1.If you pour a handful of salt into a glass of water, the water level will go down: when you add a volume of sodium chloride (salt) to a volume of water, the overall volume actually decreases by up to 2 %
2.The Eiffel tower can be 15cm taller during the summer: when a substance is heated up, its particles move more and it takes up a larger volume – this is known as thermal expansion. For this reason large structures such as bridges are built with expansion joints which allow them some leeway to expand and contact without causing any damage.
3.20% of earth’s oxygen is produced by the amazon rainforest: the amazon rainforest cycles a significant proportion of the earth’s oxygen, absorbing large quantities of carbon dioxide at the same time.
4.Some metals are so reactive that they explode on contact with water. There are certain metals- including potassium, sodium, lithium, rubidium and caesium - that are so reactive that they oxidize ( or tarnish) instantly when exposed to air. They can even produce explosions when dropped in water!
5.A teaspoonful of neutron star would weigh 6 billion tons: typical neutron stars have a mass of up to three solar masses, which is crammed into a sphere with a radius of approximately ten kilometers (6.2miles)- resulting in some of the densest matter in the known universe .
6.Hawaii moves 7.5cm closer to Alaska every year: Hawaii sits in the middle of the pacific plate, which is slowly drifting north- west towards the north American plate, back to Alaska. The plates pace is comparable to the speed at which our fingernails grow.
7.Chalk is made from trillions of microscopic plankton fossils: chalk is made from single-celled algae that lived in earth’s oceans for 200 million years. That tiny single –celled algae is called coccolithophores.
8.In 2.3 billion years it will be too hot for life to exist on earth : our planet will become a vast desert similar to mars today in just over 2 billion years, temperatures will be high enough to evaporate our oceans, making life on earth impossible.
9.Polar bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras: polar bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras because of their fur.
10.A rubber tire is technically one single, giant, polymerized molecule: the vulcanized tire is all made of large polymers chains that have been cross linked together with covalent bonds.