Fun Science Facts

• The Hubble Space Telescope weighs 12 tons (10,896 kilograms), is 43 feet (13.1 meters) long, and cost $2.1 billion to originally build.
• The greatest tide change on earth occurs in the Bay of Fundy. The difference between low tide and high tide can be as great as 54 ft. 6 in. (16.6 meters).
• The highest temperature produced in a laboratory was 920,000,000 F (511,000,000 C) at the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in Princeton, NJ, USA.
• The most powerful laser in the world, the Nova laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA, USA, generates a pulse of energy equal to 100,000,000,000,000 watts of power for .000000001 second to a target the size of a grain of sand.
• The fastest computer in the world is the CRAY Y-MP C90 supercomputer. It has two gigabytes of central memory and 16 parallel central processor units.
• The hottest planet in the solar system is Venus, with an estimated surface temperature of 864 F (462 C).
• The first electronic digital computer (called ENIAC - the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was developed in 1946 and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes.
• Sound travels about 4 times faster in water than in air.
• Scientists have discovered that copper pollution of the atmosphere occurred about 2500 years ago. This was discovered by analyzing ice cores from Greenland. The pollution was attributed to the Romans who used copper for military purposes and to produce coins.
• Hydrofluoric acid will dissolve glass.
• Boron nitride (BN) is the second hardest substance known to man.
• The only letter not appearing on the Periodic Table is the letter “J”.
• October 10 is National Metric Day.
• When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of up to 3,000 miles per hour.