Science — Page 4
Fascinating scientific discoveries
172 facts
Aerogel is one of the lightest solids in the world.
Aerogel is a solid material with very low density, composed of up to 99.8 percent air. It is so light that a block…
The muon is a particle that does not interact with the magnetic field.
The muon is an elementary particle similar to the electron but heavier. It interacts with the magnetic field and…
Time crystals are a new state of matter.
Time crystals are structures that repeat in time, not just in space, like normal crystals. They were proposed in 2012…
The Kelvin scale starts at the melting point of water.
The Kelvin scale is an absolute temperature scale that starts at absolute zero, the lowest possible theoretical…
Buckyballs are carbon molecules shaped like a ball.
Buckyballs, or fullerenes, are carbon molecules with 60 atoms arranged in a hollow sphere, similar to a football…
Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius anywhere on the planet.
Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius only at sea level. At higher altitudes, atmospheric pressure is lower and water…
Most of an iceberg is underwater.
About 90 percent of an iceberg's volume is submerged. This happens because ice is less dense than seawater, but not…
The pitch drop experiment has been running for almost a century.
The pitch drop experiment began in 1927 at the University of Queensland in Australia, to demonstrate that pitch…
The Prince Rupert's drop breaks easily with a hammer.
The Prince Rupert's drop is a drop of molten glass cooled in water. The head is so resistant that it withstands…
Wine tears are due to the Marangoni effect.
Wine tears or legs are droplets that run down the walls of the glass. They form because ethanol evaporates faster…
Water has a triple point where it coexists in all three states.
The triple point of water occurs at a temperature of 0.01 degrees Celsius and a pressure of 611.657 pascals. Under…
Hydrogen is the rarest element in the universe.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, representing about 75 percent of visible matter. It forms the…
Graphene conducts electricity better than copper.
Graphene, a sheet of carbon one atom thick, conducts electricity with much less resistance than copper, making it…
Tungsten has the highest melting point of all metals.
Tungsten melts at 3,422 degrees Celsius, the highest melting point of any metal. This property makes it ideal for…
Astatine is the rarest element in the Earth's crust.
Astatine is the rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust, with less than 30 grams present on the…
All 118 elements of the periodic table exist naturally on Earth.
Of the 118 elements in the periodic table, only about 90 occur naturally on Earth. The rest were created in the…
In 2025, artificial intelligence helped identify a new hypernucleus with two strange quarks.
A hypernucleus is an atomic nucleus that contains at least one hyperon, a particle with strange quarks. AI analysed…
A single teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh approximately six billion tons on Earth.
Neutron stars are the ultra-dense remnants of collapsed massive stars, where matter is compressed to the point that a…
The Mpemba effect is the counterintuitive phenomenon where hot water can freeze faster than cold water under certain conditions.
Although it seems illogical, factors like evaporation, convection currents, and decreased dissolved gases can cause…
Bismuth is a metal that naturally forms iridescent, stair-step shaped crystals, known as hopper crystals, as it cools.
When molten bismuth cools, the outer edges solidify faster than the interior, creating this unique geometric…
Sound cannot travel in a vacuum because it needs a material medium like air, water, or a solid to propagate.
Sound waves are mechanical waves consisting of compressions and rarefactions of the medium's molecules, without which…
Helium is the only element that does not solidify at normal atmospheric pressure, even at temperatures close to absolute zero.
To solidify helium, a pressure of at least twenty-five atmospheres must be applied, as its interatomic forces are…
Gold and copper are the only metals that are not naturally silvery or gray in their pure form.
The yellow color of gold and the reddish color of copper result from how the electrons in these metals absorb and…
If it were physically possible to fold a piece of paper forty-two times, its thickness would reach from the Earth to the Moon.
Each fold doubles the paper's thickness. This exponential growth means forty-two folds would result in a stack over…