The Best Interesting Random Facts
Water moves continuously through the ocean in huge rivers called currents. Currents may flow on the surface of the ocean, where they are shallow, or they may flow far below the surface, where they are deeper. Ocean currents are set in motion by the wind. The rotation of the earth moves them clockwise in the […]
A greenhouse gives plants a glass covering which serves two purposes: it conserves the energy they get from the sun and it keeps the air temperature up. The atmosphere surrounding our planet acts the same way. Only a tiny fraction of the heat and energy produced by the sun ever reaches the earth. And that […]
It isn’t very big, and few people know about it, but there is a real desert in Maine. It is called the Desert of Maine and is located south of the town of Freeport. In 1779, the Tuttle family had a 300-acre potato farm on the site. The farm was also home to a small […]
Until about thirty years ago, the only people who “made” or claimed to “make” rain were Indian medicine men. How often their magic succeeded, no ale knows. But in the late 1940s, scientists developed a technique to make rain fall. However, this technique can only be used when fluffy cumulus clouds are in the sky […]
On a clear night, away from the lights of a city, you can see between 2,000 and 3,000 stars. To the human eye, all the stars appear to be the same distance from earth, but actually some are nearer than others. Without the aid of a telescope, you also will be able to see other […]
You didn’t know that air weighed anything? Well, it does, and we call that weight air pressure. At sea level, the average air pressure, or weight of all the earth’s atmosphere pressing down on one square inch of ground, is 14.7 pounds. This pressure, or weight varies with time and weather. Fair weather is associated […]
It is called the “Savage Mountain,” and it is located in Pakistan, not far from Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. The real name of this mountain is Godwin Austen, but it is known as K2. While it is 778 feet less high than Everest, it has been climbed many times. Those who […]
When it’s 20 degrees centigrade, of course. Twenty degrees centigrade is the same as 68 degrees Fahrenheit, or just about room temperature. Most of the world uses the Centigrade system today, but the Fahrenheit system is much older. This temperature measurement system was named after Gabriel Fahrenheit, a German scientist who was born in 1686. […]
Leaves are actually little “factories” that manufacture food to help the plant grow. In the spring and summer, these factories run at top speed, taking in carbon dioxide from the air and water from their roots. Then sunlight enters the leaf and sets the factory in motion. But a leaf could not begin its manufacturing […]
In general, cactus plants are the slowest growing plants on earth. One kind of cactus, the saguaro, grows just one inch in the first ten years of its life. The saguaro cactus doesn’t grow a branch until it’s 16 years old, and after that, it grows just an inch a year. But some pine trees […]
Grains of sand are really very tiny particles of rock. It takes time and certain kinds of weather to turn rock into sand. Rain, frost, and wind can do the job. At beaches, the tide hitting against the rocks forms sand. Salt water, too, forms sand by dissolving minerals in the rocks. Since rocks are […]
A tiny fungus that scientists call Zoophagus insidians has a most unusual way of catching the microscopic animals that form its diet. This fungus, which lives in the water, has short branches, called hyphae, along its main stem. When tiny water animals, called rotifers, bite into these hyphae, the rotifers swell up inside the fungus’s […]
On clear, cloudless nights, the earth loses its heat more quickly than on cloudy nights. Therefore, the earth and the atmosphere get cooler much sooner. Since cooler air usually brings a heavy dew, you can be pretty sure that when you see a heavy dew, the sky is clear and therefore good weather lies ahead. […]
Cactuses are thrifty plants that live in dry regions. They may not get much moisture where they live, but they manage to make the most of what they do get. Since the cactus’s long roots lie close to the surface of the ground, they can catch water from desert rains. And since the roots have […]
The huge stone slab at Mystery Hill in New Hampshire has long been a puzzle. Who put it there? Why? And what was it used for? The slab seems to be the top of a stone table, which may have been the scene of animal or human sacrifice. The grooves along the edge of the […]
How long will the Sun Last? It will be a long time before the sun begins to burn out, at least 5 billion years. The sun is made of hydrogen and helium and radiates energy by nuclear fusion of the hydrogen into helium. When that does happen, the sun will get bigger and become a […]
When you live in a place like Siberia, in northern Russia, you know what cold means. Ice and snow cover this area for half the year. This is the place of the lowest temperature ever recorded, 90° below 0° Fahrenheit. It is not a good place for people who enjoy outdoor sports. Five minutes outdoors […]
The outer layer, or crust, of the earth is made up of plates that are constantly moving past one another in very slow side-to-side and up-and-down movements. These movements cause the earth’s rocks to rub against and slide past each other at their outer edges, creating a break in the crust. This break is called […]
Trees grow up because that is where the light is, and they need the light in order to continue growing. Like most plants, trees grow from seeds and have roots, stems, and leaves. A seed sends its roots down into the ground when it begins to grow, to take minerals and water from the earth […]
The Aleutian Islands are said to have the worst weather in the world. They are far to the north and lie in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. They are not so far north as to be in the Arctic. There are colder places, like the Antarctic, which holds the record for both one-time […]
Steamboat geyser, which can hurl its super hot water 300 feet in the air, is one of two geysers that seem to be tied for this title of most powerful geyser on earth. Steamboat geyser is located in Yellowstone National Park. The only trouble with Steamboat is that, unlike Old Faithful, which erupts on an […]
The earth is 24,902 miles around at its widest point. The furthest apart any two points on earth can be is no more than half of that, 12,451 miles. There are no two cities on earth that are exactly that far apart, but some come close. The distance between Wellington, New Zealand, and Paris, France, […]
The ocean’s depth is measured not by looking, but by listening. This is done with a detection device called sonar. Sonar comes from the words SOund NAvigation and Ranging. Sound waves are sent to the ocean floor and their return time noted. Sound travels through water at the rate of 5,000 feet per second, so […]
When you think of a desert, you may picture vast areas of totally barren, shifting sands. But only a small part of most deserts is completely barren. By and large, most of the world’s deserts look just like the parts of the United States that we call deserts, with rocks, cliffs, and a great variety […]
The word “laser” is an acronym, a word formed from the first letters of a series of words. “Laser” actually stands for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.” Invented in the 1950s, the laser is the most powerful source of energy man has discovered. To create a laser beam, light is focused on a […]
Man’s deepest journey to the center of the earth was made by a petroleum company in Texas. The hole was dug in search of oil, but when none was found, the hole was plugged. However, drillers worked for two years, at a cost of 3 million dollars, to reach a depth of 25,340 feet, or […]
There are really two kinds of planets in our solar system. One kind is called a terrestrial planet because it is very much like Earth. The other is called a jovian planet because it is more like Jupiter. When the solar system formed, the planets took shape out of clouds of dust and gas. Those […]
The answer to both questions is yes, if you calculate the date according to calendars other than the one we use! We number our years from the supposed date of Christ’s birth. But Jews count their years from the date of creation, which ancient scholars claimed took place in the year 3761 B.C. So, the […]
Before the first man landed on the moon, scientists had come up with three possible ways that the moon might have been formed. First, it could have formed out of the same gas cloud that formed the earth. Or it could have broken off from the earth many millions of years ago. Or perhaps the […]
There Two North Poles, and there are also two South Poles. The “true” poles are the “top” and “bottom” of the earth when the Equator is figured as its center. A compass needle lines up with earth’s magnetic field and points to Magnetic North and Magnetic South. It is a long walk between the magnetic […]
The earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but life did not exist on this planet until about 2 billion years ago, when certain kinds of bacteria and algae began to appear. Land plants did not appear until about 430 million years ago; reptiles, 300 million years ago; and modern mammals, 75 million years ago. […]
A type of star called a black hole isn’t really black. It’s giving off light just like any other star. But this light can never reach us, so the star looks “black.” Imagine a huge star that runs out of gas to burn after billions of years of shining. As the star runs out of […]
When you drop a straw into a bottle of soda, that straw is filled with air. As you put the straw into your mouth and start sucking in, you begin by sucking the air out of the straw, creating a vacuum, or airless space, inside the straw. Since air pressure is at work all around […]
The lines that divide the world’s time zones meet at the North and South Poles, so the zones get narrower as they near’ the poles. An Alaskan airline offers a flight over the Arctic regions that includes a circular flight around the North Pole. If you were to circle the North Pole, you’d pass through […]
Coal was formed from the remains of ancient, strange looking trees, giant ferns, soft mosses, and grassy plants, all of which grew in swampy jungles hundreds of millions of years ago. When these giant trees and plants died and fell into the swamp, they rotted and became mixed with other decaying plants, forming a spongy […]
The surface of the Moon can get very hot indeed. Much hotter than it does on earth. On the daylight side of the moon, temperatures rise above the boiling point of water, 280 degrees F. Temperatures on the moon go up and down very fast with the coming and leaving of sunlight. In just one […]
