Interesting Science Facts You Maybe Don't Know

Interesting Science Facts You Maybe Don't Know






It's time to refresh our brains with another list of fascinating factlets. These mini-facts are all science based and should be news to some readers.










1. Raindrops are not shaped like a teardrop (as they are almost always depicted in drawings) – they are actually spherical.




2. When something "sublimes" it turns directly into a gas from a solid – bypassing the liquid state. This is what would happen if you throw dry-ice into a fire.



3. Gorillas sleep in nests – they weave together soft foliage and bent branches from trees. Males tend to like sleeping on the ground while females like to have their nests in trees.

4. Champagne doesn't fizz because of carbon dioxide – it fizzes because of dirt or dust. In a completely smooth glass with no dust molecules in it, champagne would be completely still.

5. Most digestion occurs, not in the stomach, but in the small intestine. This may be the reason that a person can be bulimic whilst still staying fat.

6. The red juice that comes out of rare steak is not blood – it is myoglobin a close relative of blood. Almost all the blood has been removed from a steak by the time it hits the market.


7. Plastic bags are better than paper bags for the environment. The manufacturing process that makes paper bags requires far more energy than that which produces plastic. Recycling paper bags takes more energy than recycling plastic, and paper bags take up more space in a landfill. Because landfills are usually airtight beneath the surface, paper and plastic are equally bad at biodegrading.

8. Polar bears are fascinating creatures. Their fur is transparent (not white), their skin is black (not white), and when kept in warm humid environments, their fur can turn green from algae.

9. Pet allergies are usually not allergies to fur but allergies to the animal's dead skin, saliva, or waste matter. Regularly cleaning pets can dramatically reduce allergies.


10. The tongue map is a lie – you can taste all tastes on all parts of the tongue. The tongue map is derived from a discredited German paper from 1901.

11. When you hold a shell to your ear to hear the sea, the sound you hear is actually your own blood rushing through your veins! You can use any cup shaped object to hear this effect.



12. When you are alive, your brain is pink. When you die, it turns grey. While we describe the brain as "gray matter" and "white matter", this is not a true description of its color.

13. Mercury, the fascinating liquid metal is not the only liquid metal. Gallium is solid at room temperature but will melt if held in your hand, caesium (Cs), and francium (Fr) – the second rarest naturally occurring element, can also be liquid at or near room temperature.


14. Dolphins don't drink water – if they drank sea water it would make them ill and potentially kill them. They get all of their liquid needs through the foods they eat.





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Fun facts about engineering, science and technology

1. 220 million tons of old computers and other technological hardware are trashed in the United States each year.



2. A diamond will not dissolve in acid. The only thing that can destroy it is intense heat.


3. According to Moore's Law, microchips double in power every 18 to 24 months.


4. Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921.


5. Although the famous first flight at Kitty Hawk took place on December 17, 1903, the secretive Wright Brothers did not demonstrate the technology to the broader public until August 8, 1908.


6. As of early 2009, there have been 113 space shuttle flights since the program began in 1981.


7. Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1997 was the first to be webcast.


8. Chuck Yeager blasted through the sound barrier at Edwards Air Force Base in 1947.


9. Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, the phenomenon by which electrons are knocked out of matter by electromagnetic radiation such as light.


10. In 1901, the Spanish engineer Leonar do Torres-Quevedo was responsible for the earliest developments in the remote control with his Telekine that was able to do "mechanical movements at a distance."

20 Interesting facts.

1. A zebra is white with black stripes.







2. All the planets in our solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.






3. Hummingbirds are the only animal that can also fly backwards.






4. Insects do not make noises with their voices. The noise of bees, mosquitoes and other buzzing insects is caused by rapidly moving their wings.






5. The cockroach is the fastest animal on 6 legs covering a meter a second.






6. The word "listen" contains the same letters as the word "silent".






7. The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and the parrot.






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






9. India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.






10. The whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.






11. A hippopotamus can run faster than a man.






12. India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.






13. 'Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.






14. Didaskaleinophobia is the fear of going to school.






15. A snail can sleep for 3 years.






16. The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start.






17. In 1883 the explosion of the volcano Krakatau put so much dust into the earth's atmosphere that sunsets appeared green and the moon appeared blue around the world for almost two years.






18. "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.






19. Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold since there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.






20. Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.

10 Interesting scientific Facts

1 – The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).







2 – It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.






3 – 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.






4 – The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.






5 – Every year, over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.






6 – When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.






7 – Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.






8 – Every year lightning kills 1000 people.






9 – In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .






10 – If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

Levi.s Jeans

No item of clothing is more American than the blue jeans invented in 1873 by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss. These two visionary immigrants, turned denim, thread and a little metal into the most popular clothing product in the world. Waist overalls, was the traditional name for work pants, which is what these first jeans were called. The word jeans became more popular around 1960 when the baby-boom generation adopted the term for its favorite type of pants, blue jeans.. THE DID YOU KNOW?


Invention: blue jeans






Definition: noun / waist overalls, jeans, Levi's® jeans


Function: Clothes, especially pants, that are usually close-fitting and created from the rugged cotton twill textile that is colored blue with indigo dye


Patent: 139,121 (US) issued May 20, 1873 for Fastening Pocket-Openings


Inventor: Jacob Davis (aka Jacob Youphes)






Criteria: First to invent. First to patent. First practical.


Birth: 1834 in Riga Latvia


Death: 1908 in San Francisco, California


Nationality: German


Inventor: Levi Strauss (aka Loeb Strauss)






Criteria: First to patent. First practical. Entrepreneur.


Birth: February 26, 1829 in Buttenheim, Germany


Death: September 27, 1902 in San Francisco, California


Nationality: American (of German decent)


Milestones:


1847 Strauss family moves to New York City where Levi joined his brothers dry-goods business


1853 Levi moves to San Francisco, California to establishing a dry-goods business Levi Strauss&Co.


1854 Jacob moves to New York, then to San Francisco, California then to Canada for nine years


1868 Jacob settled in Reno, Neveda tailoring clothing and manufacturing tents and horse blankets


1871 Jacob who was using rivets on horse blankets, decides to try them on pant pockets for strength


1872 Jacob wrote a letter to Levi suggests that they hold the riveted pants patent rights together.


1872 on August 8, filed patent application for Improvements in Fastening Pocket-Openings


1873 patent 139,121 awarded to Jacob Davis and one half assigned to Levi Strauss & Co.


1873 Levi hires Jacob to oversee production of the riveted pants at the San Francisco plant


1875 Levi and two associates purchased the Mission and Pacific Woolen Mills


1890 the year that the lot number "501®" was first used to designate the denim waist overalls


1935 Levi's® jeans for women were first featured in Vogue magazine


1936 The red Tab Device was created to help identify Levi's® 501® jeans from a distance


1960 The word jeans became popular when the baby-boom generation used the term for the pants


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The Story:


The first jeans came in two styles, indigo blue and brown cotton "duck." Unlike denim, the duck material never became soft and comfortable so it was eventually dropped from the line. Although denim pants had been around as work wear for many years, historically dating back to England in the 1600s with a fabric there called denim, it was the first use of rivets that created what we now call jeans. "Waist overalls" was the traditional name for work pants, which is what these first jeans were called. The word jeans became more popular around 1960 when the baby-boom generation adopted the term for its favorite type of pants. How were blue jeans invented is a simple story.






Levi Strauss came to San Francisco in 1853, at the age of twenty-four, to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business. He had spent a number of years learning the trade in New York after emigrating there from his native Germany. He built his business into a very successful operation over the next twenty years, making a name for himself not only as a well-respected businessman, but as a local philanthropist as well.






One of Levi's many customers was a tailor named Jacob Davis. Originally from Latvia, Jacob lived in Reno, Nevada, and regularly purchased bolts of cloth from the wholesale house of Levi Strauss & Co. Among Jacob's customers was a difficult man who kept ripping the pockets of the pants that Jacob made for him. Jacob tried to think of a way to strengthen the man's trousers, and one day hit upon the idea of putting metal rivets at the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly.






These riveted pants were an instant hit with Jacob's customers and he worried that someone might steal this great idea. He decided he should apply for a patent on the process, but didn't have the $68 that was required to file the papers. He needed a business partner and he immediately thought of Levi Strauss.






In 1872 Jacob wrote a letter to Levi to suggest that the two men hold the patent together. Levi, who was an astute businessman, saw the potential for this new product and agreed to Jacob's proposal. On May 20, 1873, the two men received patent no.139,121 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. That day is now considered to be the official "birthday" of blue jeans.






With the patent secured, Levi hired Jacob Davis to oversee production of the riveted pants at the Levi Strauss & Co. San Francisco plant. Sometime during 1873, the first riveted clothing was made and sold. (the exact date was lost along with the company records in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire). Jacob Davis was in charge of manufacturing when Levi Strauss & Co. opened its two San Francisco factories.


In 1875 Levi and two associates purchased the Mission and Pacific Woolen Mills from the estate of former silver millionaire William Ralston. Much of the mill's fabric was used to make the Levi Strauss & Co. "blanket-lined" pants and coats.






The denim for the riveted work pants came from the Amoskeag Mill in Manchester, New Hampshire, a company known for the quality of its fabrics. Within a very short time, all types of working men were buying the innovative new pants and spreading the word about their unrivaled durability. Hard to imagine that back in 1885, when denim first established itself as a reliable work wear cloth for a working man's garment — that a pair of Levi overalls cost $1.25. Brand new.






Holding a patent on this process meant that for nearly twenty years, Levi Strauss & Co. was the only company allowed to make riveted clothing until the patent went into the public domain.. Around 1890, these pants were assigned the number 501, which they still bear today. When the patent expired, dozens of garment manufacturers began to imitate the original riveted clothing made popular by Levi Strauss & Co.






In the 1950s, high school kids put them on as a radical way of defining themselves, of wanting to look and be more adult — and dangerous and rebellious against adults because adults didn't wear jeans. A decade later, blue jeans became a symbol of egalitarianism, a uniform for young adult baby boomers waging a generational war. In the 1970s Me Decade and the beginnings of celebrity culture surfaced, jeans were definitely about being sexy and all about fashion.






In 1980 came the controversial Calvin Klein ad slogan heard around the world. Who can ever forget 15-year-old Brooke Shields (barely old enough to get her driver's permit) purring into living rooms "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins"? As Vogue magazine editor in 1988, Anna Wintour's first cover was a pair of Guess? stonewash jeans teamed with a Christian Lacroix bejeweled top. The 1990s took denim onto country-western dance floors, onto the red carpet and created puzzling fashion styles from born-to-be-torn grunge jeans to baggy hip-hop jeans to rock star appeal — all adding to the confusion of casual Fridays.






The term "Levi's," though, was not the company's--it originated with the public, just as the public invented the term "coke" for Coca-Cola. But when the public started referring to the pants generically as "Levi's," the company quickly trademarked it. No item of clothing is more American than the blue jeans invented and perfected in the last quarter of the19th century by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss These two visionary immigrants, turned denim, thread and a little metal into the most popular clothing product in the world - blue jeans.

Artificial Heart

Artificial hearts date back to the mid-1950s when Dr. Paul Winchell first patented an artificial heart.


The Jarvik 7


In 1982, Seattle dentist Dr. Barney Clark was the first person implanted with the Jarvik-7, an artificial heart intended to last a lifetime. William DeVries an American surgeon performed the surgery. The Jarvik-7 artificial heart was designed by Robert Jarvik. The patient survived 112 days. "It has been hard, but the heart itself has pumped right along." - Barney Clark


The AbioCor TAH is completely contained inside the chest. A battery powers this TAH. The battery is charged through the skin with a special magnetic charger.

Energy from the external charger reaches the internal battery through an energy transfer device called transcutaneous energy transmission, or TET.

An implanted TET device is connected to the implanted battery. An external TET coil is connected to the external charger. Also, an implanted controller monitors and controls the pumping speed of the heart.

Normal Heart and AbioCor Total Artificial Heart







Creator of the Jarvik-7, Dr. Robert Jarvik is now working on the Jarvik 2000, a thumb-sized heart pump. "This came from the understanding that people want a normal life and just being alive is not good enough." - Dr. Robert Jarvik.
 
New Electric Hearts



The race for the artificial heart. At the end of 1998 American heart specialist Michael DeBakey performed a world-first in heart surgery with a totally new device. If this electric heart proves successful, it could be a permanent alternative to a heart transplant.

Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) True discoverer of antisepsis.

Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865)






Ignaz Semmelweis (born Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp in Buda, Hungary on 1st July, 1818) lived and worked before germ theory was popularised by Louis Pasteur. Things might have been a little easier for him if he had been born 10-20 years later.While employed as a senior assistant to the professor of obstetrics in the Vienna General Hospital, the Mortality was significantly higher in the clinic where he taught medical students, compared to the second clinic where only midwives trained. So obvious was the difference that women preferred to be delivered in the second clinic. Semmelweis realised that the explanation had something to do with the movement of medical students between autopsies and the obstetric clinic, proposing “cadaverous particles” as the likely cause of infection. The final straw was the death of his friend and colleague Jakob Kolletschka who died from septicaemia after being pricked by a student’s scalpel. Semmelweis introduced removal of his proposed cadaverous particles with chloride of lime solution between the autopsy room and the delivery bed and documented an almost ten-fold reduction in mortality.


You would have thought that an improvement of care of this magnitude would have met with widespread acclaim. Unfortunately it was not. His discovery was greeted with indifference, disbelief, opposition and ridicule. Semmelweis’ increasingly angry protests did not help his position. When an opportunity for promotion arose, he was passed over in favour of colleague. He returned to Pest, Hungary and was able to show once again an impressive reduction in mortality from childbed fever on the introduction of his method. Rather late in the day Semmelweis began to publish his findings papers, monographs and books. These stirred up further opposition from prominent authorities such as Simpson in the UK, and Virchow in Germany. His key work, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, was finally published only four years before he died.


Faced with the opposition of some of the leading specialists of his day, is is not surprising that Semmelweiss slipped into a rapid decline. After a period of erratic and increasingly irritable behaviour, he finally had a nervous breakdown in 1865. Speculation includes causes such as Alzheimer’s Disease and neurosyphilis (an occupational hazard of obstetricians in those days). He was committed to an asylum and, in a final twist of fate, died from septicaemia following injuries probably incurred during or shortly after his admission.


In retrospect it is easy to understand his frustration that a purely empiric demonstration of efficacy was not enough to win over his medical colleagues. It would take another generation to build a firmer foundation for a mechanistic understanding of the disease process Semmelweiss sought to prevent. Yet you have to admire his ability to make that leap of imagination that enabled him to understand the basis of a causal relationship between something he couldn’t see and its disease-causing effects. His use of the term “Etiology” in the title of his book shows his colours as a forerunner of the hygiene movement. His intuitive grasp of disease causation makes you wonder what he might have achieved if he had within his reach the laboratory tools we now command.


The house where Ignaz Semmelweiss was born is now a museum of the history of medicine. It aims to put him in his rightful place as one of those who developed methods we use today. It can be found underneath the southern ramparts of Buda Castle, overlooking the Danube. A tram will get you close to the museum, but the walk along the west bank of the river is a pleasant alternative.

Invention of the microscope

During that historic period known as the Renaissance, after the "dark" Middle Ages, there occurred the inventions of printing, gunpowder and the mariner's compass, followed by the discovery of America. Equally remarkable was the invention of the light microscope: an instrument that enables the human eye, by means of a lens or combinations of lenses, to observe enlarged images of tiny objects. It made visible the fascinating details of worlds within worlds.



Invention of Glass Lenses






Long before, in the hazy unrecorded past, someone picked up a piece of transparent crystal thicker in the middle than at the edges, looked through it, and discovered that it made things look larger. Someone also found that such a crystal would focus the sun's rays and set fire to a piece of parchment or cloth. Magnifiers and "burning glasses" or "magnifying glasses" are mentioned in the writings of Seneca and Pliny the Elder, Roman philosophers during the first century A. D., but apparently they were not used much until the invention of spectacles, toward the end of the 13th century. They were named lenses because they are shaped like the seeds of a lentil.


The earliest simple microscope was merely a tube with a plate for the object at one end and, at the other, a lens which gave a magnification less than ten diameters -- ten times the actual size. These excited general wonder when used to view fleas or tiny creeping things and so were dubbed "flea glasses."






Birth of the Light Microscope






About 1590, two Dutch spectacle makers, Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans, while experimenting with several lenses in a tube, discovered that nearby objects appeared greatly




enlarged. That was the forerunner of the compound microscope and of the telescope. In 1609, Galileo, father of modern physics and astronomy, heard of these early experiments, worked out the principles of lenses, and made a much better instrument with a focusing device.


Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)






The father of microscopy, Anton van Leeuwenhoek of Holland, started as an apprentice in a dry goods store where magnifying glasses were used to count the threads in cloth. He taught himself new methods for grinding and polishing tiny lenses of great curvature which gave magnifications up to 270 diameters, the finest known at that time. These led to the building of his microscopes and the biological discoveries for which he is famous. He was the first to see and describe bacteria, yeast plants, the teeming life in a drop of water, and the circulation of blood corpuscles in capillaries. During a long life he used his lenses to make pioneer studies on an extraordinary variety of things, both living and non living, and reported his findings in over a hundred letters to the Royal Society of England and the French Academy.


Robert Hooke






Robert Hooke, the English father of microscopy, re-confirmed Anton van Leeuwenhoek's discoveries of the existence of tiny living organisms in a drop of water. Hooke made a copy of Leeuwenhoek's light microscope and then improved upon his design.


Charles A. Spencer






Later, few major improvements were made until the middle of the 19th century. Then several European countries began to manufacture fine optical equipment but none finer than the marvelous instruments built by the American, Charles A. Spencer, and the industry he founded. Present day instruments, changed but little, give magnifications up to 1250 diameters with ordinary light and up to 5000 with blue light.


Beyond the Light Microscope






A light microscope, even one with perfect lenses and perfect illumination, simply cannot be used to distinguish objects that are smaller than half the wavelength of light. White light has an average wavelength of 0.55 micrometers, half of which is 0.275 micrometers. (One micrometer is a thousandth of a millimeter, and there are about 25,000 micrometers to an inch. Micrometers are also called microns.) Any two lines that are closer together than 0.275 micrometers will be seen as a single line, and any object with a diameter smaller than 0.275 micrometers will be invisible or, at best, show up as a blur. To see tiny particles under a microscope, scientists must bypass light altogether and use a different sort of "illumination," one with a shorter wavelength.

What Is Hip Replacement?

A hip replacement is a surgical procedure that replaces the painful hip joint with an artificial hip joint.







In a hip replacement, the head of the femur (the bone that extends from the hip to the knee) is removed along with the surface layer of the socket in which it rests (called the acetabulum).






The head of the femur, which is situated within the pelvis socket, is replaced with a metal ball and stem. This stem fits into the shaft of the femur.


The socket is replaced with a plastic or a metal and plastic cup.


Recently there has been a return to the earlier version of the operation when the hip was 'resurfaced'. Rather than remove the head of the femur it is covered by a metal cover. The socket is replaced with a metal socket.


For nearly a century, doctors have been putting various materials into diseased and painful hip joints to relieve pain. Up until the 1960s, outcomes had been unreliable. At that time, the metal ball and plastic socket for the replacement of the hip joint was introduced. Today, the artificial components used in a hip replacement are stronger and more designs are available.






There are many different shapes, sizes, and designs of artificial components of the hip joint. For the most part these are composed of chrome, cobalt, titanium, or ceramic materials. Some surgeons are also using custom-made components to improve the fit in the femur.
 

Facts About Total Hip Replacement







There are approximately 150,000 artificial hip joints implanted annually in the United States, with the success rate over 90%.


The majority of individuals in need of hip replacement are in their 60s and 70s.


Depending on the condition, people in their late teens and in their 90s can possibly be candidates for a hip replacement.


New materials used in total hip replacement are very durable and are expected to last more than 10 years in 90% of individuals receiving total hips.






The "Normal" Hip


The hip is a ball-and-socket joint comprised of the following structures:






Head of the femur


Acetabulum of the pelvis


Ligaments of the hip joint


The head of the femur or "ball" of the hip joint articulates or moves within the cup-like "socket" called the acetabulum of the pelvic bone. Together, these structures are referred to as a "ball and socket" joint. The femoral head and acetabulum are covered by a specialized surface called articular cartilage. This allows smooth and painless motion of the hip joint. The joint is held together by several strong ligaments and a strong dense tissue called the capsule which enevelops the joint.




 

Differance betweeb fruits and vegetables

Wikipedia defines Fruit and Vegetables as follows:



"There are three definitions relating to fruits and vegetables:


Fruit (scientific): the ovary of a seed-bearing plant,


Fruit (culinary): any edible part of a plant with a sweet flavor,


Vegetable: any edible part of a plant with a savory flavor."
 
A fruit is actually the sweet, ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed-bearing plant. A vegetable, in contrast, is an herbaceous plant cultivated for an edible part (seeds, roots, stems, leaves, bulbs, tubers, or nonsweet fruits). So, to be really nitpicky, a fruit could be a vegetable, but a vegetable could not be a fruit.



The Nutriquest team offers a similar answer, adding that most fruits are sweet because they contain a simple sugar called fructose, while most vegetables are less sweet because they have much less fructose. The sweetness of fruit encourages animals to eat it and thereby spread the seeds. The site also presents an interesting list of fruits that are often thought to be vegetables:






tomatoes


cucumbers


squashes and zucchini


avocados


green, red, and yellow peppers


peapods


pumpkins


But hey, what about the nut? Well, according to our friends at The Straight Dope, a nut is actually a "a dry, one-seeded, usually oily fruit."


Potato potahto, tomato tomahto, let's call the whole thing off.