TASK DEFINITION: In this task you will be given a text passage from a trivia quiz. You should choose the category this question belongs to from these categories: History, Science, Social Science, Fine Arts, Literature. You can only choose one category, so if in doubt, please choose the closest match.
PROBLEM: The differential of this quantity, which is given in general by minus Boltzmanns constant times the thermodynamic temperature times the natural logarithm of the partition function, is non-positive for isothermal, isometric processes, so it is minimized for equilibria in constant-temperature, constant-volume systems. It gives the available useful energy from a closed system, so it is usually symbolized A from the German for work. The p-V Legendre transform of a similar quantity named for Gibbs, it is given by the internal energy minus the absolute temperature times the entropy. For 10 points, name this thermochemical quantity, a thermodynamic potential named for a German physicist.

SOLUTION: Science

PROBLEM: One of these organic compounds is converted to an alkene by a diorganochromium compound in the Takai olefination. Compounds may be reduced to this functionality via the use of DIBAL-H (die-bahl aitch), and alkynes are formed by a reaction of these compounds with tetrabromomethane and triphenylphosphine named for Corey and Fuchs. When these organic compounds lack a hydrogen atom in the alpha position, their disproportionation can be induced by a base in the Cannizzaro reaction. These organic compounds are oxidized to carboxylic acids by a diamminesilver (I) complex, leading to the precipitation of metal onto the inside of the vessel, giving the positive "silver mirror" result of the Tollens test. For 10 points, name this special class of ketones with one R group being just hydrogen.

SOLUTION: Science

PROBLEM: A poet who wrote exclusively about the inhabitants of a northwestern city of this country did so in such volumes as Difficult Situations and For the Shortcut. In the nineteenth century, a Jewish author from this country described Efrain's heartbreak after returning home from medical school in London to see his cousin in the romance Maria. One author from this country wrote a "gothic tale from the hot lands" before a series including Snow of the Admiral and The Tramp Stamer's Last Port of Call featuring the recurring character of (*) Maqroll the Lookout. This home country of Luis Carlos Lopez, Jorge Isaacs, and Alvaro Mutis is also home to an author who wrote a novel where everyone is ordered to wake up at three in the morning in order to distract a politician from the beautiful Manuela Sanchez, and a man who may be 232 years old is eaten by vultures. For 10 points, name this country where novels such as The Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in the Time of Cholera were written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

SOLUTION:
Literature