Cool & Crazy Science Facts

heres a few

1.) If given the same mass, our body would be hotter than the sun.

2.) A solar panel 100 miles by 100 miles (161x161km) in the Mojave Desert (USA) could replace all the coal now burned to generate electricity in the entire U.S

3.) If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced just enough sound energy to heat up one cup of coffee.

4.) Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.

reply to post by DaMod

If you slowly pour a handful of salt into a totally full glass of water it will not overflow. In fact, the water level will go down. (Someone needs to test this one)

Just tried this out. Nothing.. The level did not go down, it went up. (but it did not overflow either, surface tension or whatever). Maybe should be purified or distilled water? Tried it out with tap water.

Props to the OP for starting this thread. Starred, flagged, subscribed, added to favorites.

If you were able to fire a bullet from a rifle exactly parallel to the ground (and the ground was perfectly flat) while at the same instant dropping a bullet from exactly the same height as the barrel both bullets would hit the ground at the same time... Of course the one fired from the rifle would be pretty far away...

This is because the x and the y axis are totally independent from each other - or simply it does not matter how fast the bullet is travelling down range it is still subject to gravity in exactly the way the bullet that was simply dropped.

Of course in the real world this would be very hard to demonstrate - the fired bullet has to be fired exactly parallel to the ground - even a fraction of a degree out either up or down would ruin the result.

reply to post by constantwonder


Cool, I like #3!

Thanks for the post.

Originally posted by MastaG
reply to post by DaMod

 

If you slowly pour a handful of salt into a totally full glass of water it will not overflow. In fact, the water level will go down. (Someone needs to test this one)

Just tried this out. Nothing.. The level did not go down, it went up. (but it did not overflow either, surface tension or whatever). Maybe should be purified or distilled water? Tried it out with tap water.

Props to the OP for starting this thread. Starred, flagged, subscribed, added to favorites.

Tap water is already partially saturated with minerals, including many different types of salts.

To be accurate, distilled water would be necessary; purified water does not remove all mineral content.

Those are all very interesting facts, I enjoyed reading them all.

Great find

reply to post by Now_Then


My physics teacher demonstrated this, albiet slightly different. He had a mechanism that when fired, would shoot a steel bearing from its side (at a slow speed... from a height of about 10 feet, the bearing that was 'shot' would only travel 20-25 feet) while at the same time dropping a second bearing straight down through a hole. He had us all be quiet and listen for two distinct pings of the balls hitting the ground. Behold, after 6-7 attempts, no one in the class heard them hit the marble floor independantly of each other. Each time, there was only one 'ping' heard.

Originally posted by rogerstigers
reply to post by Ace High

 

Wow, the protein numbers are staggering (1055^1055) ~= 3.39 E3189

even "pulling the handle" every second for a 4 billion years is only 1.26 E 17! But then the math is not a true impression of how things came about... if you start small and build, protein evolution makes more sense.

Just a small correction on the math here, it should be 20^1055, as the protein slot machine would have 20 symbols on each wheel, and 1055 wheels.

Still a lot of combinations though


Edit: i tried the salt in water thing, it worked. Not sure how much salt i poured in there, but it looks like half a centimeter of salt on the bottom of the glass. The glass was filled to the rim and the surface did not rise when i poured salt into it

[edit on 30-8-2009 by Deran]

Another interesting fact/story:

"A great deal of [animal] extinction...hasn't been cruel or wanton, but just kind of majestically foolish. In 1894, when a lighthouse was built on a lonely rock called Stephens Island, in the tempestuous straight between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, the lighthouse keeper's cat kept bringing him strange little birds that it had caught. The keeper dutifully sent some specimens to the museum in Wellington. There a curator grew very excited because the bird was a relic species of flightless wrens - the only example of a flightless perching bird ever found anywhere. He set off at once for the island, but by the time he got there the cat had killed them all. Twelve stuffed museum species of the Stephens Island flightless wren are all that now exist."

Originally posted by TreyFlipAWS
reply to post by Now_Then

 

My physics teacher demonstrated this, albiet slightly different. He had a mechanism that when fired, would shoot a steel bearing from its side (at a slow speed... from a height of about 10 feet, the bearing that was 'shot' would only travel 20-25 feet) while at the same time dropping a second bearing straight down through a hole. He had us all be quiet and listen for two distinct pings of the balls hitting the ground. Behold, after 6-7 attempts, no one in the class heard them hit the marble floor independantly of each other. Each time, there was only one 'ping' heard.

I would love to see that experiment conducted. Cool

Thanks for posting.