Interesting trivia and facts on science, nature, technology and the universe

Facts about Apricots in the UK
Demand for Apricots in the UK fell by 33% last year. Amazingly 64% of the Apricots eaten in the UK are consumed as dry fruit.

Early morning is the main time Apricots are consumed with 40% eaten for breakfast. The main consumers are people over 45 who consume 76% of the Apricots sold in the UK. (Fact for 8 Jan 2009)

LSD -"acid"
The drug known as "acid" was discovered accidentally by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann who had the world’s first acid hit in 1943, when he touched a drop of lysergic acid diethylamide. He was actually searching for a chemical to help induce childbirth. (Fact for 13 Nov 2008)

YouTube
In 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet did in 2000. (Fact for 17 Nov 2008)

Dewey decimal Categorisation
Is the system used for categorising books for libraries. The system is made up of ten main categories, each divided into ten subcategories, each having ten subdivisions of its own.

Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.

That's *Computer Science, * Philosophy, * Religion, * Social Sciences, * Languages, * Science & Maths, * Technology and Applied Science, *Arts and Recreation Literature, and *History, geography and biology. (Fact for 2 Dec 2008)

Too cold to snow
The popular saying " it's too cold to snow" is a myth - technically the only temperature which is too cold for snow is absolute zero but then again the Earth doesn't ever get anywhere near that temperature (-273 degrees Celsius).

Snow falls at the polar caps, which are well below zero, but it is true that snow is less common and less plentiful once ground level air temperatures get much below zero mainly because of a lack of water in the cold air. (Fact for 6 Jan 2009)

Universal Temperature?
The coldest recorded point in space is the Boomerang Nebula at minus 272.15 degrees Celsius, whilst the average temperature of the universe is minus 270.422 degrees Celsius.

The coldest temperature achievable is minus 273.15 degrees Celsius and is also known as Absolute Zero. (Fact for 28 Oct 2008)

Dry Ice
Dry ice is actually solid carbon dioxide that forms at temperatures of minus 79 degrees centigrade. It was first observed in 1825 by the French chemist Charles Saint-Ange Thilorier, he published a thesis in 1934 on the subject.

At normal pressure as Dry Ice warms up it transfers straight to gaseous form missing out the liquid stage making it useful as a cooling agent for transportation of food. (Fact for 6 Oct 2008)

Palm Oil
One in ten supermarket products contain palm oil - these include crisps, chocolate and shampoos!

83% of the world's palm oil now comes from Indonesia and Malaysia where natural rainforests have been and are still being destroyed and planted with palm trees to meet the huge demand.

2% of the Indonesian population relies on income from Palm oil but 44% rely on the natural rainforest. (Fact for 9 Sept 2008)

CERN Particle Accelerator
The accelerator at CERN, which is to carry out the largest experiment into the Big Bang Theory, is an engineering and physics feet in itself!

The Large Hadron Collider (or LHC as it is known) is set 100 meters underground in a 26,650-meter long circle that originally took 3 years to excavate, being Europe's second largest tunnel boring project after the Channel Tunnel.

The LHC equipment has a cooling system in built, which will mean it reaches temperatures of -271 degrees Celsius! Almost the coldest temperature possible (-273 degrees Celsius). This will therefore also be the world's largest fridge by a factor of 8 times! (Fact for 5 Sept 2008)

National Park
The world’s first ever National Park was created in America and was Yellowstone National Park. It covered 3,400 square miles and covered parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

True to the intention 99 percent of the area remains undeveloped. (Fact for 29 Aug 2008)

UK rainfall
The wettest place in the UK is not Manchester - which comes third but is actually Belfast with average annual rainfall of 978mm, Glasgow is second with 931mm and then Manchester with a mere 873mm.

The wettest place in Europe though is Bergen in Norway with over 2,000mm!
(Fact for 26 Aug 2008)

Right now
At this moment there are 5.5 million people on the Internet - and you are one of them - Thanks (fact for 23 Aug 2008)

Nile River
The Nile River is 4,184 miles long and starts at Lake Victoria in Uganda, this is the White Nile and is joined by the Blue Nile River at Khartoum in Sudan, the Nile then stretches through Egypt to the Mediterranean.
The river flows at an average of 300 million cubic meters per day and has four major dams on its path: Roseires Dam, Sennar Dam, Aswan High Dam, and Owen Falls Dam. (Fact for 18 Aug 2008)

London Zoo
London Zoo’s food bill is large and a bit odd; here are just some of the requirements to keep the animals fed:

90,000 ants daily (for the 3 Anteaters)
29 tonnes of bananas a year
15,860 lettuce heads a year
250kg of Honey a year
11.5 tonnes of Sprats (fact for 15 Aug 2008)

Trees
The Yew tree was originally planted in graveyards as it was poisonous to cattle but was needed to build longbows. Graveyards were one of the few places cattle were not allowed. (Fact for 13 Aug 2008)

Neurons
There are 100 Billion neurons in your head making up the nervous system. Each Neuron has between 1,000 and 10,000 connections to other brain cells. (Fact for 9 Aug 2008)

Fun Patents
The UK patent office has had some amusing patents registered:

Spectacles for Chickens - to stop eyes being pecked out
Coffin Alarm - in case someone is accidentally buried alive! (Fact for 8 Aug 2008)

Iceland
The only native mammal to Iceland is the Arctic Fox. All the other mammals currently in Iceland were imported. (Fact for 19 July 2008)

Biofuel breakthrough
Japanease scientists have discovered algae that produce oil. The Algae, called Botryococcus braunii, which given enough carbon dioxide and light excretes oil which floats to the surface in test tube experiments. The oil can then be converted into plastics and fuel using the same techniques as for crude oil.

The Japanese government is investing in further research, as currently although oil yield is high versus other crops such as rapeseed it would require a field of algae the size or Yorkshire to provide sufficient fuel for Japan. (Fact for 7 July 2008)

World's largest TV
The Japanese conglomerate Matsushita Electric Industrial Co unveiled the World's largest single panel TV screen with a 150 inches plasma screen.

That's equivalent of nine 50-inch TV's that's some big lounge you will need!

12 July 2008

Bunsen Burner Day
31 March is the day that commemorates the date of birth of the inventor of the Bunsen burner. Whilst not enjoying the status of being considered a major holiday in any country or group of countries, the chemist community has observed Bunsen Burner Day for a number of years.

German chemist Robert Wilhelm Eberhard von Bunsen, born in 1811, is recognised as the inventor of the Bunsen burner used by school children all over the world in Chemistry lessons. The Bunsen burner is a simple device that allows easy control of the heat and flame when carrying out chemical experiments. (Fact for 6 July 2008)

The first truly sustainable car?
A prototype wooden electric car was unveiled in Kyoto, Japan in June 2008.

The car, which has bamboo doors can travel at speeds up to 30-mph but has a range of only 10km (fact for 4 July 2008)

The perfect cheese sandwich
There is a formula that makes the perfect Cheese sandwich, it is:

W={1+(bd)-s+(m-2c)+(v+p)}100+I

If you are not scientifically talented but want to put it into practice try:
18mm thick bread, 6.6mm thick slice of cheese, 4mm of tomato, 3mm of pickle, 2mm of mayonnaise and a thin layer of butter

This is according to valuable research by Bristol University

Innovation -
Sir Clive Sinclair created the C5 "a new form of transport" in 1985. Unfortunately it was slow and was restricted to 15 mph as the driver was exposed, it was battery powered but unfortunately the technology at the time meant that recharging was frequent with a maximum range on a full charge of 20 miles as claimed by the manufacturer.

Only 12,000 units were produced and production stopped after 9 months.

Television Invention
By the 1920’s there were 50 serious attempts to invent the television from Russia, America, Germany, Britain and Japan. In 1925 John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of his television at Selfridges in Oxford Street. Customers could see a faint fuzzy but recognisable image

Blinking
We blink about 15 times each minute, without thinking about it. The brain controls this action automatically. Blinking spreads tears across the eyes to keep the eyes clean and stop them from drying out.

Television
The picture on a TV screen is made up of 350,000 red, blue and green pixels that combine to make the picture you see.

Sight
Each eye has 125 million rods that only detect black and white and 7 million cones that detect colours. The cones need bright light to work, which is why at night you mainly see shades of grey!

Supersonic Car
On 15th October 1997 Richard Noble's car Thrust SSC smashed through the sound barrier to be the first car to travel at 763mph, the first supersonic land speed record. Squadron leader Andy Green drove the car. Noble had previously held the land speed record in 1983 when he drove his earlier car Thrust 2 achieving 633 mph

Steel
If all the steel cans used in Britain and Ireland each year and stacked end to end they would reach the moon and back three times! That's 1 million 433 thousand miles worth of cans

Fingerprints
Fingerprints start to form before birth and are influenced by the nutrition and growth early on in the pregnancy. Each finger has a slightly different pattern. Even identical twins that grow from the same egg have different fingerprints so fingerprints really are unique.

Contact Lenses
Believe it or not Leonardo Da Vinci was the first person to come up with the theory of contact lenses in the early 1500’s! - Obviously the great man was ahead of his time and it wasn't until plastic was invented that attempts to create contact lenses became a reality. The accolade of inventor of contacts is given to Kevin Tuhoy who first created working lenses in 1946.

Population
57% of the world's population is Asian. Only 21% is European

Spam
The Great War favourite Spam manufactured by Homel has been unsuccessfully in its attempts to retain its name for itself. Most people think of unsolicited e-mails when you mention spam