98 Fun Facts About Elementary School

What shape are the wax cells of a honeycomb?

Hexagon cells fit together with no gaps and need less wall than any other shape that does, so bees spend the least wax on storing honey.

Which world was named in 1930 by an 11-year-old English schoolgirl?

Pluto got its name from Venetia Burney of Oxford, who suggested the Roman god of the underworld to her grandfather; he passed the idea on to the astronomers.

Which planet is closest to the Sun?

Mercury is closest to the Sun, yet craters at its poles lie in permanent shadow, cold enough that scientists think they hold water ice.

Which is the largest planet in the Solar System?

Jupiter is built from the same ingredients as the Sun, mostly hydrogen and helium, but it never gathered enough mass to ignite.

Which planet is nicknamed the Red Planet?

Mars looks red because of rust: iron oxide in the dust and rocks that cover most of its surface.

Which planet is famous for its bright rings?

Saturn's rings fooled Galileo, the first to see them in 1610: his telescope was too weak to show them clearly, and he took the planet for three bodies side by side.

What kind of object is the Sun?

It is a very ordinary star that only looks huge and bright because it is so much closer to us than any other.

Orion and Ursa Major, the Great Bear, are examples of what?

A constellation is only a pattern seen from Earth: its points of light are not connected at all, and some lie far closer to us than others.

Earth's spin on its axis causes which of these?

Day and night come from Earth turning once about every 24 hours; the seasons have a different cause, the tilt of Earth's axis as it circles the Sun.

Which star is called the North Star?

Polaris sits less than one degree from the north celestial pole, almost directly above the North Pole, so it barely moves while other stars wheel around it.

Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

Neil Armstrong stepped off Apollo 11's ladder in July 1969, followed by Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins circled overhead in the command module.

Which continent is home to about six in every ten people on Earth?

Asia holds roughly 60 percent of humanity, yet it has no clear physical edge: it shares one continuous landmass with Europe, split only by convention along the Urals.

Which is the smallest continent?

Australia is the smallest continent, and its long isolation from the other landmasses is why most of its wildlife, kangaroos and koalas included, lives nowhere else.

Which is the largest ocean on Earth?

Pacific means 'peaceful': Ferdinand Magellan named it in 1520 after calm sailing, though the ocean is so vast that every continent could fit inside its basin.

What do we call land that is almost surrounded by water but still joined to the mainland?

A peninsula takes its name from the Latin for 'almost an island', and most of the state of Florida is one.

Which river is traditionally ranked as the longest in the world?

The Nile has long held the title, but it is disputed: some scientists argue the Amazon is longer, depending on where each river is judged to begin.

What is the largest hot desert in the world?

The Sahara was not always desert: until roughly 5,000 years ago much of it was green, with lakes, grassland and animals such as hippos.

What is the tallest mountain on Earth above sea level?

Mount Everest was remeasured by China and Nepal in 2020 at 8,848.86 meters, and it is still rising as the colliding plates beneath the Himalayas push it upward.

Which is the largest country in the world by area?

Russia is so wide that it spans eleven time zones, with up to ten hours' difference between Kaliningrad in the west and Kamchatka in the east.

As of 2025, which country has the most people?

India overtook China in 2023, by United Nations estimates, ending China's long run as the most populous country; each has more than 1.4 billion people.

On which continent is the Amazon rainforest?

South America's Amazon is so vast that it helps make its own rain: moisture released by its trees falls again as rain across the forest.

What is the capital city of Canada?

Ottawa was Queen Victoria's choice in 1857, picked because rivalry among the bigger cities made choosing any one of them too divisive.

What is the imaginary line around the middle of the Earth called?

The equator is where Earth is widest: the planet's spin makes it bulge, so its diameter there is about 43 km greater than from pole to pole.

Which of North America's five Great Lakes is the largest?

Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes, and its storms can sink big ships: the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald went down in one in 1975 with all 29 crew.

Which was the 50th and most recent state to join the United States?

Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959, months after Alaska, once its own voters had approved statehood in a June referendum.

Who was the first president of the United States?

George Washington served two terms, from 1789 to 1797, and then chose to step down instead of running again.

Who wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence?

Thomas Jefferson recalled that the rest of a five-man drafting committee, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin among them, pressed him to take the job.

Which president's face is on the U.S. penny?

Abraham Lincoln has been on the penny since 1909, but the Mint struck its last ones for circulation in November 2025 because each cost nearly four cents to make.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from which country?

France built the statue in Paris, then took it apart and shipped it over in crates aboard the navy ship Isère to be reassembled in New York Harbor.

Who painted the Mona Lisa?

Leonardo da Vinci's portrait owes much of its fame to a crime: it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, and the hunt for it made headlines around the world.

What is the largest animal known to have ever lived?

The blue whale is the biggest animal known, yet it lives almost entirely on krill, tiny creatures it strains from huge mouthfuls of seawater.

What is the fastest land animal?

A cheetah can hit about 104 kilometers per hour (65 mph), but only for a few hundred meters before it has to rest.

What is the tallest land animal?

Giraffes are the tallest land animals, yet that long neck has only seven bones, the same number as a human neck: each can be over 25 cm long.

Which is the largest living bird?

The ostrich cannot fly, but it is the fastest animal on two legs, sprinting in bursts of up to about 70 km/h.

Which is the largest living reptile?

Saltwater crocodiles are the biggest reptiles alive and strong ocean swimmers: individuals have turned up on remote islands as far away as Fiji.

On which continent do emperor penguins live?

Emperor penguins breed only on Antarctica and its sea ice; they are the tallest and heaviest penguins and huddle together through the coldest winter on Earth.

Which of these animals is a mammal?

A dolphin breathes air, so it must keep surfacing, and it sleeps with only half of its brain at a time while the other half stays alert.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A joey is born tiny and underdeveloped, smaller than your thumb, then spends months in its mother's pouch attached to a nipple while it finishes growing.

What is a group of lions called?

A pride is usually a few related females, their cubs and one or a few adult males, and the lionesses usually hunt together as a team.

What is a young frog called before it grows legs?

Tadpoles breathe with gills like fish, then grow legs and lungs and lose their tails.

A frog belongs to which group of animals?

Amphibians usually start life in water and move onto land as adults, which is exactly what a frog does.

Which of these creatures is an insect?

An ant is an insect, with six legs; a centipede has far more, and because its leg pairs always come in an odd number, none has exactly 100.

Spider webs are spun from which material?

Silk starts out as a liquid inside a spider's body and turns into a solid thread as it is drawn out through tiny spigots.

What do we call an animal that eats only plants?

A herbivore such as a cow has wide, flat teeth for grinding, because the tough cell walls of plants make them hard to digest.

Which gas do plants take in from the air to make their food?

Plants take in carbon dioxide and, using water and the energy of sunlight, turn it into the sugar they live on.

Which gas do plants give off during photosynthesis?

Oxygen is the gas plants give off, and about half of Earth's supply comes not from forests but from tiny plankton drifting in the ocean.

At what temperature does water freeze on the Fahrenheit scale?

32°F looks odd because, by his own account, Daniel Fahrenheit set zero with a freezing mixture of ice, water and salt, far colder than the point where pure water freezes.

At what temperature does water boil on the Celsius scale?

100°C is no accident: the scale was built on water, though Anders Celsius first numbered it upside down, with 0 for boiling and 100 for freezing.

What is the process called when water vapor in the air turns back into liquid water?

Condensation is how clouds form, and why a cold glass gets wet on the outside on a hot day as vapor cools into droplets.

What is the hardest known natural material?

Diamond is so hard that only another diamond can scratch it, which is why industry uses diamonds to cut and polish other hard materials.

What is melted rock called once it flows out of a volcano?

Lava is molten rock that has reached the surface; when it cools very quickly it hardens into obsidian, a natural glass with razor-sharp edges.

What is the chemical symbol for gold?

Au comes from aurum, the Latin word for gold; Ag is silver, from argentum.

Which of these is a primary color of paint?

Red, yellow and blue are the primaries in art class; mixing two of them makes the other three colors on the list.

Which scientist used a glass prism to split sunlight into a rainbow of colors?

Isaac Newton showed that white light is really a blend of colors, and he divided the rainbow into the seven still taught as ROYGBIV.

What is the largest organ of the human body?

The skin is the body's largest organ, and it never stops renewing itself: old cells flake off constantly and the outer layer is replaced every few weeks.

About how many bones does an adult human have?

206 is the adult count: a baby is born with dozens more bones, which fuse together as the child grows.

Which vessels carry blood away from the heart?

Arteries carry blood away from the heart under high pressure, which is why you can feel your pulse where one runs close to the surface, as at the wrist.

Which vitamin does your body make when you spend time in sunlight?

Vitamin D forms naturally in your body after exposure to sunlight, and it helps you absorb calcium, one of the main building blocks of bone.

What do we call the answer to a multiplication problem?

The product stays the same if you swap the two numbers, so anyone who knows 7 × 8 = 56 already knows 8 × 7 too.

What number does the Roman numeral X stand for?

X stands for 10 in a system with no symbol for zero at all, a gap that made Roman numerals clumsy for arithmetic.

A leap year's extra day keeps the calendar in step with what?

Earth's orbit takes about 365 and a quarter days, so without an extra day almost every fourth year the calendar would slowly drift out of step with the seasons.

What shape is a stop sign?

A stop sign is an octagon: its eight sides make it recognizable even from the back, so drivers know oncoming cars must stop.

What is a word that means the opposite of another word called?

An antonym was named to be the opposite of a synonym: the word was coined in the 1800s by swapping the first syllable for ant-, 'against'.

Who wrote Charlotte's Web, the story of Wilbur the pig?

E. B. White found the story on his own farm in Maine, where he came across a real spider and her web in the barn.

Who wrote The Cat in the Hat?

Dr. Seuss wrote it after a publisher asked him for a first reader children would enjoy, using only 236 different words from a set list.

Which keyboard instrument normally has 88 keys?

Piano is short for pianoforte, Italian for 'soft-loud', because unlike a harpsichord it could play quietly or loudly depending on how hard the keys were struck.

How many players does each soccer team have on the field at once?

11 a side includes the goalkeeper, the only player who may handle the ball, and a match cannot go on if a team drops below seven players.

What do we call a caterpillar's change into a butterfly?

Metamorphosis is a real rebuild: inside the chrysalis much of the caterpillar's body is broken down, and the wings, legs and eyes grow from small groups of cells that survive.

How do worker honey bees tell each other where to find food?

By dancing: a returning bee waggles in a pattern whose angle and length tell her hive-mates which way and how far to fly, a code Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for cracking.

Which instrument lets scientists see things too small for the naked eye?

A microscope opened a hidden world when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch cloth merchant who made his own lenses, became the first person to see bacteria.

Which part of speech names a person, place, or thing?

A noun is literally a name: the word comes from the Latin nomen, 'name', which is just the job it does in a sentence.

What force pulls a dropped ball toward the ground?

Gravity pulls everything down at the same rate: with no air in the way, a hammer and a feather dropped together by an Apollo 15 astronaut landed at the same instant.

Which month has only 28 days in most years?

It gets a 29th day in leap years, so someone born on 29 February has a real birthday only every four years.

Which instrument measures temperature?

A thermometer of the classic kind works because liquids expand when heated: the warmer it gets, the higher the liquid climbs in its narrow glass tube.

Which bird is the national symbol of the United States?

The bald eagle was only made the official national bird by an act of Congress in December 2024, more than 240 years after it first appeared on the Great Seal.

How many degrees are in a right angle?

90 degrees makes a right angle, and the 'right' has nothing to do with left and right: it translates the Latin angulus rectus, where rectus means straight or upright.

On a globe, which lines run east to west and show how far north or south a place is?

Latitude lines never touch, which is why mapmakers call them parallels; longitude lines, by contrast, all meet at the North and South Poles.

What is the name of the galaxy that contains our Solar System?

The Milky Way is named for the milky band of light it paints across the night sky: we live inside its flat disk, so we see it edge-on.

The trumpet belongs to which family of instruments?

Brass instruments are named for their metal, but what defines the family is the cup-shaped mouthpiece, where the player's lips vibrate to make the sound.

What do scientists call the giant landmass that once held all of Earth's continents?

Pangaea was championed by Alfred Wegener, who argued in 1912 that the continents had drifted apart after noticing how neatly far-off coastlines fit together.

Who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Roald Dahl got the idea at boarding school, where a chocolate maker sent the pupils new bars to taste and rate.

Which planet is farthest from the Sun?

Neptune is so far out that one trip around the Sun takes about 165 Earth years: it has completed just one since it was discovered in 1846.

Spiders belong to which group of animals?

Arachnids are named from arakhne, the Greek word for spider; in the Roman poet Ovid's tale, the weaver Arachne is turned into one after a contest with a goddess.

Who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone?

Alexander Graham Bell received his patent on March 7, 1876, and within days made the first call, summoning his assistant Watson from another room.

A seesaw is an example of which simple machine?

A seesaw is a lever: the middle support is the fulcrum, and the farther from it you sit, the more turning force your weight provides.

What is the largest bone in the human body?

The femur, or thigh bone, is the body's longest and strongest bone: breaking it usually takes a severe force such as a car crash.

Which gas makes up most of Earth's air?

Nitrogen makes up about 78 percent of the air, yet most living things cannot use it in that form: bacteria must first convert it into compounds plants can take up.

Which planet is the hottest in the Solar System?

Venus has a thick atmosphere that traps so much heat that its surface, at about 465°C, is hot enough to melt lead.

Which is the largest living primate?

Gorillas are the largest living primates, and before dusk each one builds its own nest of branches and leaves to sleep in.

Words like 'rain' and 'reign' that sound alike but differ in meaning are called what?

Homophones comes from the Greek for 'same' and 'sound'; 'night' and 'knight' are another pair, alike to the ear but not on the page.

Where is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans?

The Mariana Trench's deepest spot is the Challenger Deep, nearly 11 km down, named after HMS Challenger, the ship whose crew first sounded the trench in 1875.

What is a young swan called?

A cygnet is the true identity of the 'ugly duckling' in Hans Christian Andersen's 1843 tale, mocked in the farmyard until it grows into a swan.

Which is the smallest bone in the human body?

The stapes, named for its stirrup shape, is the last of three tiny bones in the middle ear that pass sound vibrations from the eardrum on to the inner ear.

In Roman numerals, which letter stands for 1,000?

M stands for 1,000, matching the Latin word mille, 'thousand', which also gave us 'mile': a Roman mile was a thousand double paces.

What is the official language of Brazil?

Portuguese is spoken in Brazil because a 1494 treaty split the newly explored lands between Spain and Portugal, and Brazil's eastern coast fell on Portugal's side of the line.

What is the currency of Japan?

Yen shares its origin with China's yuan and Korea's won: all three come from a Chinese word meaning 'round'.

Which is the largest African country by area?

Algeria has been Africa's largest country only since 2011, when Sudan, the previous holder, split in two with the birth of South Sudan.

Leukocytes are better known as what?

White blood cells get their scientific name from the Greek leukos, 'white', and their job is defense: they travel through the blood and tissues attacking germs.