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.