George Smoot , Nobel laureate (physics) was on tonight’s (Sep 18, 2009) “Are you smarter than a 5th grder”
You may remember him from the Big Bang Theory cameo.
Brian
He was the 2nd to win the million . He took a chance on the 1/2 million (using a copy even though he knew the answer) (a cappella for singing w/o music)
final question: What state is Acadia Nat’l park in?
Maine
Brian
I don’t usually watch this show, but I was channel surfing and caught the last 20 minutes or so – right when he started talking about wanting to buy a lube shop in Vegas. He’s either got the driest sense of humor I’ve ever seen or he’s seriously nuts. Taking the risk on the a cappella question made it seem like the latter.
Pretty entertaining.
With all the people driving in and out of the desert? A lube shop in Vegas could be a gold mine.
George Smoot? Is he the guy that the unit of measurement is named after?
Eccentric, dear, eccentric. Academes can’t be nuts.
His son or nephew was the namesake of the unit, IIRC.
No, that was Oliver R. Smoot, who amusingly would eventually become head of the National Institute for Standards. George Smoot, a relative, won the Nobel Prize for work proving the Big Bang model.
At dinner tonight, a colleague told me about a recent(?) episode of “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” which featured George Smoot as the contestant.
Spoilers from here out:
Apparently Smoot had no real trouble answering the questions, but somewhere along in the show realized it was no fun to watch him just answer each question. Apparently, on the penultimate question he “copied” a student’s answer even though he was fairly sure he knew the right answer.
The clip is available on Hulu/Fox, but I am not in the USA so can’t have a look. Can someone tell me what was the question he risked on the kid’s answer?
Thanks,
Shibb
“What two-word phrase, derived from Italian, is a musical term meaning to sing without accompaniment?”
Answer: a capellaFor those who can get Hulu (unlike the OP), the question’s at about 28:00 here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/96145/are-you-smarter-than-a-5th-grader-episode-27
<hijack>In what school is that a 5th grade question? I had never heard of a capella until that whole brouhaha with Sinead O’Conner.</hijack>
Yeah, I think based on the other kids’ answers that it pretty clearly isn’t a 5th grade question. They were all over the place and not even close. I’d bet Franchesca has some musical training. (I also think he pegged her as smart enough to know the answer anyway. He’d remarked before the reveal that he had confidence in her and that was why he saved her for last.)
Smoot was quite a guy. His good-natured, good-humored manner never changed throughout the show, he was mild-manneredly confident without being cocky or seeming at all self-impressed, and was as calm and self-possessed in going for the half-million and million dollar questions as he was in the beginning.
(And it was pretty funny to see that this Nobel-prize winning scientist and UC-Berkely physics professor wants to use his winnings to open an oil-change shop in Las Vegas.) 
He also appeared as himself on an episode of The Big Bang Theory.
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Moved to Cafe Society.
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And I’m merging it into the previous thread on this.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator