Most of us are far from science and understand little about it, but does this prevent us from learning interesting scientific facts about the world that surrounds us? A lot of interesting, funny and surprising is hidden from our eyes.

Proven Scientific Facts

Miscellaneous scientific facts

Facts about people

A little about the world around

Space is waiting for us

• The length of a day on Mars is almost the same as on Earth, they are only 39 minutes longer.
• The fastest planet in the solar system is Jupiter. It needs only ten hours for a complete rotation around the axis.
• The galaxy we are in contains about 200-400 billion stars.
• At a decent distance, a spacecraft can take a photo of a million square kilometers of our planet in just ten minutes. You can do the same with an airplane in four years.

Results

The concept of a scientific fact is quite broad, so this category of knowledge can include a lot of information from different fields of knowledge. To recognize a fact as such, it must not only be proved, but also verified. The problem with scientific fact is that very often these proofs are neglected and the product is presented in its raw form, but science will always be able to distinguish truth from lies.

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Some parents say to the baby: "You are the light of my life." But did you know that if you were light, you would circle the entire globe 7.5 times per second! If you became sound, you could fly around the Earth in 4 hours! If we lived on Jupiter, our day would consist of only 9 hours. It’s good that on Earth a day lasts 24 hours, because we need to do so much during the day! These are just a few entertaining scientific facts that can interest both an inquisitive child and an adult.

What is science?

Science is an organized and consistent study that includes observation, collection of scientific facts, experiments, verification of results and explanation of natural and man-made phenomena. This is an area that gives us the opportunity to better understand the world around us and create good things for the benefit of man and all living beings.

Ordinary scientific facts

Now that you know what we are talking about, here are some interesting scientific facts:

• If you stretch the chain of human DNA, its length will be the distance from Pluto to the Sun and back.
• When a person sneezes, the speed of the air they exhale is about 160 km/h.
• A flea can jump to a height that is 130 times its own height. If the flea were a 1.80 m tall human, it could jump 230 m.
• An electric eel generates an electric current of 650 volts. Touching him is the most powerful shock that a person can experience.
• It takes light particles photons 40,000 years to travel from the core of the Sun to its surface, and only 8 minutes to reach the Earth.

Scientific facts about the earth

Earth is our home. To take care of her, we need to know important information about her:

• The age of the Earth is from 5 to 6 billion years. The Moon and the Sun are about the same age.
• Our planet is made up primarily of iron, silicon, and a relatively small amount of magnesium.
• Earth is the only planet in the solar system that has water on its surface, and the atmosphere is 21% oxygen.
• The surface of the Earth is made up of tectonic plates placed on the mantle - a layer located between the Earth's core and the surface. This structure of the earth's surface explains earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
• About 8.7 million species of living organisms live on Earth. Of these, 2.2 million species live in the ocean, while the rest live on land.
• ¾ of the Earth's surface is covered with water. When astronauts first saw Earth from space, they saw mostly water. Hence the name "blue planet".

Facts about the environment

Why do the seasons change? What happens to trash after we throw it away? What causes the weather to be hot or cold? This and much more children learn in the lessons of natural history at school. Consider some of the facts that convince us of what a beautiful planet we live on.

• Plastic completely decomposes in the ground in 450 years, and glass in 4,000 years.
• Every day, 27,000 trees in the world are used just to make toilet paper.
• 97% of all water on Earth is salty and unusable. 2% of water is in glaciers. Therefore, only 1% of water is usable.
• The meat processing industry contributes the most to global warming. In second place among global problems is deforestation. About 68% of existing plant species are likely to become extinct in the near future.
• The population of the Earth is more than 7 billion people. This figure is expected to reach 8 billion by 2025.
• Unfortunately, 99% of the existing species of living organisms, according to scientists, will become extinct.

Interesting facts about animals

The animal kingdom is beautiful and amazing. It has tame otters, powerful eels, singing whales, giggling rats, sex-changing oysters, and many other equally amazing representatives. Here are some facts about animals that your child will surely enjoy:

• Octopuses have three hearts. An even stranger fact: lobsters have their urinary tracts on their faces, while turtles breathe through their anus.
• In seahorses, males produce offspring, not females.
• The kakapo parrot has a strong, pungent odor that attracts predators. That is why kakapo are under the threat of extinction.
• A squirrel plants more trees than the average person in a lifetime. How can this be? The fact is that squirrels hide acorns and nuts underground, and then forget exactly where they hid them.
• Lions are hunted mainly by lionesses. Lions intervene only when necessary.

Interesting Plant Facts

Plants green our planet, produce oxygen, make the Earth habitable. Trees and plants are probably the most useful among the living inhabitants of the Earth. Here are some interesting facts about plants:

• Like humans, plants recognize other plants of their species.
• In total, there are more than 80,000 edible plants on Earth. Of these, we eat about 30.
• Humanity is rapidly destroying forests. About 80% of all forests have already been destroyed.
• The oldest tree in the world (sequoia) is located in the USA, in the state of California. His age is 4843 years.
• The height of the tallest tree in the world is 113 m. It is also located in California.
• The largest tree in the world is an aspen growing in the USA, in the state of Utah. Its weight is 6,000 tons.

Facts about space

The sun, stars, planets, the Milky Way, constellations, and everything in the universe is located in vacuum space. We call it space. Here are some interesting facts about him:

• The Earth is tiny compared to the Sun, which is 300,000 times larger.
• The entire cosmos is absolutely silent, because sound does not propagate in a vacuum.
• Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. The temperature on the surface of Venus is 450°C.
• The force of gravity changes the weight of a person on different planets. For example, the force of gravity on Mars is lower than on Earth, so an 80 kg person on Mars would only weigh 31 kg.
• Since there is no atmosphere or water on the Moon, nothing can erase the traces of the astronauts who set foot on its surface. Therefore, traces will probably remain here for another hundred million years.
• The temperature of the core of the Sun - the closest star to the Earth - is 15 million degrees Celsius.

Facts about famous scientists

For a long time, people thought that the Earth was flat, that the change of seasons depended on the mood of the gods, and that evil spirits caused illness. This continued until the great scientists proved otherwise. Without them, we would still be living in ignorance.

• Albert Einstein was a genius, but his talents were revealed rather late. After the death of the scientist, his brain was the object of numerous studies.
• Nicolaus Copernicus refuted the theory that the Earth is the center of the universe. He developed a model of the solar system, in the center of which is the Sun.
• Leonardo da Vinci was not only an artist. He was also an outstanding mathematician, scientist, writer and even a musician.
• Archimedes invented the law of fluid displacement while taking a bath. It's funny that, according to legend, he jumped out of the bath with a cry of "Eureka!" He was so excited that he forgot that he had no clothes on.
• Marie Curie, the woman chemist who discovered radium, was the first person in the world to win the Nobel Prize twice.

Scientific facts from the world of technology

Technology is the engine of progress. We are so dependent on technology in everyday life that it is even scary. We offer some interesting facts about the technical devices that we encounter on a daily basis:

• The first computer game appeared in 1967. It was called "brown box" (translated from English - "brown box"), because that's what it looked like.
• The world's first computer, ENIAC, weighed over 27 tons and occupied an entire room.
• The Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same thing.
• Robotics is one of the most relevant scientific fields today. However, back in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci drew the world's first diagram of a robot.
• The Camera Obscura is a prototype camera that influenced the development of photography. It was used in Ancient Greece and China for projecting images onto a screen.
• There is an interesting technology in which plant waste is used to generate methane, which, in turn, can be used to generate electricity.

Scientific facts from the engineering industry

Engineering helps create beautiful things - from houses and cars to electronic gadgets.

• The highest bridge in the world is the Millau Viaduct in France. It is located at an altitude of 245 m, supported by beams suspended on cables.
• The Palm Islands in Dubai can be called a modern wonder of the world. These are man-made islands floating on the water.
• The world's largest particle accelerator is located in Geneva. It was built to assist the research of more than 10,000 scientists and is located in an underground tunnel.
• The Chandra Space Observatory is the world's largest X-ray telescope. It is also the largest satellite launched into space.
• Today, the most ambitious project in the world is the New Valley in Egypt. Engineers are trying to turn millions of hectares of desert into farmland. Imagine what would happen if we could green the Earth in the same way! Our planet would return to its original purity!

Science is a wonderful field of study that inspires many people. All you need to do is get your child interested in it. And who knows, maybe your child will grow up to be a second Einstein.

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Newborns usually have about 270 bones, most of which are very small. This makes the skeleton more flexible and helps the baby move through the birth canal and grow quickly. As we grow older, many of these bones fuse together. The skeleton of an adult consists of an average of 200-213 bones.

2. The Eiffel Tower grows 15 centimeters in summer

The huge structure is built with temperature expansion joints, thanks to which the steel can expand and contract without any damage.

When steel is heated, it begins to expand and takes up more volume. This is called thermal expansion. Conversely, a decrease in temperature leads to a decrease in volume. For this reason, large structures such as bridges are built with expansion joints that allow them to change in size without being damaged.

3. 20% of oxygen comes from the Amazon rainforest

Flickr.com/thiagomarra

The Amazon rainforest covers 5.5 million square kilometers. The Amazonian jungle produces a significant portion of the oxygen on Earth by absorbing huge amounts of carbon dioxide, which is why they are often called the lungs of the planet.

4. Some metals are so reactive that they explode even on contact with water.

Some metals and compounds - potassium, sodium, lithium, rubidium and cesium - exhibit increased chemical activity, therefore they can ignite with lightning speed upon contact with air, and if they are lowered into water, they can even explode.

5. A teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh 6 billion tons.

Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars, consisting mainly of a neutron core covered with a relatively thin (about 1 km) crust of matter in the form of heavy atomic nuclei and electrons. The cores of stars that died during a supernova explosion were compressed under the influence of gravity. This is how superdense neutron stars were formed. Astronomers have found that the mass of neutron stars can be comparable to the mass of the Sun, despite the fact that their radius does not exceed 10–20 kilometers.

6. Each year, Hawaii moves closer to Alaska by 7.5 cm.

The earth's crust consists of several huge parts - tectonic plates. These plates are constantly moving along with the upper layer of the mantle. Hawaii is located in the middle part of the Pacific Plate, which is slowly drifting in a northwesterly direction towards the North American Plate, on which Alaska is located. Tectonic plates move at the same speed as human nails grow.

7. In 2.3 billion years, Earth will be too hot for life to exist.

Our planet will eventually become a vast desert, similar to today's Mars. For hundreds of millions of years, the Sun has been heating up, getting brighter and hotter, and will continue to do so. In about two billion years or more, temperatures will become so hot that the oceans that make Earth habitable will evaporate. The whole planet will turn into an endless desert. As scientists predict, in the next few billion years, the Sun will turn into a red giant and completely swallow the Earth - the planet will definitely come to an end.

Flickr.com/andy999

Thermal imagers are able to identify an object by the heat it radiates. And polar bears are experts at keeping warm. Thanks to a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and a warm coat, bears are able to endure even the coldest days in the Arctic.

9. It takes light 8 minutes 19 seconds to travel from the sun to the earth.

It is known that the speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second. But even with such dizzying speed, it will take time to overcome the distance between the Sun and the Earth. And 8 minutes is not so much on a cosmic scale. It takes 5.5 hours for sunlight to reach Pluto.

10. If you remove all the interatomic space, humanity will fit in a sugar cube

In fact, more than 99.9999% of an atom is empty space. An atom consists of a tiny, dense nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons that proportionally occupy more space. This is because electrons move in waves. They can only exist where the crests and troughs of the waves add up in a certain way. The electrons do not stay at one point, their location can be anywhere within the orbit. That is why they take up a lot of space.

11. Gastric Juice Can Dissolve Razor Blades

The stomach digests food thanks to caustic hydrochloric acid with a high pH (hydrogen index) - from two to three. But at the same time, the acid also affects the gastric mucosa, which, however, is able to quickly recover. The lining of your stomach is completely renewed every four days.

Scientists have many versions of why this happens. The most likely: due to huge asteroids that have affected its course in the past, or due to the strong circulation of air currents in the upper atmosphere.

13. A flea can accelerate faster than a space shuttle.

Flea jumps reach breathtaking heights - 8 centimeters per millisecond. Each jump gives the flea an acceleration that is 50 times the acceleration of the spaceship.

What interesting facts do you know?

1. Raindrops are usually depicted as teardrops, but they are not. They are spherical.

2. In the process of sublimation, a solid substance immediately turns into a gas, bypassing the liquid state. For example, this will happen if you throw dry ice into a fire.

3. Gorillas sleep in nests - they make them from soft foliage and curved branches. Males tend to nest on the ground, while females nest in trees.

4. Champagne does not sizzle because of the carbon dioxide in it - it sizzles due to the contact of gas with dirt and dust. In a perfectly smooth glass without a single molecule of dust, champagne would not fizz at all.

5. Most of the process of digestion does not take place in the stomach, but in the small intestine. That is why a person can suffer from bulimia, while maintaining excess weight for some time.

6. The red juice that comes out of the steak is not blood. Myoglobin is a close relative of blood. By the time the steak reaches the counter, there is almost no blood left in it.

7. For those who want to contribute to environmental protection, it is better to use plastic bags rather than paper bags. The production process for the production and recycling of paper bags requires significantly more energy than the production of plastic. And in landfills, paper bags take up significantly more space.

8. The coat of polar bears is actually transparent, not white, as it seems. And the skin is black, not white. And in warm, humid environments, polar bear fur can turn greenish due to algae.

9. Allergies to pets, as a rule, are not caused by animal hair, as is commonly believed, but by particles of their dead skin or saliva. Regular thorough bathing of the animal can relieve allergy symptoms.

10. The tongue map, according to which sour, sweet, salty and bitter tastes are perceived by different areas of the tongue, is considered incorrect. This theory was debunked in 1901 by German scientists, who based their evidence on the fact that any taste is recognized by any area of ​​the tongue, based on practical experiments.

11. Many put a shell to their ear to hear the sea. The sound you hear is actually the noise of your own blood in your veins! You can use any cup-shaped object to hear this effect.

12. While a person is alive, his brain is pink. Only after the brain dies does it turn gray. Therefore, the description of the brain as "gray matter" is a little misleading.

13. Mercury is not the only liquid metal. Gallium, Cesium and Francium are metals that are in a solid state at room temperature, but even in the hand they begin to melt from the temperature of the human body.

14. Dolphins don't drink sea water. It can make them sick or even die. They satisfy all their drinking needs through the consumption of food containing liquid.

Much of what we learn in school will never come in handy. Most of this large part we will never even remember. And yet, some crumbs of "useless" information will remain in memory. Paradoxically, it is thanks to them that we feel like educated people. The luxury of keeping in mind not only vital information, but also “information surplus” increases self-esteem and gives a sense of intellectual consistency.

And “unnecessary information” surprisingly turns out to be the most interesting. This interest can become for children a magical key to the vast world of science, which is often hidden behind boring formulas and incomprehensible definitions.

In this article, we have collected nine scientific facts that can be used in the lessons of mathematics, physics, geography, chemistry and biology to clearly show that science is not something abstract from real life, but situations that we face every day.

Fact number 1. On average, an ordinary person travels a distance equal to three equators of the Earth in his life

The equator is approximately 40,075 km long. Multiplying this figure by three, we get 120,225 km. With an average life expectancy of 70 years, we get about 1717 km per year, which is a little more than five kilometers per day. Not so much, but it runs for life.

On the one hand, this information has no practical application. On the other hand, it is much more interesting to measure the distance traveled not in meters, steps or calories, but in equators. And calculating the percentage of the length of the equator will draw attention not only to geography, but also to mathematics.

The following two facts may come in handy in mathematics lessons. Using the first, you can calculate the number of children in parallel or even in the entire school who were born on the same day.

Fact #2: If there are 23 random people in a room, there is over a 50% chance that two of them will have the same birthday.

And if you put together 75 people, then this probability reaches 99%. A 100% chance of a match can be in a group of 367 people. The probability of a match is determined by the number of pairs that can be made from all the people in the group. Since the order of people in pairs does not matter, the total number of such pairs is equal to the number of combinations of 23 by 2, that is, (23 × 22) / 2 = 253 pairs. Thus, the number of pairs exceeds the number of days in a year. The same formula calculates the probability of matches for any number of people. So you can estimate the number of children born on the same day in parallel or even in the entire school.

Fact number 3. The number of living organisms in a teaspoon of soil is greater than the entire population of our planet

One square centimeter of soil contains billions of bacteria, fungi, algae and other organisms. About 60 million bacteria live in just one gram of dry soil. Nematodes, or roundworms (the most famous of which are roundworms and pinworms) in the same amount of soil are much smaller - only 10 thousand. A figure that is incommensurable with the human population, but no less unpleasant for that.

Practical application of the information: Wash your hands thoroughly after taking care of your houseplants and after working in the garden. A zone of increased bacterial danger is a sandbox on any playground.

Fact #4: The average toilet seat is much cleaner than the average toothbrush

The bacteria on your teeth live at a density of about 10 million per square centimeter. The number of bacteria on the skin varies depending on the part of the body, but in any case it is much less than in the mouth.

But there are no bacteria on the skin of frogs at all. The reason for this is the mucus secreted by the frog and contains the strongest antibiotics. This is how frogs protect themselves from the aggressive bacterial environment of the swamps in which they live.

A person in this regard is much less adapted, so toothbrushes are advised to be changed every couple of months.

Fact number 5. In the evening, a person becomes 1% lower compared to his "day" height

Under the influence of loads, our joints tend to shrink. With a normal lifestyle, by the evening a person's height decreases by 1-2 cm, which is approximately 1%. The decrease is not permanent.

The maximum decrease in height occurs after weightlifting. Changes in growth can be three or more centimeters. This is due to the compaction of the vertebrae.

Fact #6: Using very high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter.

Scientists from the Bavarian Research Institute of Geophysics and Geochemistry tried to simulate in the laboratory the conditions of the Earth's lower mantle, where at a depth of 2,900 kilometers the pressure is 1.3 million times higher than atmospheric pressure. During the experiment, some innovative ways of producing diamonds were discovered. According to one hypothesis, diamonds are formed from carbon under very high pressure. Carbon is found in almost all foods. And since the researchers had only peanut butter on hand, they tried it out. Unfortunately, the hydrogen, which is bonded to carbon in peanut butter, slows the process down considerably: even a small diamond takes weeks to produce. Thus scientific thought proves that the most incredible transformations are quite possible.

Fact number 7. The height of the Eiffel Tower can change by 12 centimeters depending on the air temperature

An iron rod 300 meters long expands by 3 mm when the ambient temperature rises by one degree.

This is exactly what is happening with the Eiffel Tower, which is approximately 324 meters high.

In hot sunny weather, the iron material of the tower can heat up to +40 degrees, and in winter in Paris it cools down to about 0 degrees (great frosts are rare there).

Thus, the height of the Eiffel Tower can fluctuate by 12 centimeters (3 mm * 40 = 120 mm).

Fact #8: A conventional microwave oven uses much more energy to keep the built-in clock running than when reheating food.

While in standby mode, a modern microwave consumes approximately 3 watts per hour. Already 72 watts come out per day, and if we multiply this number by thirty days, we get an energy consumption of 2160 watts per month.

If we assume that we use the microwave every day for 5 minutes, we get 150 minutes or 2.5 hours per month. Modern stoves consume about 0.8 kW / h in heating mode. It turns out that with this use, the energy consumption directly for heating food is 2000 watts. If you buy a more economical model that consumes only 0.7 kWh, we get only 1.75 kW per month.

Fact #9. The first computer mouse was made of wood.

Sometimes it's just curious to know the fate of the items that we use every day.

The computer mouse in the design familiar to us was introduced to the world in 1984 by Apple. Largely thanks to her, Macintosh computers have become incredibly popular. But this small, but such a necessary device begins its true history 20 years earlier.

In 1964, Stanford engineer Douglas Engelbart designed a manipulator to work with the oN-Line System (NLS) operating system. Initially, the device was a handmade wooden box with two wheels inside and a button on the case. After some time, the device has a third button, and a couple of years later Engelbart receives a patent for his invention.

Next, Xerox enters the business, but its modification of a computer mouse costs about $ 700, which by no means contributes to its mass distribution. And only the Steve Jobs company is able to develop a similar device with a cost of $ 20-30, which has become part of the daily lives of billions of people.