The Best Interesting Random Facts
What! In the driest place in the world? But the answer is yes! In places like the Sahara Desert in Africa, people can fish in the many underground streams which lie on top of a layer of clay beneath the sand. The water feeding these streams comes from nearby mountains where rain does fall. This […]
E = mc2 is a formula that shows, in mathematical terms, the relationship between energy and mass. In this formula, E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light. The number 2 to the upper right of the c means that c is squared, or multiplied by itself. This formula, first […]
In the rain forests of Sumatra, an Indonesian island, grows a very strange plant called the rafflesia. This plant has no stem and no leaves, but consists of just a single flower. And that flower is the biggest in the world, often measuring over three feet across. A full-grown rafflesia weighs 15 pounds, and can […]
Most hailstones are about the size of a golf ball. If they are not round, then hailstones are about the size of an hen’s egg. Other stones have frequently been reported to be the size of a baseball or even a small grapefruit. How would you like to be hit by one of these? The […]
In 1967, scientists detected pulsing signals coming from far-off outer space. These bursts of energy reached earth with such a regular pulse rate that it seemed they were being sent by beings on another world. At first they were called LGMs, for “Little Green Men.” Later, it was discovered that these signals came from stars […]
Rain falls once in a while even in the hottest parts of the desert. The average rainfall in the Sahara Desert, the world’s largest, is from five to ten inches per year in most places. But one region of the Sahara receives just one-tenth of an inch of rain each year, and another part of […]
Sometimes a person wandering in a desert may be so thirsty and sun- parched that he begins to see things that aren’t there. This is a hallucination, and not a mirage, for mirages really exist, and can be seen by anyone in the area at the time they appear! A mirage is a trick of […]
Many scientists think that sometime during the next century, the polar ice caps will melt, the oceans will rise, and many coastal cities and lands will be flooded. They call this big melt the “greenhouse effect.” They believe that man is turning earth into hothouses like the ones used to grow plants. The glass used […]
You would have to be in an airplane looking down on the Nazca Desert in order to see this Peruvian puzzle. A series of gigantic pictures and designs have been made by removing the dark topsoil and exposing the lighter yellow soil underneath. The subjects are flowers, spiders, birds, snakes, and gods wearing halos. Some […]
Not only does the light from the stars appear to twinkle or jump about, it also appears to change color. When the light from the stars is traveling through space, there is no twinkling or changing of color. It is the earth’s atmosphere that makes the stars twinkle and change color. This is brought about […]
Poison ivy is a vine that straggles over the ground or winds itself around tree trunks, or even forms its own bush if it has nothing to wind itself around. The poison ivy leaf is made up of three leaflets. These leaflets contain poisonous oil that irritates the skin of anyone touching them. This oil […]
The colorful stone “icicles” which hang from the roof and walls of some caves are called stalactites, and those rising from the floor are called stalagmites. Both these formations build up when water drips through rocks in a cave roof. These rocks contain mineral deposits called calcite. It is this calcite and other minerals which […]
Many flowers have petals which are open during the day, but which close up at night. These flowers are reacting to light or temperature changes. Other flowers, however, remain open around the clock, while still others have unusual opening and closing habits. But these habits are all related to light or temperature changes. Here’s how […]
Believe it or not, the moon nods both yes and no. The nods or movements are called librations. The slow nod “no” from side to side, which lets us see first one “cheek” of the moon and then the other, is called longitudinal libration. The nod “yes,” which shows us the “forehead” and then the […]
It smells like tar, and Canada has more of it than any other nation in the world. The Tar sands are a rich source of oil that lies right on the earth’s surface in parts of western Canada. There is so much oil in this tar sand that Canada may very well become the richest […]
Inertia is the tendency of objects that are at rest to remain at rest, or of moving objects to continue moving, unless they are acted upon by some outside force. This concept of physics was discovered by the Italian scientist Galileo in the 16th century. Because of the property of inertia, an object set on […]
Caves, or caverns, are holes made in the earth’s surface by the forces of nature. Sea caves were formed by the steady beating of the sea against large rocks on shore. This beating, over thousands of years, hollowed out a cave. The Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri in Italy is probably the best-known […]
You may have seen the small, moss-like plants called lichens covering rocks or the branches of old trees. Though you’d never guess it from looking at these plants, lichens are really two plants in one: a fungus and an alga. The fungus and alga in a lichen live so closely together that you’d need a […]
The distances that astronomers deal with when they measure the distance between stars, or between stars and planets, are so great that there would be almost no room on this page to express that distance in miles. Astronomers therefore measure those distances in units called light-years. A light-year is the distance light travels during one […]
Meteorologists, or weather experts, measure rainfall and snowfall in inches. They let falling rain collect in a cylinder, and can tell how many inches have fallen by seeing how far the rain fills up the cylinder. If your weatherman says that an inch of rain fell on your town, it means that if the ground […]
Easter Island, a volcanic island in the South Pacific, is the site of a great mystery. Over 600 enormous stone heads, 2,000 years old, each carved from a solid piece of rock and with identical faces, stand over all the island. They rise from 10 to 40 feet above the surface and weigh up to […]
No. Dark, dirty snow absorbs the heat rays of the sun more quickly than clean, white snow, which reflects these rays back into the air. So dirty snow melts faster than clean snow. Actually, clean snow isn’t white at all. The tiny flakes are frozen, colorless ice crystals which reflect the light and make the […]
If you were to see a banana plantation, you’d probably say “yes,” bananas do grow on trees. But although banana plants certainly look like trees, growing up to 30 feet tall, they’re really giant shoots, the banana plant is an herb, not a tree! In fact, the banana is the largest plant on earth without […]
The Polar Lights have got to be among the most fascinating sights in the world. These glowing or flickering colored night lights are known in the Northern Hemisphere as the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, and in the Southern Hemisphere as the Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights. These displays light up the sky with flashing, […]
During the 4,600,000,000 years that the sun has been shining, it has been burning up 22 quadrillion tons of hydrogen and changing it into helium every year. Scientists estimate that the sun has enough of a supply of these gases to keep shining for another 5,000,000,000 years. How do they know this? Astronomers have been […]
Scientists in Kyoto, Japan, clocked the growth of a group of bamboo plants and watched as one of them set a world record. This plant grew 48 inches in 24 hours, two inches an hour. If you had been there, you could have watched it growing. In China, people used to listen to the bamboo […]
Since the moon’s mass (the amount of matter it contains) is smaller than earth’s, the moon has a weaker gravity pull, only one-sixth the pull of earth. This means that everything is six times lighter on the moon than it is on earth. A person weighing 120 pounds on earth would weigh only 20 pounds […]
Even though the Indians in the eastern part of North America used the white, purple, and black beads made from shells mainly as money, or wampum, they also used them to record important happenings in the tribe. Wampum beads were strung on belts to record each event in a story, and served as a reminder […]
Look at the skies at night and see all those bright stars. Is it possible that man could measure the temperature of just one of them? As strange as it may sound, we can take the temperature of a star. All we need is a jet airplane, a telescope, a heat detector, and a paper-thin […]
If they did not have flowers, they would not be able to reproduce. If trees didn’t have flowers there would be no seeds, and if there were no seeds, new trees wouldn’t come up each year. And if new trees didn’t come up each year, there wouldn’t be forests. Every single tree in the world […]
Water witching is what some people call the finding of underground water with the use of a divining rod. Water Witching is sometimes called Dowsing, divining, or doodlebugging. Certain people, including many scientists, do not believe in divining rods, but others are equally sure that they work. What happens is this. A person called a […]
The smells in flowers come from special oils that are produced in the petals as the plant grows. When this oil evaporates, which it does very easily, it gives off a fragrance which we can smell. Various combinations of chemicals in the oils of different flowers result in a variety of fragrances. Some are pleasant, […]
When the Vikings first visited the west coast of Greenland they found that the Eskimos who lived there used heavy stones to anchor their boats. The Vikings were amazed to see that when these stones were dropped in the water, they became nearly invisible. Today this mineral is called Cryolite. Greenland is the only place […]
When water changes to ice, it becomes lighter. It is the only substance on earth that is lighter as a solid than as a liquid. This means that when the water in a lake freezes, the ice floats to the top, and fish swim beneath it. It is very, very rare for a lake to […]
Since the earth is suspended in space, it cannot be put on a scale and weighed. But scientists can estimate its total weight by estimating the weight of each of its parts, the crust, or solid rock, the mantle, also solid rock, and the core, a liquid, because of the great heat at the center. […]
The equator is an imaginary circle around the earth, an equal distance from the North and South Poles. Since the weather gets warmer as you travel away from the polar regions toward the equator, you would think that the equator is the hottest place on earth. But there are some places on the equator where […]
