20 Interesting Science Facts (#5)

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1. 7up contained the mood-stabilising drug lithium citrate until 1950.
2. 620 million years ago, a day was only 21.9 hours long.
3. When the moon is directly overhead, you weigh slightly less.
4. A jiffy was originally a unit of time which was equal to the time it takes light to travel one cm.
5. Hyenas are more closely related to cats than dogs.
6. The tails of comets generally point away from the Sun no matter what direction they are travelling.
7. Argon comes from the greek word αργον, which means lazy.
8. Magnesium is the 10th most abundant element in the human body.
9. A Neutron star the same size as Brooklyn would be 500,000 times the mass of the Earth.
10. In Britain, around 13% of men and 11% of women are left-handed, compared to just 3% of those born before 1910.
11. October 10 is National Metric Day.
12. A can of coke will sink in water, but a can of diet coke will float.
13. Airports at higher altitudes need a longer airstrip due to lower air density.
14. That sudden jerk you sometimes experience when you are half asleep is called a “Hypnic Jerk.”
15. Light takes 8 minutes 17 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
16. In 5 billion years the Sun will turn into a Red Giant.
17. Inbreeding causes 3 out of every 10 Dalmation dogs to suffer from hearing disability.
18. The deepest part of the world’s oceans is the Mariana trench in the Pacific that reaches a depth of 10.911 km.
19. The Mariana trench is not the closest seabed to the centre of the earth. This is because the Earth is not a perfect sphere.
20. At the bottom of the Mariana trench the pressure is over one thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level.