| 3441/ By the time
the average bucket of sand had been processed and the silicon
in it converted into silicon chips fit for personal computers,
an average garden bucket of sand would be worth more than
£4 million. Unfortunately it is not the cost of the
raw materials, but the laborious process involved to convert
it that costs the money.
3442/ The cleanliness of the
area used to make silicon chips is paramount for them to function
correctly. Therefore the inside of the production area is
some 10,000 times cleaner than an operating theatre..
3443/ Geysers are extremely rare
- Only 700 are active worldwide, of which 300 are in Yellowstone
Park in America.
3444/ The unique geological nature
of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is due to the fact
that it sits inside a caldera - the exploded crater of a volcano.
the last of the lava flows occurred only 100,000 years ago,
and even today, there is molten rock just two and a half miles
below the surface.
3445/ The famous Old Faithful
geyser in Yellowstone erupts around every 76 minutes, expelling
between 830 and 1885 galons each time.
3446/ Babies that are starved
in the womb are more likely to be obese adults in later life.
A study performed by a group of doctors at the University
of Amsterdam, looked at 741 men and women who were conceived
during the Dutch Famine of 1944-45. The rate of obesity within
the group was about 10% higher than the rest of the population.
3447/ In 1974-5, Mariner 10 flew
past the planet Mercury three times before running out of
fuel. It only mapped 45% of the planets surface.
3448/ one style of building has
survived countless Earthquakes - The traditional Japanese
Pagoda. Only two of the 500 or so wooden structures have collapsed
over 1400 years. Their secret lies in the construction of
their floors, which aren't fixed to each other, but can move
about; a massive trucnklike pillar in the centre prevents
them from breaking free. Once a quake strikes, the floors
move but the damaging energy is sent harmlessly into the ground.
3449/ Plutonium has a half life
of 24,000 years.
3450/ The only person to have
an element named after him while still alive was Glenn Seaborg,
the most prolific of all the element hunters. With no less
than nice dicoveries to his name, seaborgs thirst for discovery
at the far end of the periodic table started as section head
on the Manhattan project. His team was responsible for the
creation of Plutonium, one of the main components of the atomic
bomb.
3451/ The Saw-Scaled Viper is
thought to cause tens of thousands of deaths annually in Africa
and Asia. They don't have the most lethal snake venom but
they are numerous and aggressive.
3452/ Apart from the 46 species
of sea-snake, the skin of a snake feels dry.
3453/ There are around 3000 species
of snake of which only 10% or about 300 are classed as venomus.
Of these, many produce venom that it no more serious than
a wasp sting. Only betwen 50-75 species are capable of 'clinically-severe-
bites.
3454/ Ireland has only about
half the number of animal species that Britain has, including
no snakes or toads (although there are some frogs).
3455/ One hectare of tropical
rainforest is destroyed every second for logging or farmland.
3456/ Our DNA proves that our
common ancestry was very recent and even 150,000 years ago,
may have comprised as few as 50,000 adults who resided entirely
in Africa and evolved in response to a hominid population
bottleneck caused by an ice age.
3457/ A teaspoon of soil from
your garden would hold about 100 million bacteria. At present
we only know anything about 1% of that life.
3458/ About 60% of the worlds
population (over 4 billion) rely on rice to survive.
3459/ The corn genome is six
times larger then that of rice. The wheat genome is 37 times
larger then that of wheat.
3460/ According to Dr Michio
Kaku, 50% of the Soy Beans planted in the US in 1999 contained
a gene that made them resistant to herbicides. This meant
that farmers could dump more herbicides on their crops. Thus,
the chemical companies made profits in both directions, by
selling more herbicide-resistant crops and in selling farmers
more herbicides.
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