- The air we breathe is 78% nitrogen, 21.5% oxygen, .5% argon and other gases.
- Eighty-five percent of all the plants and animals live in the sea.
- Liquid air looks like water with a bluish tint.
- Evidently, your kidneys use more energy that your heart. The kidneys use 12 percent of your oxygen, yet the heart only requires 7 percent.
- Joseph Priestly is credited with discovering oxygen, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, sulphur dioxide, and nitrous oxide. He was also the first to isolate chlorine.
- A scientific satellite needs only 250 watts of power, the equivelant used by two hour light bulbs, to operate.
- There are plants with a body temperature just like birds and mammals. Skunk cabbages can have an internal temperature 25 degrees higher than their surroundings.
- Balneology is the science of swimming pools. Balneologists study problems of heating, cleaning, maintenance, and construction.
- The thin line of cloud that forms behind an aircraft at high altitudes is called a contrail.
- The angle of the branches from the trunk of a tree is constant from one member to another of the same species. Furthermore, that same angle is represented in the veins of that tree's leaves.
- The first plastic ever invented was celluloid in 1868. It's still used today to make billiard balls.
- Radio waves travel so much faster than sound waves that a broadcast voice can be heard sooner 18,000 km away than in the back of the room in which it originated.
- Only 13.5 percent of scientists are women.
- Sterling silver contains 7.5% copper.
- Ten per cent of the salt mined in the world each year is used to de-ice the roads in America.
- Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance.
- If you put a chemical into the water in the deepest parts of the oceans, it would take more than a thousand years for any traces of the chemical to rise to the surface.
- If you slowly pour a handful of salt into a totally full glass of water it will not overflow. In fact, the water level will go down.
- You can figure out which way is south if you are near a tree stump. The growth rings are wider on the south side.
- Electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain has been proven to revive long-lost memories.
- A US ton is equivalent to 900 kg (2000 pounds). A British ton is 1008 kg (2240 pounds), called a gross ton.
- Trees sweat. Up to 1,680 gallons of water evaporate off a large oak tree per day. If you decide to water your trees with a garden hose, it will take over five hours to make up one tree's daily water use.
- It is estimated that a plastic container can resist decomposition for as long as 50,000 years.
- The average marathon runner's heart beats about 175 times per minute during a race. A typical adult's heart beats 68 times a minute at rest.
- Russia spends 4.6 percent of their gross national product on scientific research. In the United States the figure is only 2.5 percent.
- Water expands by about 10% as it freezes.
- Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
- The Chinese were using aluminum to make things as early as 300 AD Western civilization didn't rediscover aluminum until 1827.
- Aspirin was the first drug offered as a water-soluble tablet in 1900.
- Eighty-five percent of all life on Earth is Plankton.
- The only rock that floats in water is pumice.
- Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.
- Minus forty degrees Celsius is exactly the same temperature as minus forty degrees Fahrenheit.
- The most abundant metal in the Earth's crust is aluminum.
- Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.
- A teaspoonful of soil may contain 100 million bacteria.
- Sea water, loaded with mineral salts, weighs about a pound and a half more per cubit foot than fresh water at the same temperature.
- Air becomes liquid at about minus 190 degrees Celsius.
- If you took a glass of iced tea and magnified it until it was as large as the whole earth, each molecule of water would be about the size of a baseball.
- The drug thiopentone can kill a human being in one second if it's injected directly into the blood stream.
- The word "biology" was coined in 1805 by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
- How big is a molecule? If you were to make a pile of 10,000 average-size molecules, you could just barely see it as a tiny speck.
- German chemist Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus while he was examining urine for a way to turn baser metals into gold.
- The familiar Einsteinian formula of E=Mc2 was actually L/MV2 as he first proposed it. Two years later he corrected it to the form we know now.
- The first flight of the Wright Brothers was a distance less than the wing span of a Jumbo Jet.
- Mineral deposits in caves: The ones growing upward are stalagmites, the ones growing downward are stalactites.
- In a scientific study, children were told to imagine that they were wearing heavy mittens. The temperature of their fingertips went up.
- The wind must be below one mile an hour in order for the National Weather Service to rate the weather as "calm."
- Prussic acid, in a crystalline powder called Zyklon B, was used to kill in Germany's gas chambers. The gas would paralyze the victim's lungs, causing them to suffocate.
- Industrial hemp contains less than 1% of THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana.
- The telegraph plant has leaves that move themselves continuously in calm weather as if they were fluttering in the breeze.
- Natural gas has no odor. The smell is added artificially so that leaks can be detected.
- Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846.
- Since space is essentially empty it cannot carry sound. Therefor there is no sound in space, at least not the sort of sound that we are used to.
- An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long.
- Mosquitoes like the scent of estrogen, hence, women get bitten by mosquitoes more than men do. Only female mosquitoes bite people.
- James Ramsey invented a steam-driven motorboat in 1784. He ran it on the Potomac River in an event witnessed by George Washington.
- If an item moves very, very fast, it becomes smaller and heavier.
- The Space Shuttle always rolls over after launch to alleviate structural loading, allowing the shuttle to carry more mass into orbit.
- All snow crystals are hexagonal.
- Putty is a cement compound of fine powdered chalk or oxide of lead mixed with linseed oil.
- Of all the non-biodegradable trash buried in American landfills, 30% of it is disposable diapers. It takes five centuries for these to disintegrate.
- 1/25 of the energy put out by a light bulb is light. The rest is heat.
- The name of the Russian space station, Mir, means "peace."
- The fastest-growing plant, the giant sea kelp, grows 1-1/2" per hour.
- Lobster shells and mushrooms are made out of the same thing, chitin.
- Waldo Hanchett invented the modern dentist's chair in 1848.
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