Navy sailors and locals outside the "True Blue" saloon in Valparaíso, Chile.

Baltimore Crisis (1891)

US Navy officer who wrote The Influence of Sea Power upon History

Alfred Thayer Mahan

Skirmish between US Navy members and the Mexican Army that triggered the 1914 occupation of Veracruz.

Tampico Affair (1914)

US Navy ship whose explosion in Havana Harbor served as a casus belli for the Spanish-American War.

USS Maine

The US Navy battle fleet that completed a circumnavigation of the globe from 1907–1909 by order of Theodore Roosevelt.

Great White Fleet

Percussion instrument (relative of the marimba); depicts "rattling of bones" in Danse Macabre and The Carnival of the Animals.

Xylophone

French composer; wrote The Carnival of the Animals and Danse Macabre.

Camille Saint-Saëns

Movement scored for strings, two pianos, clarinet, and xylophone; quotes the composer's own Danse Macabre.

"Fossils" (from Carnival of the Animals)

Fourteen-movement work; The Swan is the only movement published during the composer's lifetime; includes Fossils.

The Carnival of the Animals

Tone poem beginning with 12 D's on the harp (midnight clock); features the xylophone to represent rattling skeletons/bones.

Danse Macabre

Amorphous material produced by melting sand; main component is silicon dioxide; types include borosilicate and soda-lime.

Glass