The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information

by Don Voorhees

  In 2011, scientists at MIT developed the fastest camera system ever, capable of recording 1 trillion exposures per second. The camera is so fast that it can render a light beam moving in slow motion.

  The darkest substance known to science is made from carbon nanotubes that are stacked and sandwiched together. This material absorbs 99.9 percent of the light that hits it. The microscopic surface is rough and uneven, making it a very poor reflector, and its superconductive properties also help it absorb light.

  HOT STUFF

  Chlorine trifluoride is the most flammable chemical. It will combust on contact with almost anything and burns such materials as asbestos, concrete, glass, sand, and flame retardants.

  WEIRD SCIENCE

  The world’s lowest density solid, Aerogel, also known as frozen smoke, is a silicon gel with all the liquid taken out and replaced with gas, making it 96 percent air. When a piece is held in the hand, it is almost impossible to feel or see. Aerogel can support four thousand times its own weight and is the best insulator known to man.

  Gömböc is the world’s only self-righting object. Developed in 2005, it is shaped in such a way that no matter how it is put down, it will always stand itself back up. Unlike Weebles, which self-right because of a weight in the bottom, Gömböc does so simply because of its shape. It has since been found that turtles share the same basic shape, allowing them to easily right themselves.

  Gallium is a silvery metallic element that melts at 85°F. Crystals of this metal are on the market, and one can hold a gallium crystal in one’s hand and watch it slowly melt into a shiny puddle that will freeze back into a solid when it cools.

  Oobleck is a suspension of starch (such as cornstarch) in water and is an example of a non-Newtonian fluid (a liquid that does not behave as a typical liquid). Although it is a fluid, it becomes solid when pressure is applied to it. As such, a person can run across a vat of liquid oobleck.

  Chilled caramel is another non-Newtonian liquid. Caramel on top of ice cream is a liquid, but if a finger is pushed rapidly into it, the caramel acts like a solid. A spoon pushed slowly in will keep the caramel in its liquid state, but pulling the spoon out quickly will cause it to form a solid. The same effect can be achieved by turning a container holding chilled caramel upside down rapidly.

  EcoSpheres are sealed glass balls of seawater, algae, bacteria, and shrimp. These tiny ecosystems will live for years. All they require is warmth and sunlight.

  DISHWASHER DISCOVERIES

  Fish can be steamed in a dishwasher. To do so, wrap fish tightly in aluminum foil and run on the normal cycle with no detergent. Do not run the dry cycle. Enjoy.

  Lemonade-flavored Kool-Aid can be used to remove iron and lime stains from a dishwasher. Simply empty a packet in the detergent dispenser and run the dishwasher.

  LOTTO LOWDOWN

  Studies show that people play lottery numbers 31 and down more often than higher numbers, probably because many bettors play birthdays.

  BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

  Tumbleweeds are not native to the American West, but originated in Eurasia.

  Tumbleweeds are unique in that they disperse their seeds by rolling across the ground when blown by the wind.

  A LITTLE NIBBLE

  A “nibble,” in computing, is four bits, or half a byte. It is also spelled “nybble” and “nyble.”

  PINHEAD NUMBER

  The most common ATM PIN number is 1234. These incredibly unimaginative four digits make up 10.7 percent of PIN numbers. 1111 is second, with a user frequency rate of 6 percent. 0000, 1212, and 7777 round out the top five most popular PINs.

  IN THE PINK

  The color magenta gets its name from the dye magenta that was discovered shortly after the Battle of Magenta in 1859, near Magenta, Italy.

  WATTS UP?

  A one-watt night-light emits a billion billion photons per second.

  PLANE AND SIMPLE

  Flying in an airplane is safer than riding an escalator.

  About 97.5 percent of passengers involved in a fatal plane crash survive.

  Statistically speaking, a person would have to fly every day for thirty-five thousand years to be in a fatal plane crash.

  The safest places to sit on a plane are in the back or in the middle over the wing.

  The black box and flight recorders are kept in the tails of planes because that is the section most likely to survive a wreck.

  PLASTIC IS FOREVER

  Each year the United States uses about 102 billion plastic grocery bags.

  Plastic molecules are too big for bacteria and fungi to break down. Sunlight, however, does degrade plastic, making it brittle and causing it to fracture into tiny pieces.

  THAT BLOWS

  Hurricane Alice has the distinction of being both the earliest and latest hurricane on record. It began on December 30, 1954 and ended on January 5, 1955. No other hurricanes have been active so late in a year, or so early in a year.

  The only years on record in which there were no Atlantic hurricanes were 1907 and 1914.

  IN A FOG

  The foggiest place in the world is the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland, where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream meet the cold waters of the Labrador Current.

  The foggiest place in the United States is Point Reyes, California, which averages more than two hundred foggy days a year.

  Redwood trees in California receive 30 to 40 percent of their moisture from fog.

  Precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before it reaches the ground is called virga.

  Cloudy nights are warmer than clear nights, since clouds trap heat absorbed by the Earth during the day, preventing it from being lost back to space when the sun goes down.

  Helicopters are sometimes used to clear fog from the runways at airports.

  WEATHER UPDATE

  Raindrops are not tear-shaped, but actually resemble mushroom caps.

  The last snowfall of the season is known as the onion snow.

  The warmest it has ever been in Antarctica was 59°F at Vanda Station on January 5, 1974.

  SPACED OUT

  Astronauts report that space has a distinctive odor. Upon returning from a spacewalk, their spacesuits have a metallic smell, similar to that of seared steak or welding fumes.

  Bacteria grow faster in space.

  Water in space boils in one big bubble, instead of the thousands of tiny ones found in earthbound boiling water.

  Candle flames in space are spherical, not tear-shaped.

  Many astronauts who spend too much time in space begin to develop blurry vision. Scientists aren’t sure why this happens, but it could complicate efforts to send people on long-term missions, such as to Mars.

  The first person to walk in space was Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, in 1965. His spacesuit was not properly pressurized and it ballooned and stiffened so much that Leonov got stuck trying to reenter the space capsule’s air lock after first entering it the wrong way. He had to reduce the pressure in his suit to free himself, and he risked death from the bends.

  Astronauts’ urine is discharged into space. Their feces are brought back to Earth. The astronauts who landed on the moon left all their trash, including excrement, behind for future visitors to find. Apollo astronauts pooped into a bag and then had the odious task of squirting in some germicide and kneading the contents to sterilize said poop.

  Many early space shots involved sending live animals into orbit. Sadly, none of these dogs, apes, and other animals ever returned safely to Earth. In fact, dozens of them are still orbiting the planet in mummified form.

  STARSTRUCK

  The sun is really a white star. It is the Earth’s atmosphere that makes it appear yellow.

  Most stars are smaller than the sun and most have a companion star.

  The sun is closest to the Earth in early January.

 
The seasons on Earth have nothing to do with its distance from the sun, but with the tilt of the Earth’s axis.

  Brown dwarfs are space objects that are bigger than large gas planets (like Jupiter) but smaller than stars. Some brown dwarfs are as cool as 80°F.

  Newly discovered stars, known as Y dwarfs, are about the size of Jupiter and are almost cool enough to touch. They remain so cool because their size is too small to allow fusion to take place. One of the nearest stars to Earth is a Y dwarf. Brown dwarfs that cool off become Y dwarfs.

  VY Canis Majoris is the largest known star, some two thousand times the size of the sun. It is so big that it would take a jet plane twelve hundred years to fly around it.

  A marshmallow dropped on a neutron star would impact with the force of an atomic bomb due to the star’s enormous gravity.

  There are so many stars at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy that if the Earth were moved there, there would be 1 million stars in the sky and there would be no night.

  A recent study of the cosmos suggests that the universe is running out of star-making material and that new star formation is coming to an end.

  Scientists now believe there are at least 176 billion galaxies in the universe.

  The Hubble Space Telescope can see galaxies one-ten-billionth as bright as the naked eye can see.

  The farthest away galaxy was discovered/photographed in 2011. Named GN-108036, this galaxy is believed to be 12.9 billion years old, just 750 million years younger than the universe itself.

  If the sun was replaced by a black hole of equal mass, the orbits of the planets would not be affected.

  Once a black hole forms, it never dissipates.

  FRANKENSTORM

  There was a massive storm on Saturn in 2011 that stretched some two hundred thousand miles, with a vortex nearly as wide as Earth.

  STARDUST

  Comet dust contains the gemstone peridot.

  GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

  Meteoroids that are large enough to impact the Earth are called meteorites.

  Most meteoroids visible in the night sky are at an altitude of forty to seventy-five miles above the Earth.

  Sometimes the sonic booms created by meteoroids can be heard on the ground. During the 2001 Leonid meteor shower, people reported hearing a cracking sound.

  EARTH SCIENCE

  If Earth didn’t have an atmosphere, the sky would always be black, as on the moon. The atmosphere scatters sunlight, making it look blue.

  Four billion years ago, an Earth day was just ten hours long. Tidal friction, or gravitational force, between the Earth and the moon has slowed Earth’s rotation over the years. It is currently slowing at the rate of twenty seconds every million years.

  Parts of Canada near the Hudson Bay have less gravity than the rest of the world.

  Earthquake lights are multicolored lights, similar to aurorae, that appear in the sky during earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

  GREAT MINDS

  Isaac Newton wrote more about his Bible interpretations and the occult than he did about science.

  Modern scholars believe Newton may have had Asperger’s syndrome.

  Biographers speculate that Newton, who never married, may have died a virgin.

  Galileo Galilei was an excellent lute player.

  Galileo’s middle finger is on display at the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy.

  Francis Bacon died after contracting pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat—perhaps bacon.

  Bacon married a fourteen-year-old girl when he was forty-five.

  Charles Darwin married his first cousin. Whenever one of their children would get sick, he worried that it was because of inherited weakness due to inbreeding with his cousin.

  Charles Francis Richter, of Richter scale fame, was an avid nudist.

  Greek mathematician Pythagorus did not discover the Pythagorean theorem—a2 + b2 = c2. It was known to the Babylonians some time earlier.

  EASY AS PI

  Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Its decimal representation never ends and never repeats. Pi, in short, is roughly 3.14159.

  Computers have calculated pi to more than ten trillion digits.

  In 2005, a Chinese man named Lu Chao set the world record for reciting the digits of pi, correctly rattling off pi to 67,890 digits in just over twenty-four hours.

  PAPER MOON

  If an ordinary one-millimeter-thick sheet of paper could be folded 42 times, it would reach past the moon. Folding it 51 times would make it extend out past the sun. Folding it 60 times would reach past the edge of the solar system. Folding it 83 times would make it thicker than the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy, and unbelievably, folding it 103 times would put it near the edge of the known universe! (Each time the paper is folded, it doubles the previous thickness, resulting in phenomenal growth. This is the power of exponential math!)

  ICE, ICE, BABY!

  Depending on temperature and pressure, there are fifteen known “phases” of ice. All ice found in the biosphere is known as Ice I. The different kinds of ice differ in their density and crystalline structure.

  It is believed that under high enough pressures, ice may become a metal.

  SLIME TIME

  Slime molds are giant one-celled organisms with many nuclei that may be up to several square feet in size.

  Even though they have no brain, slime molds have the ability to “remember” where they have been. They lay down a trail of goo as they slide along and use its presence to retrace their path or move in a new direction.

  That musty odor of old books is caused by the spores of the fungi that live on the pages. Some experts believe that breathing the spores of some of these fungi for a period of time can cause hallucinations.

  SIZING YOU UP

  That gadget they use to measure your feet at the shoe store is known as a Brannock Device.

  BIG BIRD

  Sixty-seven million years ago, a giant flying pterosaur the size of an F-16 fighter jet, named Quetzalcoatlus, lived in what now is Texas.

  Sports Page

  LET THE GAMES BEGIN

  The 1900 Olympics had a live pigeon shooting event.

  The 1904 Games had club swinging, an event that involved the twirling of clubs.

  The 1924 Games had an event called La Canne, a French sport similar to fencing, that used wooden canes.

  Rope climbing was an Olympic event up until 1932.

  World Olympic record-holder South Korean archer Im Dong-hyun is legally blind, with 10 percent vision in one eye and 20 percent in the other. He does not wear glasses or contacts during competition.

  Olympic gold medals are only 1.34 percent gold. The rest is comprised of 93 percent silver and 6 percent copper. The metals in the gold medal are worth about $650, as of 2012.

  Olympic silver medals are comprised of 93 percent silver and 7 percent copper.

  Bronze medals are mostly copper.

  A study of Olympic medalists found that they live an average of 2.8 years longer than members of the general public.

  In 2012, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps sunk the longest televised putt in history when he holed a 159-footer at the Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland. The putt took seventeen seconds to reach the cup. Phelps had only been golfing seriously for two months before accomplishing the feat.

  American William Fiske won Olympic gold in the bobsled in the 1928 and 1932 Winter Games. He was just sixteen years old in the 1928 Games and was the flag bearer in the 1932 Games. Fiske also holds the distinction of being the first American killed in World War II. He pretended to be a Canadian and joined the British RAF in 1940, before the United States entered the war. He died in the Battle of Britain.

  The U.S. Olympic flag bearer is selected by a vote of the captains of the various sports represented. />
  ISN’T IT IRONIC?

  Chaunté Lowe is an American high jumper who competed in the 2012 Olympics.

  Sylvia Fowles is an American basketball player who competed in the 2012 Olympics.

  BAD SPORTS

  The only gold medal won by Ireland in the 2004 Olympic Games came in show jumping. Unfortunately the winning horse—Waterford Crystal—tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug and was stripped of the medal.

  At the 2008 Olympic Games, Cuban tae kwon do athlete Angel Matos was disqualified during a match after he took a longer than allowed injury time-out. He responded by kicking the referee in the face.

  In his fencing match, Russian pentathlete Boris Onishchenko used an electronically rigged dueling sword that automatically scored hits, whether he touched his opponent or not. He was disqualified.

  DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB

  Most American Olympic athletes work normal jobs and train in their spare time. Some examples from the 2012 team are triathlete Gwen Jorgensen, who is an accountant; discus thrower Lance Brooks, who is a construction worker in the oil business; sailor Debbie Capozzi, who works in the family Italian ice shop; and wrestler Chas Betts, who works as a motions designer (graphic arts) for films and videos.

  American Suzy Favor-Hamilton, who ran in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Summer Games, supplemented her income as a high-priced call girl, earning up to six hundred dollars per client.

  TO DIE FOR

  Hall of Fame baseball player Ed Delahanty died in 1903 after a conductor kicked him off a train for being drunk and disorderly. Delahanty then attempted to walk over the International Railway Bridge connecting Buffalo, New York, to Fort Erie, Ontario, and either jumped or fell into the Niagara River and was swept over the falls.

  Formula One racer Alan Stacey was killed during the 1960 Belgium Gran Prix after a bird hit him in the face, causing him to crash.