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| October 10, 2011
| Science
FactID: 630
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Rated
3.00 stars from 2 votes
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The "decibel" was named after Alexander Graham Bell.
Decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale -- every 3 dB is a doubling of the intensity of sound saves. Restaurant conversation is about 60 dB, a motorcycle (at 25 ft) is 90 dB, airplanes at takeoff are 110 dB.
Our human senses for sound (as well as light) are tuned for a wide range of values, hence the logarithmic scales we use for measurement
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| Source: Big Picture Science podcast by SETI
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| September 17, 2011
| Science
FactID: 627
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Rated
4.67 stars from 3 votes
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A lifespan is a billion heartbeats.
Remarkably, there exist simple scaling laws relating animal metabolism to body mass. Larger animals live longer; but they also metabolize slower, as manifested in slower heart rates. These effects cancel out, so that animals from shrews to blue whales have lifespans with just about equal number of heartbeats — about one and a half billion, if you simply must be precise. In that very real sense, all animal species experience “the same amount of time.”
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| Source: Discover Magazine
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| August 2, 2008
| Science
FactID: 406
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Rated
3.67 stars from 12 votes
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Giant Sequoias in California's Sequoia National Park, 2,000 to 2,100 years old and measures 275 feet tall and 30 feet across.
Each tree produces about 40 cubic feet of wood every year.
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| Source: Animal facts and National Park Service
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| July 22, 2008
| Science
FactID: 395
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Rated
3.91 stars from 11 votes
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"Special Relativity states that nothing that is moving initially slower than the speed of light can be accelerated to exceed the speed of light. This is not strictly speaking the same as the statement that nothing can travel faster than light. It is in principle possible that particles exist which move faster than light from the moment they are created.
If such particles did exist, however, Special Relativity implies that they could never be slowed down to velocities below the speed of light. The existence of such particles, called tachyons, has not been totally ruled out, but several experiments have tried, without luck to detect them. If they did exist, and they interacted with ordinary matter, it would give us the means to communicate with the past...
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| Source: University of Winnipeg & Wikipedia via Kamal Menghrajani
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| August 1, 2007
| Science
FactID: 451
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Rated
3.76 stars from 21 votes
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There are more than 1016 prokaryotes (typically bacteria) in a ton of soil -- there are only 1011 stars in our galaxy!
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| Source: "Exploring Microbial Diversity: A Vast Below" (PDF link) via Kate Harris
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| July 28, 2007
| Science
FactID: 490
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Rated
4.17 stars from 18 votes
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You can fit an entire person on to a standard CD!
A strand of human DNA, containing every bit of information about you, contains 3 billion base pairs. These base pairs can be A, T, C, or G. Since it takes two bits to represent 4 options, your full DNA sequence would occupy 6 billion bits in a computer -- or 800 megabytes. This is just enough to fit onto a compact disc!
And according to an old fact, with current IP addressing, we could almost give every person on Earth a unique address.
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| Source: Random thoughts
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| July 25, 2007
| Science
FactID: 439
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Rated
4.42 stars from 24 votes
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In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons detonated at once.
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| Source: Bright & Briscoe
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| July 20, 2007
| Science
FactID: 377
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Rated
4.39 stars from 18 votes
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What makes the South Pole so much colder than the North Pole is that it sits on top of a very thick ice sheet, which itself sits on a continent. The surface of the ice sheet at the South Pole is more than 9,000 feet in elevation --more than a mile and a half above sea level. Antarctica is by far the highest continent on the earth.
In comparison, the North Pole rests in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, where the surface of floating ice rides only a foot or so above the surrounding sea. The Arctic Ocean also acts as an effective heat reservoir, warming the cold atmosphere in the winter and drawing heat from the atmosphere in the summer.
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| Source: Scientific American via Aaron Fulkerson
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| July 15, 2007
| Science
FactID: 51
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Rated
3.90 stars from 10 votes
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In 1961, the Soviets detonated the largest
single explosion by the human species - a 58-megaton thermonuclear
weapon on Novaya Zemlya, an island in the Arctic Sea.
58-megaton means that the blast was equivalent to exploding 58,000,000 tons of dynamite.
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| Source: NuclearWeaponArchive.org
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| July 9, 2007
| Science
FactID: 281
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Rated
4.00 stars from 11 votes
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Ever jump off a cliff into water?
According to Mythbusters, if you fall/jump from 160 feet, your body experiences 285 G's, or 285 times the normal force of gravity, when you hit the water.
To put this in context, the force your body experiences in a normal car crash is 70 G's.
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| Source: Mythbusters on Discovery Channel
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| July 6, 2007
| Science
FactID: 242
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Rated
4.44 stars from 9 votes
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The atoms in the air around us are flying around at about 1,000 miles per hour (for normal room temperature).
As the temperature drops, the atoms slow down - In 1995, physicists in Boulder, CO, cooled atoms to 20 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, where all motion ceases, creating a Bose-Einstein condensate - a new state of matter that "had never existed anywhere in the universe ever before".
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| Source: UCAR & Temperature Primer
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| July 1, 2007
| Science
FactID: 231
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Rated
4.30 stars from 10 votes
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In a 10-megaton nuclear bomb explosion (as big as they get), all the energy is produced from less than 1 pound of matter, in accordance with Einstein's formula E=mc2.
This one pound of highly enriched uranium (~90% Uranium-235 for weapons grade vs. 2% -3% for civilian reactors) has as much energy as a million pounds of gasoline (a cube 50 ft/side).
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| Source: Nova on PBS & HowStuffWorks
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| June 29, 2007
| Science
FactID: 192
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Rated
3.30 stars from 10 votes
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"Inches", "Feet", and "Miles" were originally defined based on the human body.
An inch was the width of a thumb.
A foot was the length of a foot.
A pace was two marching steps (~5 feet). A mile was a thousand paces (5,280 feet).
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| Source: "Necessary Numbers" by Mary Blocksma
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| June 24, 2007
| Science
FactID: 116
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Rated
4.40 stars from 5 votes
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There are only 6 lists of hurricane names,
used in rotation, so hurricanes have the same name every
6 years. Also, the list for each year includes one hurricane
name for each letter of the alphabet except Q, U, X, Y, and Z.
If a hurricane is particularly devastating or costly, however,
the name can be retired. Atlantic storms can have French, English
or Spanish names because those are the languages spoken where
the hurricane activity usually is.
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| Source: Katie Corbyons
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| April 30, 2007
| Science
FactID: 607
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Rated
4.56 stars from 16 votes
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Algae in the world's oceans generate two-thirds of all oxygen on the planet.
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| Source: Planet Earth on Discovery Channel
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| January 27, 2007
| Science
FactID: 601
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Rated
4.58 stars from 12 votes
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Your body has 10 times more bacteria cells than human cells!
According to Princeton geneticist Bonnie Bassler, there are 10^10 bacterial cells in your gut. You only have 10^9 human cells making up your whole body. So there are 10 times more bacterial cells in you, or on you, than human cells. By weight, you are more human than bacteria, because your cells are bigger, but by numbers, it's not even close.
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| Source: Nova ScienceNow
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| September 14, 2006
| Science
FactID: 585
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Rated
4.59 stars from 39 votes
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If you could stretch out the spiraled line of music on a CD, it would be 3.5 miles long!
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| Source: The elevator TV in Justin Doshi's office building & HowStuffWorks.com
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| December 30, 2005
| Science
FactID: 513
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Rated
4.53 stars from 17 votes
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A "nautical mile" is technically the angular distance of 1 minute of arc (1/60th of one degree) on the Earth's surface. It has been defined as 6,080 feet even though an arcminute is different lengths at different latitudes (since the Earth bulges at the equator).
A "knot" is a measure of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour (or about 1.15 mph). The name comes from the knots tied in the log line used with the sand glass. The log line was thrown onto the sea and the knots in the line were counted as they ran out during the sand glass interval.
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| Source: Nautical Units and Angles webpage
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| October 3, 2005
| Science
FactID: 448
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Rated
4.50 stars from 8 votes
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Silver tarnishes more these days because of sulfur pollution from power plants.
Before the Industrial Revolution, silver hardly tarnished at all.
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| Source: Popular Science article
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| July 7, 2005
| Science
FactID: 382
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Rated
4.18 stars from 11 votes
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Ever wonder why your breath become visible in the cold...
There is no fixed air temperature for frosty breath. Exhaled air has relatively high amounts of moisture from our lungs. When this warm, moist air is chilled, the moisture condenses. The exhaled air is chilled below its saturation temperature, or dew point. For big dramatic clouds of frosty breath, it helps to have humid air. Why? This stops the condensation cloud from evaporating too quickly. The water droplets will last longer in moist air, because the air is already fairly saturated.
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| Source: Ask Yahoo via Jason Langberg
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| June 25, 2005
| Science
FactID: 370
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Rated
4.09 stars from 11 votes
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Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals.
A cube of it about 2.5 inches on edge can be beaten out to cover an entire football field.
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| Source: Popular Science
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| June 23, 2005
| Science
FactID: 176
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Rated
3.47 stars from 15 votes
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At any given moment, 2,000 thunderstorms are occurring around the world. This results in 8.6 million lightning strikes each day.
The average lightning flash would power a 100 watt bulb for 3 months.
One lightning casualty occurred for every 86,000 flashes in the United States. There are 20 million flashes in the US per year.
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| Source: NOAA via Brad Davis
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| May 4, 2005
| Science
FactID: 329
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Rated
4.23 stars from 13 votes
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Matthew Nagle can control his TV and computer just by thinking!
After a knife attack in 2001, Matthew became paralyzed from the neck down. However, he received a brain implant consisting of 100 electrodes implanted a millimeter deep in the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement.
Now, he can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home. Read more!
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| Source: BBC via Chris Shields
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| April 23, 2005
| Science
FactID: 316
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Rated
2.89 stars from 9 votes
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Can you spare an attosecond?
An attosecond is 1 x 10-18 seconds. To imagine how long this is, if 100 attoseconds is stretched so that it lasts one second, one second would last 300 million years on the same scale. But by using lasers, we may be able to make new clocks that are accurate to one second over a billion years (more accurate than atomic clocks).
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| Source: BBC via Chris Shields
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| April 15, 2005
| Science
FactID: 309
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Rated
4.45 stars from 11 votes
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It's better to walk than run in the rain
As surprising as it is, on a 100-foot course, you soak up more than twice the rain by running instead of walking. By walking, it's really only the top of your head and your shoulders that get wet. When you run, you get the whole front face of your body wet as well.
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| Source: Mythbusters
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| April 14, 2005
| Science
FactID: 307
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Rated
4.20 stars from 10 votes
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Cry me a river!
Do onions bother you? No wonder! The reason that onions cause people to tear up is that onion cells contain a sulfur-containing chemical compound. When your knife slices through that, it triggers a series of chemical reactions. When the new molecules react with the moisture in your eyes, sulfuric acid -- the most widely used of all chemicals and a major component of battery acid and acid rain-- is formed.
But good ol' Texas is keeping its young ladies safe from such worries. The town of Nacogdoches, has a strict onions curfew for "young women." Under no circumstances are they allowed to have any raw onions after 6 p.m.
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| Source: Weekend Gardener via Madeleine Deblois
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| April 8, 2005
| Science
FactID: 303
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Rated
4.45 stars from 11 votes
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Thirsty? You and most Americans -- who essentially live in a state of semi-dehydration. There's good reason health advocates push water -- it leaves fast!
The average human loses between 3 and 6 liters of water on a typical day. One to two liters rushes out as urine, and another one-tenth liter in defecation. Water lost as vapor when you breathe could fill around 1 to 2 liter water bottles a day-even more in arid locations. Sweat fills up another 1 to 2 liters on an average day, but that amount can reach 1 to 2 liters per hour in an intense workout.
But if you're dehydrated, that super gulp won't give you the quick fix you dream of. The body can only absorb about 1 quart per hour...
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| Source: NOLS via Madeleine Deblois
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| March 29, 2005
| Science
FactID: 289
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Rated
3.90 stars from 10 votes
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Well, you and the Kama Sutra know that there are more than a few ways to get crazy while conceiving, but did you know that there are more than 18 ways to biologically create an embryo? Including the clearly next-to-nature "Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection" and "Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis" But you can not beat the old-fashioned way... having a Stork deliver your baby.
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| Source: PBS Special via Madeleine Deblois
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| March 8, 2005
| Science
FactID: 269
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Rated
4.27 stars from 11 votes
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A coal-fired power plant actually releases more radioactivity into the atmosphere than a properly functioning nuclear power plant.
Check out the E=mc2 fact from a few weeks ago.
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| Source: HowStuffWorks
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| February 18, 2005
| Science
FactID: 247
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Rated
4.55 stars from 11 votes
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The normal static electricity shock that zaps your finger when you touch a doorknob in the winter (why winter?) is usually between 10,000 and 30,000 volts!
But it can't hurt you because it is only 2 milliamps (i.e. about 12 million billion electrons that fly over to your finger in a flash) compared to 500mA that a 60W bulb uses.
Sick of getting shocked? Here's how to avoid it.
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| Source: Mythbusters on Discovery Channel
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| February 11, 2005
| Science
FactID: 239
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Rated
4.00 stars from 8 votes
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Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the earth's crust. However, since it's never found in a pure state the refining process makes it one of the more expensive metals.
Aluminum is everywhere -- many gemstones, for example ruby and sapphire, are mainly crystalline aluminum oxide (Al2O3). In addition, many of the world's top performance vehicles, like the Ferrari 360 Modena and the Audi A8, are 100% aluminum, since it's lighter than steel but at least twice as strong.
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| Source: History Channel via John Evans and The Aluminum Association
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| February 7, 2005
| Science
FactID: 229
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Rated
3.62 stars from 8 votes
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The caffeine extracted from coffee beans to make decaf is sold to drug and soft drink manufacturers.
Caffeine is an alkaloid that occurs naturally in the leaves, seeds, and fruit of tea, coffee, cacao, and kola trees, and has been prescribed for human use as far back as the 6th century B.C. when the spiritual leader Lao-tzu is said to have recommended tea as an elixir for deciples of his new religion, Taoism.
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| Source: National Geographic
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| January 21, 2005
| Science
FactID: 214
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Rated
3.92 stars from 13 votes
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The "windchill" is supposed to indicate how cold it feels.
A windchill temperature is, rather, a calculation of how cold it would have to be to cause the same rate of heat loss from your skin if there were no wind blowing. Wind chill approximates how cold it feels because the rate of heat loss corresponds with skin temperature, and skin temperature is what our nerves sense.
But they use the unusually high skin resistance of the 95th percentile of people to measure wind chill and therefore overestimate how cold it feels.
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| Source: Slate via Matt Mattila & Jason Langberg
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| January 19, 2005
| Science
FactID: 208
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Rated
3.75 stars from 8 votes
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The average brain uses about 10 watts of electricity.
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| Source: Jessika Allen's science test
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| January 6, 2005
| Science
FactID: 188
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Rated
3.67 stars from 6 votes
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One molecule of water is composed of three atoms (H20).
One molecule of natural rubber is composed of approximately 295,000 atoms (175,000 carbon atoms and 120,000 hydrogen atoms). Damn.
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| Source: "Intro to Matter" textbook via Madeleine DeBlois
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| December 28, 2004
| Science
FactID: 171
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Rated
2.57 stars from 7 votes
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Lead's symbol on the periodic table of elements is Pb, as in plumbum which is Latin for "lead" since the Ancient Romans made their plumbing out of lead.
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| Source: Aaron Fulkerson
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| December 5, 2004
| Science
FactID: 143
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Rated
3.29 stars from 7 votes
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You get "shocked" by static charge
more in the winter because it is less humid and humidity usually
helps to dissipate static charge.
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| Source: Discovery Channel
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| November 23, 2004
| Science
FactID: 134
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Rated
4.00 stars from 3 votes
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The basic unit of English length is the
yard, which was originally taken as the distance between Henry
Is (1068-1135) nose and the tip of his outstretched arm.
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| September 22, 2004
| Science
FactID: 109
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Rated
2.67 stars from 3 votes
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Pearls dissolve in vinegar.
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| Source: Mattila's snapple bottle cap
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| September 10, 2004
| Science
FactID: 100
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Rated
4.25 stars from 4 votes
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When you smile for a camera, you use a different
part of your brain than when
you genuinely smile.
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| Source: Katie Higgins
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| July 26, 2004
| Science
FactID: 78
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Rated
3.67 stars from 3 votes
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Germany is the worlds largest producer of
wind energy -- 15,800 turbines producing 1,500 megawatts (6% of
the country's total supply).
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| July 12, 2004
| Science
FactID: 66
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Rated
4.50 stars from 2 votes
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Laser stands for Light
Amplification by Stimulated
Emission of Radiation.
Radar stands for Radio Detecting
and Ranging.
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| June 23, 2004
| Science
FactID: 58
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Rated
4.00 stars from 3 votes
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A "drop" is about 1/60th of a
teaspoon.
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| Source: Jeopardy
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| June 2, 2004
| Science
FactID: 52
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Rated
4.00 stars from 3 votes
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Alaska is the most earthquake-prone state.
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| Source: Popular Science
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