Fun science facts

All fun science facts

• Lightning can reach about 30,000 °C, around five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.Source: US National Weather Service
• Australia is wider than the Moon. Australia is about 4,000 km across, the Moon about 3,475 km.Source: Geoscience Australia, NASA
• Antarctica is the largest desert in the world. A desert is defined by low rain or snow, not heat.Source: National Geographic
• Sound travels about four times faster in water than in air.Source: NOAA
• Diamonds and pencil graphite are both made of pure carbon. Only the arrangement of the atoms differs.Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Russia spans 11 time zones.Source: Time and Date
• Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.Source: Natural Resources Canada
• The Sahara was green, with lakes and hippos, between about 11,000 and 5,000 years ago.Source: Nature Communications
• Only about 3% of the water on Earth is fresh water, and most of that is frozen.Source: US Geological Survey
• Old church windows are thicker at the bottom because of how glass was made, not because glass flows.Source: American Journal of Physics, 1998
• The shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest dry land on Earth, more than 430 m below sea level.Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Earth is not a perfect ball. It bulges at the equator, about 43 km wider than it is tall.Source: NOAA
• Water can boil and freeze at the same time, at the "triple point" of low pressure and 0.01 °C.Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Liquid oxygen is pale blue.Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
• A cloud can weigh more than 500 tonnes, about as much as 100 elephants.Source: US Geological Survey
• Bananas are slightly radioactive, because they contain potassium-40.Source: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Hot water freezing faster than cold, the "Mpemba effect", is still argued about by physicists.Source: Nature, Scientific Reports, 2016
• Africa has 54 countries recognised by the United Nations.Source: United Nations
• Earth's days are getting longer by about 1.7 thousandths of a second every century.Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 2016