Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Did You Know? (4 page)
• Part 1: Coat the inside of a glass with vegetable oil and then pour in some soda pop. You won’t see many bubbles yet. That’s because the oil smooths over the microscopic bumps (called
nucleation sites
) that draw the carbon dioxide gas out of the soda.
• Part 2: Now, drop some sugar into the soda and…bubbles galore! The rough surface of the sugar crystals provides the nucleation sites necessary to extract the dissolved gas.
• Part 3: Where does all that foam come from in an ice cream float? Answer: The rough, icy surface of the ice cream draws the bubbles out of the soda, and then milk proteins coat the bubbles, producing a sturdy foam.
• Part 4: Mixing baking soda (a base) and vinegar (an acid) is another way to make carbon dioxide bubbles.
• The Grand Finale: Outside, in as big a space as you can find, open a large bottle of diet soda and position it so it won’t tip over. Warn any spectators to stand a few feet back, then drop a whole roll of Mentos candies into the bottle at the same time, and get out of the way. The soda will erupt like a fireworks display.
• In 1983 Japanese artist Tadahiko Ogawa made a copy of the
Mona Lisa
completely out of toast.
• Van Gogh signed his paintings using only his first name: Vincent.
• Frederic William Goudy designed 122 different typefaces. (You’re reading one of them right now.)
• Leonardo da Vinci never put a signature or date on the Mona
Lisa
.
• German artist Bernd Eilts fashions dried cow manure into wall clocks and small sculptures.
• Van Gogh’s
Portrait of Dr. Gachet
sold for $82.5 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. It now belongs to a private collection.
• Artist Claes Oldenburg created a 45-foot-tall clothespin for Philadelphia’s Centre Square Plaza. (Shouldn’t it be in
Wash
-ington?)
• In 1940 four French teenagers found a cave with wall paintings that dated back to the Upper Paleolithic Era—between 30,000 and 10,000 B.C.
• In a 2004 poll to find “The Greatest Dutch Person,” Rembrandt and Van Gogh came in 8th and 9th respectively—right behind Anne Frank.
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT
WORLD
• The Great Pyramid
is the oldest wonder, and the only one still standing. It was built as a tomb for Pharaoh Khufu, probably in 2680 B.C. It is made of 2,300,000 blocks of stone—the average weight of each block is 2.5 tons.
•
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
. Persian king Nebuchadnezzar II built the gardens for his wife in 600 B.C. in what is now Iraq. On top of 75-foot-tall columns were terraces covered with trees, flowering plants, fountains, pools, and mechanical waterfalls.
•
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
. The Greeks built this 40-foot-high statue of gold, jewels, and ivory to impress visitors to the ancient Olympics. Built in A.D. 450, it was destroyed in a fire in A.D. 462.
•
The Temple of Artemis
at Ephesus, Turkey, was built in 550 B.C. to honor the goddess of the hunt. It was destroyed in 356 B.C., then rebuilt—and then destroyed again in A.D. 262. Some of its columns survived and are now in the British Museum in London.
• The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
was erected in Bodium, Turkey, by Queen Artemisia in memory of her husband, King Mausolus, who died in 353 B.C. All that’s left of it today is the foundation, some statues (in the British Museum), and the word “mausoleum,” which has come to mean a large above-ground tomb.
•
The Colossus at Rhodes
was a 105-foot-tall bronze statue of the sun god Helios, overlooking the harbor of the Greek island of Rhodes. Completed in 280 B.C., it was destroyed during an earthquake around 224 B.C. Though no one knows exactly what the statue looked like, some historians think Helios wore the same headdress as the Statue of Liberty.
•
The Pharos of Alexandria
was a working lighthouse for 1,500 years until it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 14th century A.D. It was about 400 feet tall, the height of a 40-story skyscraper. Some deep-sea divers think they’ve found the ruins of the lighthouse, and there are plans to reconstruct it.
• When Europeans first saw these tall animals, they thought they were a cross between the spotted leopard and the camel, so they called them…
cameleopards
. We call them giraffes.
• Reebok named their shoe brand after a type of African gazelle.
• Do ostriches really bury their heads in the sand? No. They do lower their heads to fight, and will lower their heads and necks to hide…but only if they’re sitting on a nest.
• A lion’s mane protects him during fights with other lions.
• A hyena is one of the few animals that will attack a lion.
• What’s gnu? The name “gnu” is from a West African language that pronounced the “g.” (We don’t.) The word probably came from the gruntlike sound that gnus make.
• Female lions do most of the hunting. Its the males’ job to defend the herd (called a “pride”) against intruders.
Water, water everywhere
.
• About 72% of the Earth’s surface is underwater.
• The Seven Seas: Antarctic, Arctic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian, North Pacific, South Pacific.
• Every minute that your kitchen faucet is on, it pours out about three gallons of water.
• You use about two gallons of water to brush your teeth if you leave the water running.
• The longest freshwater shoreline in the world is located in the state of Michigan.
• The United States is 27 times larger than Norway, but Norway has a longer coastline. Why? Because of Norway’s
fjords
—deep inlets with steep cliffs, the longest of which reaches 127 miles inland.
• There are more than a million swimming pools in Florida…even though no one in Florida lives more than an hour’s drive from the ocean.
• Average depths: The Java Sea is 151 feet deep; the Arctic Ocean is 3,407 feet.
• The Pacific Ocean is about 12 times larger than the Arctic Ocean.
• “Rollo, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”? Almost. That was one name author Robert May considered before he decided on Rudolph. (Reginald was another.)
• Early Easter baskets were made to look like birds’ nests, with eggs and other treats tucked inside.
• What workers receive the most Valentine’s Day cards? Teachers, of course.
• Under the rule of Emperor Claudius, the Romans had 159 holidays per year—that’s one almost every other day. (Whoopee!)
• Who buys greeting cards? Women, mostly—they purchase a whopping 93% of all cards sold.
• 54% of New Year’s resolutions are broken within two weeks.
• When’s Easter? Good question. It’s celebrated on the first Sunday
after
the first full moon
after
the first day of spring. With this complicated formula, there are 35 dates in March and April on which it can fall.
• In Finland, Santa rides on a goat named Ukko.
• How fast does Santa’s sleigh have to go to deliver a gift to every kid in the world on Christmas? Over two million miles per hour.
• Scabs are nature’s Band-Aids: They start to form less than 10 seconds after you get cut, and they keep germs out while the cells underneath make new skin.
• Your mouth is one of the most crowded parts of your whole body: More than 100,000,000 micro-creatures are in residence there at any one time.
• London’s parks are watered by more than a million gallons of dog urine every single year.
• 50% of women and 90% of men do not wash their hands after they’ve used the bathroom…unless someone is watching them.
• Think your kitchen sponge is clean? Wrong! It contains more bacteria than your toilet.
• Amateur biologist Ruth Nauss was a true lover of slime mold: She kept specimens (she called them “pets”) in jars and took them along with her on vacation. One slimy pet lived for more than nine years.