The DIY university challenge

Over the past five weeks, 'The Independent' has carried 25 lectures on the subjects you always meant to study at university, but never did. The moment of truth is now at hand. To graduate, examinees must correctly answer 40 of the 50 questions asked. All graduates will receive a diploma. The top 10 graduates will also receive a year's free subscription to 'The Independent'

Week One: 5-9 August

1. Einstein

1) Einstein's general theory of relativity only received its first confirmation in

a) 1905 5

b) 1919 5

c) 1996 5

2) In E=mc2, c2 stands for

a) radiation squared 5

b) cubic space squared 5

c) light's velocity squared 5

2. Big Bang

1) The Universe is

a) expanding 5

b) shrinking 5

c) heating up 5

2) Pascal wrote about

a) the harmony of the spheres 5

b) the infinite silence of space 5

c) the chemistry of the stars 5

3. Evolution

1) The Argument from Design was used by theologians to

a) explain evolution 5

b) explain Darwin 5

c) disprove evolution 5

2) By observing the total number of creatures existing, the present day could best be called the Age of

a) mammals 5

b) vertebrates 5

c) bacteria 5

4. Freud

1) Psychoanalysts became especially popular in the United States in the

a) 1890s 5

b) 1920s 5

c) 1940s 5

2) Freud felt the best look into the unconscious came through

a) hypnosis 5

b) screams 5

c) dreams 5

5. Quantum Mechanics

1) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle shows that

a) objective experiments are impossible 5

b) all experiments are distorted by the experimenter 5

c) some experiments are distorted by the experimenter 5

2) Quantum leaps are

a) very small 5

b) very large 5

c) impossible to see 5

Week Two: 12-16 August

6. Classical Architecture

1) Why might you question the virtue of a Corinthian column?

a) because it was a debased style 5

b) because the finest Classical temples were Doric 5

c) because to ancient Greeks, anything "Corinthian" hinted at young women of famously easy virtue 5

2) Who thought walls were superfluous to ideal Classical buildings?

a) Friedrich Nietzsche 5

b) Abbe Laugier 5

c) Andrea Palladio 5

7. Modern Architecture

1) Who said "Less is More"? Was it

a) Le Corbusier 5

b) Otto Friedrich Silenus 5

c) Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 5

2) Who said "Less is a Bore"? Was it

a) John Betjeman 5

b) Robert Venturi 5

c) Evelyn Waugh 5

8. Tragedy

1) Tragedy was performed at festivals of

a) Apollo 5

b) Dionysus 5

c) Zeus 5

2) "Death of a Salesman" was written by:

a) Ibsen 5

b) Pinter 5

c) Miller 5

9. Comedy

1) The earliest comedies in existence were written by

a) Plautus 5

b) Menander 5

c) Aristophanes 5

2) Who defined comedy as "light drama, in which everyone is married in the last act"?

a) George Bernard Shaw 5

b) Oscar Wilde 5

c) Jonathan Swift 5

10. Classical music

1) Beethoven reluctantly studied under

a) Bach 5

b) Haydn 5

c) Handel 5

2) Who railed against the "superannuated system of classical tonality"?

a) Stravinsky 5

b) Schoenberg 5

c) Schumann 5

Week Three: 19-23 August

11. DNA

1) James Watson, co- discoverer of the double helix model, was a long-time opponent of :

a) biochemistry 5

b) ecology 5

c) the Human Genome Project 5

2) The structure of DNA was discovered in

a) 1933 5

b) 1953 5

c) 1973 5

12. Anthropology

1) The first main group that Evans-Pritchard studied was prone to poisoning

a) chickens

b) each other

c) visiting anthropologists

2) Claude Levi-Strauss made a study of people who "stitched together" factions by exchanging

a) mangoes 5

b) small copper coins 5

c) wives 5

13. Language

1) The Kinvunjo language, which is spoken in parts of Tanzania

a) has fewer tenses than English 5

b) has more tenses than English 5

c) cannot handle the concept of tenses at all 5

2) To produce a grammatical sentence of their own, children

a) don't need to have heard it before 5

b) need to have heard it before frequently 5

c) can succeed if they've heard it just once before 5

14. Economics

1) Inflation is caused by

a) the economy growing faster and faster 5

b) consumer demand growing faster than economic output 5

c) interest rates going up 5

2) If rollerblades suddenly became fashionable one Christmas, what would an economist expect to happen?

a) the price of rollerblades to go up 5

b) the price of rollerblades to go down 5

c) the price to stay the same, but shops to sell out 5

15. The Brain

1) The brain's weight begins to shrink from about the age of

a) 15 5

b) 25 5

c) 35 5

2) Babies are born with

a) fewer brain cells than adults have 5

b) more brain cells than adults have 5

c) the same number of brain cells that adults have 5

Week Four: 26-30 August

16. Renaissance art

1) The Renaissance began in which Italian city?

a) Venice 5

b) Rome 5

c) Florence 5

2) The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was painted by

a) Leonardo da Vinci 5

b) Michelangelo 5

c) Raphael 5

17. Modern art

1) The Fauvists were led by

a) Matisse 5

b) Seurat 5

c) Braque 5

2) Who complained of those "who preferred the shaggy posterior of a satyr to the moral feeling of landscape"?

a) Constable 5

b) Turner 5

c) Gainsborough 5

18. Opera

1) Monteverdi's La Favola d'Orfeo, the earliest opera still regularly performed, was first performed in

a) 1607 5

b) 1622 5

c) 1661 5

2) Which of the following has the highest vocal range?

a) counter-tenor 5

b) contralto 5

c) soprano 5

19. Ballet

1) Margot Fonteyn's real name was

a) Hilda Boot 5

b) Hilda Munnings 5

c) Peggy Hookham 5

2) Which toe-dancer's satin slippers were stewed and eaten by adoring fans?

a) Marie Taglioni's 5

b) Ninette de Valois's 5

c) Lydia Sokolova's 5

20. Myth

1) Who ate the salmon of knowledge?

a) King Arthur 5

b) Cuchullain 5

c) Moses 5

2) Which future Pope found a novel way of defending Bernini's Apollo and Daphne?

a) Sixtus V 5

b) Alexander VI 5

c) Urban VIII 5

Week Five: 2-6 September

21. Epistemology

1) Who asked, "Is there any knowledge in the world so certain that no one can doubt it?"

a) Bertrand Russell 5

b) Wittgenstein 5

c) Hegel 5

2) Language, by its nature, is

a) primary 5

b) binary 5

c) tertiary 5

22. Metaphysics

1) The "Vienna Circle" who taught AJ Ayer the Verification Principle were a group of philosophers known as

a) Logical Positivists 5

b) minimalists 5

c) existentialists 5

2) Whose "Critique of Pure Reason" distinguished between "phenomena" and "noumena"?

a) Kant's 5

b) Sartre's 5

c) Schlegel's 5

23. Logic

1) Aristotle's syllogisms were most comprehensively used to back Catholic theology by

a) Ignatius Loyola 5

b) Thomas a Kempis 5

c) Thomas Aquinas 5

2) Symbolic logic can describe

a) more items than syllogisms could 5

b) fewer items than syllogisms could 5

c) has no overlap with the items syllogisms can describe 5

24. Ethics

1) Who described Utilitarianism as "pig philosophy"?

a) Bentham 5

b) Nietzsche 5

c) AJ Ayer 5

2) Who said "Hell is other people?"

a) Orwell 5

b) Ionesco 5

c) Sartre 5

25. Truth

1) Science is generally thought of by working scientists as

a) true 5

b) approximating the truth 5

c) arbitrary in what it declares to be true 5

2) Renaissance painters

a) had no concept of progress in art 5

b) sometimes believed there could be progress in art 5

c) never believed there could be progress in art 5

26. And finally...

Choose one of the above subjects and precis it in not more than 50 words. Marks, to be used in the event of ties, will be given for concision, wit and accuracy.

Entries should be sent, together with name, address and phone number, to: The Independent, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL. Closing date for entries is 18 September 1996. The judges' decision is final.