15 Science Factlets

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ARMS87

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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.

15. The Soviet Union was the first country to have a spacecraft on the moon - not the Unites States. In 1959, Luna 2 was the first craft to crash-land on the moon. In February, 1966, Luna 9 was the first soft-landed craft on the moon which relayed back pictures. Four months later, the United States landed its first craft on the moon (Surveyor I).
 
another dolphin related fact . dolphins only "sleep" with half of their brain at any 1 time , to avoid drowning
 
Saying about the polar bear fur, because sloths are so slow moving and live in warm, humid conditions anyways, algae also grows on their fur causing it to go green and providing them with extra camoflage :)
 
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.

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.

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.

Hmm...

4. Champagne fizzes in your glass because once you pop the cork and release the pressure the champagne almost instantly becomes super saturated with carbon dioxide and releases it from the liquid in a gaseous form.

7. I don't believe that, I've accidentally put plastic bags in my compost bin only to find them there a few years later, I have in fact had a compost bin of almost entirely filled with newspapers and some vegetation with most pleasing results within a year.

13. Any metal will become liquid given the right temperature and pressures, it all depends on what temperatures you can bear to what will melt in your hand. The fact about francium I believe is 99.9% theory and will almost certainly be correct however due to franciums nature I doubt you will ever have it long enough to test out that theory.

A random fact....

90% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Edit:

Where about's on the Wirral are you from?
 
Pretty sure it's not dirt and such that causes champagne to fizz. And it's already saturated with CO2 when it's in the bottle, it just releases it when it's depressurized.

The fizz in the glass is created by imperfections in the glass (so dirt n such could cause the fizz... but personally I tend to opt for clean glasses lol). Anyhoo, something to do with the imperfections allows the CO2 to gas out in little bubbles.

Edit: Fizzing explanation
 
Yeh I read a article by Adam Hart Davies on this a while ago, the guy who did "What the romans did for us". He says the champagne can contain more Co2 under a high pressure they then pop the cork on and put it on the shelf. Once you open that cork the pressure is released from the bottle and it drops to atmospheric pressure, the CO2 is then super saturated in comparison to what is normal for CO2 dissolved in champagne at atmospheric pressure and the result is a nice sparkling fizz. The dust merely acts like a catalyst or a nerve centre for where they form, the CO2 will still exit the liquid either way.
 
1. Raindrops are not shaped like a teardrop (as they are almost always depicted in drawings) - they are actually spherical.

The shape a volume of liquid falling takes is very much dependent on its size and its surface tension. Very small drops will be close to spheres because surface tension is dominant. Larger drops will start to flatten out because the drag forces become more and more important as it gets larger. I've often seen them describer as "caps" in this state. Very large ones will actually look like a spherical shell with a hole in the bottom, and these usually will be broken back apart into smaller drops. Smaller drops collide and agglomerate together and the cycle repeats itself.

A pretty good non-technical read: http://weather.about.com/od/cloudsandprecipitation/a/rainburgers.htm

I can further discuss the equations of fluid mechanics, should anyone desire ;)

Edited to put sentences in correct order
 
Pretty sure it's not dirt and such that causes champagne to fizz. And it's already saturated with CO2 when it's in the bottle, it just releases it when it's depressurized.

The fizz in the glass is created by imperfections in the glass (so dirt n such could cause the fizz... but personally I tend to opt for clean glasses lol). Anyhoo, something to do with the imperfections allows the CO2 to gas out in little bubbles.

Edit: Fizzing explanation

Yep, the bubbles start at a nucleation point, which is almost always an imperfection in the glass or a speck of dust. While it is possible for a perfectly smooth container of champagne to sit there and not fizz, the liquid is in a meta-stable state at that point, and any shock or disturbance will cause a rush or bubbles.

In fact, this is more pertinent if you were to try to heat water in a microwave in a glass container. Again, so long as the glass is smooth, you can heat water above the boiling point and because there isn't a nucleation site, the water won't boil. But, then, when you take the container out and set it on the counter, the shock of setting it on the container causes all the water to flash into steam. People have been seriously burnt this way.

Whenever I use a microwave to heat up water, I always through a toothpick into the container -- the wood will have plenty of nucleation site so that it won't flash into steam.
 
Pretty sure it's not dirt and such that causes champagne to fizz. And it's already saturated with CO2 when it's in the bottle, it just releases it when it's depressurized.

The fizz in the glass is created by imperfections in the glass (so dirt n such could cause the fizz... but personally I tend to opt for clean glasses lol). Anyhoo, something to do with the imperfections allows the CO2 to gas out in little bubbles.

Edit: Fizzing explanation

Yep, the bubbles start at a nucleation point, which is almost always an imperfection in the glass or a speck of dust. While it is possible for a perfectly smooth container of champagne to sit there and not fizz, the liquid is in a meta-stable state at that point, and any shock or disturbance will cause a rush or bubbles.

In fact, this is more pertinent if you were to try to heat water in a microwave in a glass container. Again, so long as the glass is smooth, you can heat water above the boiling point and because there isn't a nucleation site, the water won't boil. But, then, when you take the container out and set it on the counter, the shock of setting it on the container causes all the water to flash into steam. People have been seriously burnt this way.

Whenever I use a microwave to heat up water, I always through a toothpick into the container -- the wood will have plenty of nucleation site so that it won't flash into steam.

"Super"cooling beer in a bottle follows the same process if I recall correctly. As long as you don't disturb the bottle as it's chilling and it chills to the right temperature you can have a bottle of beer that freezes instantly when you bash it again something. I've done it a few times as a party trick, just a waste of a beer as you have to wait a few hours for it to defrost.
 

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