50 Fun Facts About Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Which U.S. state is home to the Grand Canyon, the mile-deep gorge carved by the Colorado River?

Arizona holds the Grand Canyon, which stretches 277 miles and reaches 18 miles across at its widest point.

Which city, not Los Angeles or San Francisco, has been California's state capital since 1854?

Sacramento won the job by offering its county courthouse as a home for the state legislature in 1852. Under Spanish and Mexican rule the capital had been Monterey.

Which sugary liquid, made by flowers to attract pollinators, do bees gather and refine into honey?

Nectar is the sugar source for honey, which bees make by gathering and refining it. Hummingbirds, butterflies and bats drink it straight from the flower.

Which bird, shown on the Great Seal gripping an olive branch, is the U.S. national bird?

The bald eagle became a national emblem in 1782. The tale that Benjamin Franklin pushed for the wild turkey instead is a popular legend with no evidence behind it.

Which planet, the smallest in the Solar System, orbits closest to the Sun?

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun but only the second-hottest, because it has no atmosphere to trap heat. Venus is hotter.

Which country gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States, shipping it across the sea in crates?

France sent the statue as a gift from its people, and Gustave Eiffel built the metal framework that holds up its copper skin.

What is a polygon with six sides called, the shape bees use for the cells of a honeycomb?

Hexagon comes from the Greek word hex, meaning six. Regular ones fit together with no gaps, which is why honeycomb cells make such efficient use of wax and space.

Which children's author, born Theodor Geisel, created the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch?

Dr. Seuss was a pen name, and he wrote and illustrated more than 60 books under it. Both of those famous characters first appeared in 1957.

Which ocean, the second-largest on Earth, separates Europe and Africa from the Americas?

The Atlantic covers about 85 million square kilometers. In the Age of Discovery it was known as the water dividing the Old World from the New World.

Which gemstone, used in industrial cutting tools, is the hardest natural material known?

Diamond is the hardest material on the Mohs scale, and it also conducts heat better than any other natural material.

What do scientists call an animal built to feed mainly on plants, such as a horse or a cow?

A herbivore that grazes has wide, flat-crowned teeth for grinding grass, and many rely on gut bacteria to break down the tough cellulose in their food.

Which president's portrait, from a 1796 painting by Gilbert Stuart, is on the U.S. one-dollar bill?

George Washington has sat at the center of the one-dollar bill since the 1869 design. The back of the note shows the Great Seal of the United States.

Which European country, home to Rome and Venice, sits on a peninsula shaped like a boot?

Italy's peninsula is nicknamed lo Stivale for its high-heeled outline, and the country also takes in nearly 800 islands, including Sicily and Sardinia.

Which part of speech names a person, place or thing, such as 'teacher', 'river' or 'pencil'?

A noun can also name things nobody can touch, such as an event, a quality or a quantity, which is why 'birthday' and 'kindness' count too.

Which planet, second-largest in the Solar System, is famous for bright rings of ice and rock?

Saturn is over 95 times more massive than Earth but has only an eighth of its average density. Hundreds of tiny moonlets orbit inside the rings.

Which force, the one that gives objects their weight, pulls everything on Earth toward the ground?

Gravity acts between any two bodies, as Isaac Newton worked out: the pull grows with their masses and fades with the distance between them.

Which continent, covered by an ice sheet more than a mile thick on average, contains the South Pole?

Antarctica holds about 70% of the world's fresh water as ice, and on average it is the coldest, driest and windiest of the continents.

What is the distance around the outside of a flat shape called, found by adding up its sides?

Perimeter is the length of fence needed to surround a yard or garden. On a circle the same measurement gets a name of its own, the circumference.

On which date, now a national holiday, was the Declaration of Independence adopted in Philadelphia?

July 4 is the day the text was adopted in 1776, but most of the delegates did not put their names to the official copy until August 2.

Which gas, breathed out by people and animals, do plants take in from the air to make food?

Carbon dioxide and water are what plants turn into carbohydrates using energy from sunlight, and the process gives off oxygen as waste.

Which continent, home to more than half of the world's people, is the largest by land area?

Asia covers about 30% of Earth's land and has the longest coastline of any continent, at 62,800 kilometres.

Which explorer left Spain in August 1492 with three ships, the largest of them the Santa María?

Christopher Columbus was hunting for a western sea passage to the East Indies and its spice trade when he made landfall in the Americas on 12 October.

What do we call a word with nearly the same meaning as another, as 'begin' is to 'start'?

A synonym may match in only one sense: 'long' and 'extended' both describe a stretch of time, yet nobody talks about a long family.

Which orchestra family, sounded by vibration of the player's lips, includes the trumpet and tuba?

Brass instruments are defined by how the sound is made, not by the metal: a saxophone is built of the same alloy yet counts as a woodwind.

Which mineral, plentiful in milk, yogurt and cheese, does the human body need in order to form bone?

Calcium is the most abundant metal in the human body, and roughly 99% of the body's supply is locked away in the skeleton.

Which Blue Collar Comedy Tour comic hosted Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader when it began on Fox?

Jeff Foxworthy fronted the game show from its 2007 debut, having made his name with one-liners about rednecks and six major-label comedy albums.

Which desert, covering much of North Africa, is the largest hot desert in the world?

Sahara comes from an Arabic word that simply means desert. It is far from all sand: rocky plateaus, gravel plains and salt flats fill much of it.

Which class of animals, with eight legs and no antennae, includes spiders, scorpions and ticks?

Arachnids number over 110,000 named species, and about 51,000 of them, nearly half, are spiders. Mites belong to the group as well.

Which inventor, nicknamed the Wizard of Menlo Park, worked on the phonograph and the light bulb?

Thomas Edison registered 1,093 patents in the United States, and his Menlo Park site is now considered the first industrial research laboratory.

Which term names the result of a multiplication, as 21 is for 3 times 7?

Product is the word for the result, while the numbers being multiplied together are called factors.

Which 1952 children's novel tells of a barn spider who writes messages to save a pig named Wilbur?

Charlotte's Web, written by E. B. White with pictures by Garth Williams, was listed in 2000 as the best-selling children's paperback of all time.

Which country, the largest in the world, spans eleven time zones and borders fourteen other nations?

Russia is also the most populous country in Europe, with more than 140 million people.

Which process turns a caterpillar into a butterfly, with a resting stage spent inside a chrysalis?

Metamorphosis gives a butterfly four life stages. Frogs, toads and newts go through it too, hatching from their eggs as larvae with gills.

Which conflict, fought from 1861 to 1865, set the Union against the Confederacy of seceded states?

The Civil War ended in Union victory and the national abolition of slavery, which freed four million African Americans.

Which punctuation mark shows possession and stands in for missing letters in a word like 'it's'?

The apostrophe arrived in English in the 16th century. Wrongly used to make a plural, it is known as a greengrocers' apostrophe.

Which state, the only one that is an archipelago, joined the United States in August 1959?

Hawaii is made up of 137 volcanic islands, and its state flag still carries a Union Jack, a mark of early British influence.

Which simple machine, a rigid beam that pivots on a fulcrum, is at work in a seesaw or a crowbar?

A lever is one of the six simple machines identified by Renaissance scientists. Scissors, pliers and a claw hammer all work on the same idea.

How many stripes are on the U.S. flag, one for each British colony that won independence?

The 13 stripes alternate red and white, beginning with red, while the stars in the blue corner have grown in number to match the states.

Which body, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, meets in the U.S. Capitol?

Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government and has 535 voting members: 100 senators and 435 representatives.

Which word describes two straight lines that never meet, like the rails of a train track?

Parallel lines keep every point of one exactly the same distance from the other, and the ancient thinker Posidonius defined them simply as equidistant lines.

Which blood vessels carry blood away from the heart, doing the opposite job to the veins?

Arteries such as the aorta take oxygen-rich blood out to the body, while veins bring oxygen-poor blood back the other way.

Which mountain on the border of Nepal and China is the highest on Earth above sea level?

Mount Everest is known in Nepali as Sagarmatha, and a joint Nepalese and Chinese survey in 2020 measured its height at 8,848.86 metres.

Which Dutch painter created The Starry Night in 1889, showing the view from his asylum window?

Vincent van Gogh added an imaginary village to the real view before sunrise, and the canvas has belonged to New York's Museum of Modern Art since 1941.

Which Baptist minister gave a 1963 speech about his dream from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial?

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to more than 250,000 supporters that August day, in what became one of the most iconic speeches in American history.

Which term describes a word that imitates the sound it names, such as oink, meow or beep?

Onomatopoeia covers most animal noises, which is why English gives a duck its quack, a cow its moo and a chicken its cluck.

Which bone, running from the hip to the knee, is the longest in the human body?

The femur, or thigh bone, is the only bone in the upper leg, and by some measures it is the strongest in the body as well.

Which word names molten rock while it is still beneath Earth's surface, before it erupts as lava?

Magma is the molten material from which all igneous rocks form. Some of it never erupts at all and hardens underground instead.

Which statistical measure is the value that appears most often in a set of test scores?

The mode need not be unique: a data set with two values tied for most common is described as bimodal.

Which line of longitude, defined as zero degrees, was fixed at Greenwich by an 1884 vote?

The Prime Meridian was settled when 22 countries voted for Greenwich at a conference, though a rival line through Paris stayed in official use for timekeeping until 1911.

Which Kansas City tight end hosted the 2024 streaming revival Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?

Travis Kelce quizzed contestants on first- to fifth-grade subjects for a top prize of $100,000, with five celebrities replacing the classmates who help.