RE: I Can Do Science, Me!
Why do minutes have 60 seconds?
Sixty was the number base used since ancient times. The Semerians, who lived around the region of Mesopotamia about 5,000 years ago, were the first people known to have recorded a workable counting system, and they also used 60 as a base. Thus hours and degrees of longitude were divided into 60 minutes and the minutes into 60 seconds.
What is a Second?
Before 1956, 1 seconds (or the mean solar second) was interpreted as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. But scientiest found that, as the Earth's rotation slowed, each day became about 20 microseconds longer than the corresponding day in the proir year (adding about 0.73 seconds to each year). They also determined that the year was getting shorter by about 0.53 seconds each year. To compensate, the second was defined as the ephemeris second, equal to 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year at 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds (00h 00m 00s) on December 31, 1899.
Currently the second is more accurately defined using atomic measurements: 1 second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of cesium-133 in the ground state.
(quoted from The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference)
RE: I Can Do Science, Me!
Distribution of Mass in the Solar System
Sun (99.86%)
Planets (0.135%)
Satellites (0.00004%)
Comets (0.00003% estimated)
Asteroids (minor planets) (0.00000003% estimated)
Interplanetary medium (dust and gases) (>0.00000001% estimated)
(quoted from The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference)
RE: I Can Do Science, Me!
A crematorium furnace doesn't burn a body - it is the body fat that reduces a body to ashes.
Patsy.
RE: I Can Do Science, Me!
Thanks for starting this thread, some I do know, but it has also inspired me to search out more strange facts! Such as...
A fetus develops fingerprints at eighteen weeks
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails
Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet
Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second
When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour. To photograph the event, a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second!
A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun's surface
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second
RE: I Can Do Science, Me!
ORIGINAL: caveman
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second
That reminded me of this one...
"Mickeys per pixel" is the units of measurement of a computer mouse. i.e. the more mickeys per pixel your mouse is set to, the further your mouse has to travel across the mouse mat to make the cursor move a pixel across the screen. Less mickeys = faster mouse movement.
(and yes it does come from Mickey Mouse! ;))