WWTBAM Bored

Whiz Kids get an extra lifeline—Cut the Question which can be used up to (and including) the $50,000 question

Will Lourcey
Fort Worth ,TX
Will is a 14-year-old who has won seven spelling bees

$500
President Andrew Jackson's funeral was famously interrupted by his pet what, which had to be removed because it wouldn't stop swearing?
A: Saint Bernard B: Guinea pig
C: Goldfish D: Parrot

Spoiler

D: Parrot

$1,000
Fast food chain Wendy's is known for selling what unusually-shaped items?
A: Triangular hot tubs B: Square hamburger patties
C: Spherical chainsaws D: Diamond-shaped catcher's mitts

Spoiler

B: Square hamburger patties

$2,000
With projectiles made from toilet plunger-tipped pool noodles, NASA engineer Mark Rober recently created the world's largest version of what popular toy?
A: Nerf Gun B: Girl Scouts cookie oven
C: Etch A Sketch D: Mr. Potato Head

Spoiler

A: Nerf Gun

$3,000
Energy, which can be transformed but never destroyed, comes in two main forms—potential energy and what?
A: Monster energy B: Rockstar energy
C: Kinetic energy D: Nervous energy

Spoiler

C: Kinetic energy

$5,000
After personally inventing the new technology, in 1971 Michael Hart established Project Gutenberg, whose website fittingly gives away what for free?
A: DVDs B: eBooks
C: Flash drives D: Music MP3s

Spoiler

B: eBooks

First commercial break

$7,000
Once considered to simply be 1/86,400th of a day, since 1967 what's been defined as the time it takes for a cesium electron to oscillate about 9 billion times?
A: A nanosecond B: A second
C: A minute D: An hour

Spoiler

A: 56% B: 35% C: 6% D: 3%

Will tries to do some math—

Spoiler

24 times 60, he knows 25 times 6 is 150, he thinks...

He seems to struggle

Spoiler

Will guesses A nanosecond.
The correct answer is B: A second
Will wins $5,000

7K: It wasn't considered necessary to have a standard for nanosecond.

ghostjmf wrote:7K: It wasn't considered necessary to have a standard for nanosecond.

A nanosecond (billionth of a second) would have to have at least 9 zeroes at the end of the denominator. Even if they thought it were a thousandth, 2 zeroes is not enough.

BBTranscriptTeam wrote:Whiz Kids get an extra lifeline—Cut the Question which can be used up to (and including) the $50,000 question

Will Lourcey
Fort Worth ,TX
Will is a 14-year-old who has won seven spelling bees

BBTranscriptTeam wrote:$7,000
Once considered to simply be 1/86,400th of a day, since 1967 what's been defined as the time it takes for a cesium electron to oscillate about 9 billion times?
A: A nanosecond B: A second
C: A minute D: An hour

Spoiler

A: 56% B: 35% C: 6% D: 3%

Will tries to do some math—

Spoiler

24 times 60, he knows 25 times 6 is 150, he thinks...

He seems to struggle

Spoiler

Will guesses A nanosecond.
The correct answer is B: A second
Will wins $5,000

I think the audience misled him - he was on the right track with the math but struggled and opted for the audience's answer.

Pretty sure this question was asked the other way around for $100,000 before. Asking for what element is doing the oscillating.

I have a huge backlog of episodes on my DVR, from which I finally watched this one.

earendel wrote:

BBTranscriptTeam wrote:$7,000
Once considered to simply be 1/86,400th of a day, since 1967 what's been defined as the time it takes for a cesium electron to oscillate about 9 billion times?
A: A nanosecond B: A second
C: A minute D: An hour

Spoiler

A: 56% B: 35% C: 6% D: 3%

Will tries to do some math—

Spoiler

24 times 60, he knows 25 times 6 is 150, he thinks...

He seems to struggle

Spoiler

Will guesses A nanosecond.
The correct answer is B: A second
Will wins $5,000

I think the audience misled him - he was on the right track with the math but struggled and opted for the audience's answer.

I think everyone was distracted by the fluff at the end of the question and overlooked the essential clue in the first part. The audience knew that "nano" means a billionth--so therefore it must be related to those 9 billion oscillations without having any idea (or conception, even) of the frequency of that oscillation?

What annoyed me was (at least as it survived on the tape) how Will rambled on at length for all the preceding questions, but then he couldn't keep talking to reason out a question when he needed it. He knew he had to calculate 24 x 60 x 60...and then he stops cold after estimating the first part of that. Is math phobia that bad among students, these days?