INTERESTING SCIENCE FACTS
CHEMISTRY
- Glass and steel are considerably more elastic than rubber
PHYSICS
- SOLIDS
- Tiny cracks can lead to big breaks in strong structures. Ships can break in two and wings can fall off airplanes. Bonds between atoms are broken in a crack and this places greater stress upon neighboring bonds. A glass cutter need only make a shallow scratch on the surface of a pane of glass, and the glass will break easily along the line of the scratch
- The triangle is the strongest shape for building. It is the only shape that does not twist and collapse when under pressure.
- When something shrinks enough it stops acting like a miniature version of its larger self and starts behaving in new and different ways. Therefore it is a misconception that when a structure is scaled up or down in size, its properties go up or down in direct proportion. Weight, strength, surface area, and volume are examples of such that do not correspond in direct proportion. This is the misconception of scaling.
- As an object grows proportionally in all directions, there is a greater increase in volume than in surface area. Parents should take extra care that a baby is warm enough in a cold environment because a baby has more surface area per body weight and will cool more rapidly than a larger person.
- Cooks chop food in such small pieces because cooking occurs fro the surface inward, the greater area per volume speeds cooking.
- A sphere contains the largest possible volume for a given surface area.
- LIQUIDS
- When the hands are held as low as you can the veins stick out more out of the back of your hands than when you hold them as high as you can. This is because there is more pressure since the depth is greater (below the heart). This is the same principal why dams are built thicker at the bottom.
- Objects that are submerged yet above the bottom in a volume of water are slightly denser than the warmer surface water and not quite as dense as the cooler water at the bottom. This is unusual and things denser than water always sink to the bottom, regardless of the depth.
- At greater depths , the greater pressure of water surrounding us compresses us to greater densities than water and we would have to swim to the surface. We are less dense than water a meter or two below the surface.
- GASSES
ASTRONOMY
BIOLOGY