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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. It had long been noted that physical traits were inheritable and that they had something to do with what other human element?

2. Entropy is the physical equivalent of what state?

3. What did the study of thermodynamics not state about the movement of energy?

4. What did Chaitin determine about most numbers?

5. What did cosmologist George Gamow immediately recognize about DNA as a code and proposed that it could be deciphered mathematically?

Short Essay Questions

1. What fundamental problem is inherent in the observation of quantum particles?

2. What is the normal state of molecules in a system? Describe that arrangement.

3. What did Dawkins attribute the belief in God to?

4. What was the "Library of Babel" that was described in a story by Jorge Luis Borges?

5. What did IBM research Charle Bennet write about "information" in the 1980s?

6. What was John von Neumann's theory on energy cost and how did Rolf Landauer disprove that concept?

7. What are "memes" as first proposed by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene"?

8. What are examples of memes?

9. How did Erwin Schrodinger used the concept of "entropy"?

10. What has research shown about entangled particles and the transference of information?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why is the year 1948 considered a huge turning point in information theory and technology? What advances were made by researchers at Bell Laboratories during this time frame?

Essay Topic 2

Explain why electricity opened up the field of communication? How did the electric telegraph function and why was it superior to the earlier French version? How did the telegraph impact global communications?

Essay Topic 3

What were the views of Rolf Landauer and John von Neumann on the energy cost of information processing? How was von Neuman's theory disproved and by whom?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 671 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample