Final Jeopardy: Elements (10-24-12)
The Final Jeopardy question (10/24/2012) in the category “Elements” was:
This element was discovered extraterrestially in 1868; it took 27 more years until someone isolated it on earth.
2-day champ Betsy Chisolm returned today to try to add some more winnings to her total of $25,999. Today she is up against these two players: Deepa Zavatsky, from Princeton, NJ and Keith Whitener, originally from Charlotte, NC.
Keith found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Great Ideas.” He was in the lead with $1,200, while both of his opponents were in the hole for $1,000 each, thanks to some bad guessing. He bet $500 and he was RIGHT.
In 1971, 3 guys at this company first put a computer CPU on a chip. show
Keith finished in the lead with $4,500. Deepa was second with $4,200 and Betsy was last with $3,400.
Betsy found the first Double Jeopardy Daily Double in “What The Dickens.” She was now in second place with $4,600, $300 less than Keith in the lead. She bet $2,000 and she was RIGHT.
This novel set in London & Paris was first published serially in 1859. show
Betsy found the last Daily Double in “The Former Eastern Bloc.” She was kicking butt big-time and now had $14,600, $9,200 more than Deepa in second place. She bet $2,000, thought it was Croatia and that was WRONG.
This present day country used to be part of a larger nation and kept the old flag. show
Betsy finished in the lead with $17,800. Keith was next with $12,500 and Deepa was in third place with $8,600.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
“The hunt to find helium on earth ended in 1895. Sir William Ramsay, a Scottish chemist, conducted an experiment with a mineral containing uranium called clevite. He exposed the clevite to mineral acids and collected the gases that were produced. He then sent a sample of these gases to two scientists, Lockyer and Sir William Crookes, who were able to identify the helium within it. Two Swedish chemists, Nils Langlet and Per Theodor Cleve, independently found helium in clevite at about the same time as Ramsay.” (The Element Helium)
Deepa wrote down plutonium, crossed that out in favor of uranium, but both were wrong. She lost her $1,600 bet and finished with $7,000.
Keith got it right and doubled his money. He finished with $25,000.
Betsy wrote down plutonium. She lost $8,800 and ended up with $9,000. That means Keith Whitener is the new Jeopardy! champ.
What a wild game! Betsy definitely cashed in on that Dickens category, being a volunteer storyteller. But when we saw the Final Jeopardy question, we were saying “Keith’s got this one. He’s a chemist!” and we were RIGHT!
