| • |
A baby eats an amount of food
equal to his weight every ten days; an adult
consumes his own weight in food once every
fifty days. |
| • |
The body of an average-size, full-grown
human male contains enough fat to make at
least even cakes of soap, enough phosphorus
to make 2,000 match-heads, enough carbon to
make 8,500 pencils, enough iron to make one
nail, and enough water to fill a 12-gallon
barrel. |
| • |
There are some 12,00,00,00,000 cells in
the human brain. |
| • |
There are 30,00,00,000 air cells in both
human lungs. |
| • |
The kidneys have about 280 miles of tiny
tubes. |
| • |
The blood vessels have a combined length
of 1,00,000 miles. |
| • |
Ten million red blood cells in an adult
are destroyed and replaced every second. |
| • |
There are approximately twenty-five billion
(2,50,00,00,00,00,000) red blood cells in
the verage adult human body. |
| • |
And the average human heart beats 1,00,800
times a day (almost 4,00,00,000 times in a
single year), pumps 1,500 quarts of blood
a day (or almost enough to fill a goods train
wagon), and uses enough energy in two hours
to lift nearly 60 tons one foot up into the
air. |
| • |
The drug thiopentone can kill a human being
in one second if injected directly into the
blood. |
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| • |
The earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion
years old. It travels through space at 6,60,000
miles er hour. |
| • |
The oldest rocks in the world, the so-called
St. Peter and St. Paul stones in the Atlantic
Ocean, are 4 billion years old. |
| • |
The earth weighs 65,58,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,000
tons. |
| • |
The earth rotates on its axis more slowly
in March than in September. |
| • |
If the earth were compressed to a sphere
with a 2-inch diameter, its surface would
be as mooth as a billiard ball’s. |
| • |
The temperature of the earth’s interior
increases by 1 degree every 60 feet down. |
| • |
If the world were to become totally flat
and the oceans distributed themselves evenly
over he earth’s surface, the water would
be approximately 2 miles deep at every point. |
| • |
Glaciers occupy 5.8 million square miles,
or 10 percent of the world’s land surface,
an area as large as South America. |
| • |
The world is not round. It is an oblate
spheroid, flattened at the poles and bulging
at the quator. |
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| • |
The average American uses eight times as
much fuel energy as an average person nywhere
else in the world. |
| • |
In one night, the World Trade Center in
New York City uses more electricity than the
entire ity of Troy, New York. |
| • |
The world consumes 1 billion gallons of
petroleum a day. |
| • |
Petroleum accounts for half the world’s
energy supply. |
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| • |
To an observer standing on Pluto, the sun
would appear no brighter than Venus appears
in ur evening sky. |
| • |
Saturn’s rings are 5,00,000 miles
in circumferences but only about a foot thick. |
| • |
When we look at the farthest visible stare
we are looking 4 billion years into the past—the
light from that star, traveling at 1,86,000
miles a second, has taken that many years
to reach us. |
| • |
The telescope on Mount Palomar, California,
can see a distance of ,03,88,35,20,00,00,00,00,
00,000 miles. |
| • |
The sun is 3 million miles closer to the
earth during winter than summer. |
| • |
The sun is 3,30,330 times larger than the
earth. |
| • |
The earth moves in its 585-million-mile
orbit around the sun approximately eight times
faster than a bullet travels. |
| • |
It is estimated that within the entire universe
there are more than a trillion galaxies (the
Milky Way itself contains 100 billion stars).
This means that there are probably about 1022
stars in the entire cosmos. |
| • |
Traveling at a speed of 1,86,000 miles per
second, light takes 6 hours to travel from
Pluto o the earth. |
| • |
The sun burns 9 million tons of gas a second.
At this rate, it has been estimated, it will
burn ut in another 10 billion years. |
| • |
The star known as LP 327-186, a so-called
white dwarf, is smaller than the state to
Texas et so dense that if a cubic inch of
it were brought to earth it would weigh more
than 1.5 million tons. |
| • |
All the planets in our solar system could
be placed inside the planet Jupiter. |
| • |
Because of the speed at which the sun moves,
it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last
more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds. |
| • |
Four million tons of hydrogen dust are destroyed
on the sun every second. |
| • |
If a baseball-sized piece of a supernova
star (known to astronomers as a pulsar) were
brought to earth, it would weigh more than
the Empire State Building. |
| • |
A day on the planet Mercury is twice as
long as its year. Mercury rotates very slowly
but evolves around the sun in slightly less
than eighty-eight days. |
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A mile on the ocean and a mile on land are
not the same distance. On the ocean, a mile
is nown as a nautical mile and measures 6,080
feet. A land or statute mile is 5,280 feet. |
| • |
The weight of a carat (200 milligrams),
standard unit of measurement for gemstones,
is ased on the weight of the carob seed, which
was once used as a weighing standard by jewelers
in Africa and the Middle East. The word “carat”
itself is believed to be derived from an Arabic
word meaning “bean” or “seed”. |
| • |
The best working light-bulb a long time
ago was a thread of sheep’s wool coated
with arbon. |
| • |
107 incorrect medical procedures will be
performed by the end of the day today. |
| • |
A Boeing 747’s wingspan is longer
than the Wright brother’s first flight. |
| • |
A cesium atom in an atomic clock beats 9,192,631,770
times a second. |
| • |
A neutron star has such a powerful gravitational
pull that it can spin on its axis in one-hirtieth
of a second without tearing itself apart. |
| • |
A normal raindrop falls at about seven miles
per hour. |
| • |
A rainbow can only occur when the sun is
40 degrees or less above the horizon. |
| • |
All the gold produced in the past 500 years,
if melted, could be compressed into a 50-foot
cube. |
| • |
An each of snow falling evenly on one acre
of ground is equivalent to about 2,715 gallons
of water. |
| • |
At room temperature, the average air molecule
travels at the speed of a rifle bullet. |
| • |
Bacteria, the tiniest free-living cells,
are so small that a single drop of liquid
contains as any as 50 million of them. |
| • |
Bamboo (the world’s tallest grass)
can grow up to 90 cm in a day. |
| • |
By weight, the sun is 70 per cent hydrogen,
28 per cent helium, 1.5 per cent carbon, itrogen
and oxygen, and 0.5 per cent all other elements. |
| • |
If you attempted to count the stars in a
galaxy at a rate of one every second it would
take around 3,000 years to count them all. |
| • |
It takes eight and a half minutes for light
to get from the sun to earth. |
| • |
Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy
to watch TV for three hours. |
| • |
Stars come in different colours; hot stars
give off blue light and the cooler stars give
off red light. |
| • |
The Saturn V moon rocket consumed 15 tons
of fuel per second. |
| • |
When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds
up to 3,000 miles per hour. |
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