Science & Research

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every

year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into

account the weight of all the books that would occupy the

building.

More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze

completely solid. (Not surprisingly, another record was set that

winter: most deaths from going over the falls in a barrel)

If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times,

but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up

on the bottom.

The pop you get when you crack your knuckles is actually a

bubble of gas bursting.

Wet sand - for some reason - weighs LESS than dry sand.

Scientists have actually performed Brain surgery on cockroaches.

Every 10 minutes, another plant or animal life form becomes

extinct.

Women's hearts beat faster than men's.

Gershon Legman, the American sexologist and author of such

erotica reference works as "Rationale of the Dirty Joke" and

"Oragenitalism" once calculated that there are 14,288,400

possible positions for sexual intercourse.

In space, astronauts are unable to cry, because there is no

gravity and the tears won't flow.

Every year, parks in London alone are doused in one million

gallons of dog urine.

The germs present in human feces can pass through up to ten

layers of toilet paper.

The best recorded distance for projectile vomiting is 27 feet.

The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles

in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.

Researchers in Denmark found that beer tastes best when drunk

to the accompaniment of a certain musical tone. The optimal

frequency is different for each beer, they reported. The

correct harmonious tone for Carlsberg Lager, for example, is

510-520 cycles per second.

"Evaluation and Parameterization of Stability and Safety

Performance Characteristics of Two and Three Wheeled Vehicular

Toys for Riding." Title of a $230,000 research project proposed

by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to study the

various ways children fall off bicycles.

The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles')

are radioactive -- so much so that they will set off an alarm at

a nuclear reactor.

Of the 206 bones in the average human adult's body, 106 are in

the hands and feet. (54 in the hands and 52 in the feet)

The diameter of the wire in a standard paper clip is 1

millimeter - or about 0.04 inch.

10 percent of television 'Snow' is caused by microwave

radiation.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Several varieties of lightning have been identified by

meteorologists. In the so-called "Positive Giant" type, the

temperature of the lightning bolt reaches 30,000 degrees C. Over

five times hotter than the surface of the sun.

There are more plastic flamingos in the U.S that there are real

ones.

According to the records, the only bone not broken so far during

any ski accident is one located in the inner ear.

If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of

carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen

deprivation.

The lifespan of a tastebud is ten days.

The ashes of the average cremated person weighs nine pounds.

The dial tone of a normal telephone is in the key of "F".

If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep

floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.

The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that it breaks the sound

barrier. The "crack" of a whip is actually a tiny sonic boom.

The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the

shutter on backwards.

Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of

about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it

goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tetonic

destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)

The heart of an astronaut actually gets smaller when in outer

space.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all

the world's nuclear weapons combined.

Every person has a unique tongue print.

An 8oz glass of water weighs 1/2 a pound, an 8oz glass of gas

from the center of the sun would weigh about 75 pounds.

Next time you drink a glass of water think about this: the

hydrogen molecules in water are 14 billion years old, they were

created at the same time as the universe.

What is one of the most difficult items for sewage works to

handle, as it is insoluble, yet fine enough to pass through

most filtration systems? (Every month Thames Water removes

over a ton of this substance from its water treatment plants,

whereupon it is taken away to a landfill site and buried)

You guessed it - pubic hair.

Parasites count for 0.01% of your body weight.

Every person has a unique thermal face print.

Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the

bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are

orthotetrachidecahedrons.

Contrary to popular belief, if you swallow chewing gum it does

not stay in the gut. Usually it will pass through the system

and be excreted without incident. However, several cases have

been reported where the gum has stuck in the rectum, causing

the unfortunate sufferer to excrete long sticky trails of gum,

like a pink spider's web.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks

or it will digest itself.

Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton.

You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in

any other weather.

The sky is shrinking and has been doing so for the past 40 years,

scientists have discovered. About five miles of sky have been

lost since 1958, and that figure may double over the next

century. Researchers studying the Earth's upper atmosphere, 56

miles up, said the contraction is probably a result of the

greenhouse effect.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the

child reaches 2-6 years of age.

The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.

Every person has a unique tongue print.

Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.

Several well documented instances have been reported of

extremely obese people flushing aircraft toilets whilst still

sitting on them. The vacuum action of these toilets sucked the

rectum inside out.

Women's hearts beat faster than men's.

June 1, 1999 General Motors Corp. has a device in many of

its new cars that functions like the black box recorder in

airplanes: It collects data as a car crashes.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and

ears never stop growing.

A full-grown pumpkin has about 15 miles of roots.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

Henry II was murdered by his homosexual lover, who pushed a

red hot poker 0.5 meters up his rectum.

The longest recorded tapeworm found in the human body was 33

meters in length.

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

Among hypochondriacs, there are many more men than women.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the

child reaches 2-6 years of age.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

It is possible to cough your guts up.

If your body's natural defenses failed, the bacteria in your

gut would consume you within 48 hours, literally eating you

from the inside out.

Proportional to their weight, men are stronger than horses.

Men get hiccups more often than women.

Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets in our solar system

combined.

Hot water is heavier than cold.

Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.

You are born with 300 bones but only have 206 after reaching

adulthood.

Lightning strikes somewhere about 6,000 times per second on

Earth.