Science Facts
The amazing world of science sometimes treads close to science fiction...

The average American contributed 1,570 pounds of of solid trash to the world last year, along with 23 tons of hazardous waste and 3.613 pounds of sewage. The U.S produces 19% of the world's trash. The annual contribution includes 20 billion disposable diapers, 2 billion razors and 1.7 billion pens.

If the 4.6 billion year evolution of our planet were conceived of as a single day, the 40,000 years of human existence would take up on the last two seconds.

The three wealthiest people (and their families) in the world have more assets than the combined wealth of the 48 poorest countries.

Americans spend six times as much on home video games ($5.5 billion) as they do on school library materials for their children.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum.

From the smallest microprocessor to the biggest mainframe, the average American depends on over 264 computers per day.

Bore-hole seismometry indicates that the land in Oklahoma moves up and down 25cm throughout the day, corresponding with the tides. Earth tides are generally about one-third the size of ocean tides.

Physicists now believe the universe to be three billion years younger than previously thought. New information gathered by the Hipparcos satellite, combined with a reanalysis of other distance data, has enabled researchers to refine the lower age limit of the universe to 9.6 billion years.

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second

Nanotechnology has produced a guitar no bigger than a blood cell. The guitar, 10 micrometers long, has six strummable strings.

Sunflowers have long been used to control weeds in field crops. They possess a property called allelopathy by which they produce natural plant toxins around their roots.

The Ulysses Solar Mission revealed that matter flows outward from the South Pole of the Sun at a rate of one million tons per second.

One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen!

Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive.

A plot of land in Amazonia the size of a suburban lawn supports 300 species of trees.

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth

When DDT was first introduced during WW II, new recruits were given DDT-impregnated uniforms and entire city populations (e.g. Naples) were 'dusted' with the chemical. Although banned in the developed world for more than 20 years, DDT is still widely used in the developing world, primarily for control of malaria. The chemical has a half-life of more than 100 years and can be found in the tissues of almost all humans.

Over the last 30 years, the availability of freshwater in Africa has halved. This can be attributed to a combination of climate change and poor resource management

One third of 95 developing countries have a waiting period of six years or more for a telephone connection, compared with less than a month in developed nations.

Orthorhombic perskovite is the predominant mineral found in Earth's lower mantle and the most abundant mineral on Earth.

A Smithsonian researcher managed to remove a lens from the compound eye of a half-billion year old trilobite, attach it to a microscope and take a photograph of a building.

As many as one third of Americans are overweight. The fat and the near-fat pay some $30 billion per year in the effort to lose weight.

Since 1977, American's consumption of Mexican foods has increased four-fold, and consumption of snack foods such as crackers, popcorn, pretzels and corn chips has tripled.

The average surface temperature of the earth climbed to a record high in 1995, 58.7 F. Moreover, the years 1991 through 1995 were warmer than any similar five-year period, including the two half-decades of the 1980s, the warmest decade yet recorded.

There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee. Of these, only 26 have been tested, and half caused cancer in rats.

ENIAC, the first electronic computer, appeared 55 years ago. The original ENIAC was about 80 feet long, weighed 30 tons, had 17,000 tubes.By comparison, a desktop computer today can store a million times more information than an ENIAC, and 50,000 times faster.

The average life span of a major league baseball is 5-7 pitches

Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.