Some Scientific Facts

The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and class room discussions; most were from fifth- and sixth-graders. They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the “most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”

  • Question:  What is one horsepower?
    Answer:  One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.
  • You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind.
  • Talc is found in rocks and on babies.
  • The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down.
  • When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.
  • Clouds are high flying fogs.
  • When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting.
  • Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand.
  • While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the sun, it is really only centrificating.
  • Some day we may discover how to make magnets that can point in any direction.
  • South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage.
  • Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.
  • Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.
  • A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.
  • There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever.
  • There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up there these days.
  • Lime is a green-tasting rock.
  • Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.
  • Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you should.
  • Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.
  • Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother.
  • Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers.
  • We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on.
  • To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up.
  • In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are twice as many H's as O's.
  • I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.
  • Clouds just keep circling the Earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do.
  • Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is big enough to be called a drop, it does.
  • When there is fog, you might as well not mind looking at it.
  • Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water.
  • We keep track of the humidity in the air so we won't drown when we breathe.
  • In making rain water, it takes everything from H to O.
  • When rain water strikes forest fires, it heckstingwishes them. Luckily it affects we of the humans unlike that.
  • Rain is often spoken of as soft water, oppositely known as hail.
  • Rain is saved up in cloud banks.
  • In some rocks you can find the fossil footprints of fishes.
  • Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dog's tongue will kill the strongest man.
  • A blizzard is when it snows sideways.
  • A hurricane is a breeze of a bigly size.
  • A monsoon is a French gentleman.
  • A thunderstorm is like a shower, only more so.
  • Thunder is a rich source of loudness.
  • Isotherms and isobars are even more important that their names sound.
  • It is so hot in some parts of the world that the people there have to live other places.
  • The wind is like the air, only pushier.
  • Question:  In what ways are we dependant on the sun?
    Answer:  We can always depend on the sun for sunburn and tidal waves.
  • Until it is decided whether tornadoes are typhoons or hurricanes, we must continue to call them tornadoes.

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