168 Fun Facts About 5th and 6th Grade

Which is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceans?

The Pacific is both the largest ocean and the deepest: its Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench reaches about 10,900 metres, deeper than Everest is tall.

Which river carries more water than any other on Earth?

The Amazon discharges about 200,000 cubic metres of water per second into the Atlantic, roughly a fifth of all river water entering the world's oceans, far more than the Nile or Mississippi.

The Nile River flows north and empties into which sea?

The Nile empties into the Mediterranean through the Nile Delta north of Cairo; at roughly 6,650 km it is usually ranked the world's longest river, fed by the White Nile and Blue Nile.

The Sahara is the largest hot desert, but which two deserts are bigger overall?

Antarctica and the Arctic are polar deserts: a desert is defined by scant precipitation, not heat, and at roughly 14 million square km each they outsize the 9 million square km Sahara.

Mount Everest sits on the border between Nepal and which other country?

Everest straddles the Nepal–China border, with its north face in Tibet; Nepal and China jointly resurveyed the summit in 2020 and announced a single agreed height.

Which of these numbers is a prime number?

23 is prime; 21 is 3 x 7, 25 is 5 x 5 and 27 is 3 x 9. Every whole number greater than 1 is either prime or a product of primes.

A right angle measures exactly how many degrees?

A right angle is 90 degrees, exactly a quarter of the 360-degree full turn; the corner of a square is the classic example.

Pi, about 3.14159, is what you get when you divide a circle's circumference by what?

Its diameter is the divisor, so every circle is a little over three diameters around; pi's decimals never end or repeat, and Pi Day, March 14, is also Einstein's birthday.

In the fraction 3/4, what is the number 4 called?

The bottom number 4 is the denominator, telling how many equal parts make a whole; the top number 3 is the numerator, counting how many parts are taken.

What do we call the total distance around the outside of a shape?

Perimeter is the distance around a shape, found by adding up its side lengths; for a circle the same measurement gets a special name, the circumference.

Plants make their own food using sunlight, water and which gas from the air?

Carbon dioxide enters through pores in the leaves, and photosynthesis uses light energy to combine it with water into glucose, the sugar the plant lives on.

Which part of a cell is nicknamed the 'powerhouse' because it turns food into a fuel molecule called ATP?

The mitochondrion has its own DNA, inherited only from your mother, because it began as a free-living bacterium that cells swallowed around two billion years ago.

Who discovered cells in 1665 and named them after the small rooms in a monastery?

Robert Hooke coined the word in his 1665 book Micrographia after seeing a thin slice of cork under an early microscope; its tiny boxes reminded him of monks' cells.

How many bones does an adult human have once childhood bones have fused?

206 in an adult, over half of them in the hands and feet; bones make up about 14% of your body weight and are heaviest between ages 25 and 30.

Which of these is one of the six classical simple machines?

The pulley is one of the six classical simple machines, alongside the lever, wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge and screw; a bicycle combines several of them.

The fixed point that a lever pivots on is called what?

The fulcrum is the pivot point a lever turns on; Archimedes supposedly said that with a long enough lever and a place to stand he could move the world.

Which is the smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest to the Sun?

Mercury is the smallest planet and the nearest to the Sun; its solar day, sunrise to sunrise, lasts about 176 Earth days, twice as long as its 88-day year.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is what kind of feature?

The Great Red Spot is a giant anticyclonic storm wider than Earth, with winds above 400 km/h; Jupiter itself has 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets combined.

Which planet was found by mathematics before anyone saw it, from its tug on Uranus's orbit?

It is the eighth and farthest planet and cannot be seen without a telescope.

Which four planets are the rocky 'terrestrial' planets of the inner Solar System?

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are the terrestrial planets: small worlds of rock and metal with solid surfaces, unlike the four outer giants made mostly of gas and ice.

What are the large moving pieces of Earth's rigid outer shell called?

Tectonic plates are rigid slabs of crust and upper mantle that glide over hotter rock beneath; there are seven or eight major ones, moving a few centimetres a year.

Where are most of Earth's volcanoes actually found?

Most volcanoes are underwater: they cluster where plates pull apart or collide, and the longest such boundary, the mid-ocean ridge system, runs along the sea floor.

Which organ makes up most of the digestive tract's job of absorbing nutrients into the body?

The small intestine absorbs about 90% of nutrients through millions of finger-like villi, which give its roughly six-metre length an enormous surface area.

The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on which date?

Congress adopted the Declaration on July 4, 1776, two days after voting for independence on July 2, the date John Adams expected Americans to celebrate.

Who wrote the original draft of the Declaration of Independence?

Thomas Jefferson wrote the draft in June 1776 as one of the Committee of Five with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin; Congress then cut about a quarter of his text.

About how many chests of tea were thrown into the harbour at the 1773 Boston Tea Party?

Colonists dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor on 16 December 1773 in protest at the Tea Act; Parliament answered with the Coercive Acts in 1774.

Which 1783 agreement ended the American Revolutionary War with Britain recognising US independence?

The Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783, ended the war; the last major battle had been at Yorktown in 1781, where the French fleet blocked Cornwallis's escape.

The US Constitution was written at a convention held in 1787 in which city?

Delegates met in Philadelphia's Independence Hall from May to September 1787, the same building where the Declaration of Independence had been signed eleven years earlier.

The Bill of Rights, covering free speech, guns, trials and more, is the name for which amendments to the US Constitution?

The first ten amendments were ratified together in 1791; James Madison drafted them to answer Anti-Federalists who worried the new government had too much power.

In 1803 the United States bought the huge Louisiana Territory from which country?

France sold it: Napoleon, needing money for war with Britain, let the territory go for $15 million, roughly $18 a square mile.

Which young Shoshone woman travelled with the Lewis and Clark expedition as it crossed the West?

Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone teenager, joined the Corps of Discovery with her husband Toussaint Charbonneau in 1805 and interpreted when the party met Shoshone bands in the Rockies.

The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 declared enslaved people free in which part of the country?

It applied only to the Confederacy, the states in rebellion, and left slavery legal in loyal border states such as Kentucky; it declared more than 3.5 million people free as Union armies advanced.

About how many words long is Lincoln's famously brief Gettysburg Address?

271 words, read in under two minutes, after Edward Everett's two-hour oration; Everett wrote to Lincoln that he wished he had come as near the heart of the occasion in two hours.

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech at which 1963 event?

He spoke at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to about 250,000 people; he won the Nobel Peace Prize the next year.

The largest of Egypt's pyramids was built as a tomb for which pharaoh?

The Great Pyramid was built for Khufu around 2560 BC; at 146.6 metres it stayed the tallest human-made structure on Earth for more than 3,700 years.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the only one still mostly standing?

The pyramid at Giza is the sole survivor; the other six were toppled by earthquake, fire or demolition, while it stands on about 2.3 million blocks weighing six million tonnes.

Ancient Egypt's farms depended on the yearly flooding of its great river, which left behind what?

The flood left fertile soil, a layer of black silt washed down from the Ethiopian highlands; surplus crops from it fed a dense population and paid for pyramids, temples and scribes.

Who became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?

Augustus was the title the Senate gave Octavian in 27 BC, four years after he defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium.

Which Chinese dynasty built most of the brick-and-stone Great Wall that survives today?

The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) built most of the stone and brick wall seen today, including the stretches near Beijing; earlier Qin and Han walls were mostly rammed earth.

Which part of speech is a word that describes an action, like 'run' or 'read'?

Verbs can also show a state of being, such as 'be' or 'exist'.

Which part of speech is a word like 'tall' or 'blue'?

An adjective modifies a noun by adding detail such as size, colour or number; 'tall' and 'blue' both answer the question 'what kind?' about the noun they sit beside.

'Her smile was as bright as the sun' is an example of which figure of speech?

A simile says something is 'like' or 'as' another; a metaphor drops the comparison word and just says 'her smile was the sun'.

'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers' is the classic example of what?

Alliteration is the repetition of the same starting consonant sound in nearby words, here the p of Peter, Piper, picked, peck, pickled and peppers.

Words like 'buzz', 'oink' and 'hiccup' are examples of which figure of speech?

Onomatopoeia is Greek for 'making a name', and it changes by language: a dog says 'woof' in English, 'wan wan' in Japanese and 'guau' in Spanish.

A traditional Japanese haiku has three lines with syllables in what pattern?

A haiku runs 5, 7, 5 syllables across three lines, seventeen in all; classic haiku also include a 'cutting word' and a reference to a season.

In 'The Lightning Thief', Percy Jackson discovers that his father is which Greek god?

Poseidon, god of the sea, claims Percy as his son, which is why Percy can breathe underwater; his favourite teacher Mr. Brunner turns out to be the centaur Chiron.

In 'Wonder' by R. J. Palacio, Auggie Pullman starts fifth grade at which school?

Auggie enters Beecher Prep, a private school in Manhattan, after years of homeschooling by his mother because of repeated surgeries for his Treacher Collins syndrome.

What was the first Harry Potter book retitled for its 1998 US release?

Scholastic renamed it Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for its September 1998 US edition, judging 'philosopher' too dull for children; Bloomsbury had published the UK original on 26 June 1997.

In Louis Sachar's 'Holes', Stanley Yelnats is sent to which correctional boot camp in the Texas desert?

Camp Green Lake, a dried-up lakebed where the boys dig a hole a day, is Stanley's sentence; the book won the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal, and Disney filmed it in 2003.

In Gary Paulsen's 'Hatchet', what leaves 13-year-old Brian Robeson alone in the wilderness?

His plane crashes into a Canadian lake after the pilot of the small bush plane dies of a heart attack; Brian's only tool is the hatchet his mother gave him.

Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, about a Jewish friend's escape in 1943, is set in which country?

Denmark is the setting: Annemarie Johansen's family in Copenhagen hides her friend Ellen Rosen, in a story inspired by the real 1943 rescue of nearly all of Denmark's Jews.

Greg Heffley of Diary of a Wimpy Kid insists his book is what, not a 'diary'?

A journal, Greg insists, because diaries are for girls; Jeff Kinney first posted the story online in 2004, where it drew nearly 20 million views before becoming a book.

Which gas makes up about 78% of the air you breathe?

Oxygen is only about a fifth of the air; most of every breath is nitrogen, which your body simply breathes back out.

Which state became the 50th to join the United States, in August 1959?

Hawaii became the 50th state on 21 August 1959; Alaska had become the 49th that January, so 1959 added two stars to the flag.

The Preamble to the US Constitution begins with which three words?

'We the People of the United States' opens the Preamble, which was mainly written by Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania at the 1787 convention in Philadelphia.

How many members are there in the United States Senate?

There are 100 senators, two from each of the 50 states regardless of population, so Wyoming has as many as California; the House has 435 voting members.

After solid, liquid and gas, what is the fourth state of matter?

Plasma is what stars are made of, so it is actually the most common state of ordinary matter in the universe.

How many fully recognised countries are there in Africa?

Africa has 54 UN member states, more than any other continent; Asia comes next with 48, and South Sudan in 2011 was the most recent addition.

Which part of your bloodstream picks up oxygen in the lungs and carries it around the body?

Red blood cells carry oxygen bound to hemoglobin, the iron-rich protein that also gives them their colour; each cell circulates for about 120 days.

Who wrote the play Romeo and Juliet?

William Shakespeare wrote it around 1595; the tragedy follows two teenagers from the feuding Montague and Capulet families of Verona, Italy.

In the math memory aid PEMDAS, what does the P stand for?

P is Parentheses: brackets are worked first, then Exponents, Multiplication and Division, then Addition and Subtraction; the UK version is BODMAS.

On the Fahrenheit scale, at what temperature does water boil at sea level?

Water boils at 212 °F at sea level and freezes at 32 °F on the scale Daniel Fahrenheit devised in 1724; in Celsius the same points are 100 and 0.

Which country is the largest in the world by area, spanning eleven time zones?

Russia covers about 17 million square kilometres, nearly twice Canada, the runner-up; a train from Moscow to Vladivostok takes about a week.

How many presidents' faces are carved into Mount Rushmore?

They are Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, each head about 60 feet tall.

Which scientist is best known for developing the theory of relativity?

Albert Einstein published special relativity in 1905 and general relativity in 1915; he was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952 and declined.

Marie Curie won Nobel Prizes in which two subjects?

Marie Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on radioactivity and won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on her own, the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.

In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across which ocean?

She crossed the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland in under 15 hours on 20–21 May 1932; she disappeared five years later while trying to fly around the world.

Which gas do plants release as a byproduct of photosynthesis?

Water is split during the process, releasing oxygen into the air.

About what share of the world's evaporation comes from the ocean?

About 86% of global evaporation comes from the oceans, which cover 71% of Earth's surface; roughly 78% of all precipitation falls back onto them.

How many chambers does the human heart have?

They are the left and right atria and the left and right ventricles.

A blue whale's diet consists almost entirely of which tiny creatures?

Krill, shrimp-like crustaceans a few centimetres long, make up almost all of a blue whale's food; a feeding whale can swallow several tonnes a day through its baleen plates.

A cheetah can run at roughly what top speed?

A cheetah tops out at roughly 93–104 km/h (58–65 mph) in sprints of a few hundred metres; its long limbs and flexible spine are built for speed.

Bats are the only mammals capable of what?

Bats are the only mammals capable of true, sustained flight; their wings are elongated finger bones covered by a thin membrane, unlike the gliding of 'flying' squirrels.

Which is the smallest bird species, weighing less than 2 grams?

The bee hummingbird of Cuba weighs about 1.6–2 grams and measures 5–6 cm; the giant hummingbird, the largest of the family, reaches 23 cm.

Which flightless bird is the fastest bird on land, running at about 70 km/h?

Ostriches also lay the largest eggs of any living land animal.

Sloths live in the tropical rainforests of which two regions?

Sloths live only in South and Central America, from Honduras south to Brazil; they spend most of their lives hanging upside down in rainforest trees.

Roughly how many teeth does a great white shark have, continuously replaced?

A great white carries about 300 triangular, serrated teeth in several rows, with new teeth moving forward to replace any that are lost.

Scientists estimate there are roughly how many species of ants in the world?

Scientists put the total at around 22,000 species, of which more than 13,800 have been formally described; ants live on every continent except Antarctica.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A joey is born about the size of a jellybean after roughly a month's gestation, then finishes developing in its mother's pouch for several months.

Which penguin is the largest species, standing about 1.1 metres tall?

The emperor penguin is the largest penguin, about 1.1–1.3 metres tall and around 30 kg; it breeds on Antarctic sea ice through the polar winter.

Why must an owl turn its whole head to look in a new direction?

An owl's eyes are fixed in their sockets: they are tube-shaped rather than round and cannot swivel, so the bird turns its head up to 270 degrees instead.

Which bird builds the largest nest of any North American bird?

The bald eagle builds the biggest nest of any North American bird; one at St Petersburg, Florida measured 2.9 m across and 6 m deep and weighed over two tonnes.

The Sun makes up about what percentage of the Solar System's total mass?

The Sun holds about 99.86% of the Solar System's mass, around 330,000 times that of Earth; Jupiter accounts for most of the rest.

The Moon's diameter is roughly what fraction of Earth's?

The Moon is 3,474 km across, about 27% of Earth's 12,742 km diameter, so roughly one quarter; its surface area is about four times that of the United States.

Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the Solar System at nearly 22 km, rises on which planet?

Mars has Olympus Mons, about two and a half times the height of Everest, and the canyon system Valles Marineris, some 4,000 km long.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot storm has been recorded since which year?

The Great Red Spot has been tracked continuously since 1831, when Samuel Heinrich Schwabe drew it; it may be the same storm Giovanni Cassini sketched in 1665.

Which moon of Saturn is the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere?

Titan is larger than the planet Mercury but less massive.

Which planet is the hottest in the Solar System, with a surface around 464 °C?

Venus averages about 464 °C because its thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere traps heat; Mercury, though closer to the Sun, is only the second hottest.

Which planet spins on its side, with an axial tilt of about 98 degrees?

Uranus rotates tipped over at about 98 degrees, so each pole gets roughly 42 years of sunlight and then 42 of darkness during its 84-year orbit.

Uranus was the first planet discovered with a telescope, by whom in 1781?

William Herschel spotted it from his garden in Bath, England on 13 March 1781, at first taking it for a comet; Uranus is faintly visible to the naked eye.

What is the name of Pluto's largest moon?

Pluto has five known moons; Charon is over half Pluto's diameter.

A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about how far?

Light covers about 9.46 trillion km (5.88 trillion miles) in a year, travelling at 299,792 km per second.

How many patents did Thomas Edison register in the United States?

Edison held 1,093 US patents, a record that stood for decades; his Menlo Park lab is considered the first industrial research laboratory.

Where did the Wright brothers make the first powered airplane flight in 1903?

The site is now known as Kill Devil Hills.

Isaac Newton's laws of motion and gravity appeared in which 1687 book?

Its full title is Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Galileo discovered the four largest moons of which planet in 1610?

Galileo spotted Jupiter's four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, in January 1610 with his new telescope; they are known as the Galilean moons.

Charles Darwin developed his ideas after a five-year voyage aboard which ship?

Darwin sailed on HMS Beagle from December 1831 to October 1836, collecting finches and other specimens in the Galápagos that shaped his theory of natural selection.

Louis Pasteur developed vaccines against anthrax and which deadly disease?

Pasteur's rabies vaccine was first used on nine-year-old Joseph Meister in July 1885 after a dog bite; pasteurization is also named after him.

Marie Curie won her 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering which two elements?

Radium and polonium, both found in 1898 in pitchblende ore; polonium was named for her native Poland and radium for the rays it gave off.

Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining what?

The photoelectric effect: in 1905 Einstein explained how light knocks electrons out of metal by treating light as packets of energy, later called photons; the citation never mentioned relativity.

Benjamin Franklin held which job as the first person in the role for the United States?

Franklin was named the first Postmaster General by the Continental Congress in July 1775; he also wrote Poor Richard's Almanack under the name Richard Saunders.

George Washington served as president during which years?

Washington was inaugurated on 30 April 1789 and stepped down in March 1797 after two terms; he had commanded the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War.

Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre how many days after the surrender at Appomattox?

He was the first US president to be assassinated.

Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase did what to the size of the United States?

The 1803 purchase of about 828,000 square miles roughly doubled the size of the United States; Jefferson was the third president, serving from 1801 to 1809.

Who was the youngest person ever to become US president, at age 42?

Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when McKinley's assassination made him president in September 1901; John F. Kennedy, at 43, was the youngest to be elected.

Franklin D. Roosevelt served as president from 1933 until what?

His first two terms fought the Great Depression; the last two, World War II.

Harriet Tubman made about 13 rescue missions freeing roughly how many enslaved people?

Roughly 70 people across 13 trips between 1850 and 1860, many of them family members; the older figure of 300 traces to an inflated 1869 biography. She later served as a Union Army scout and spy.

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard which shuttle in 1983?

She flew on Challenger's STS-7 mission in June 1983; at 32 she was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space.

Columbus first landed in 1492 on an island in which group?

He landed on 12 October 1492 on an island in the Bahamas that its Taíno inhabitants called Guanahani, which he renamed San Salvador.

Whose company built the metal framework inside the Statue of Liberty?

Gustave Eiffel's company engineered the iron skeleton that carries the copper skin; Frédéric Bartholdi designed the statue, dedicated in 1886.

British forces set fire to the White House during which war?

British troops burned it in August 1814 during the War of 1812, gutting the interior; every president since John Adams has lived there.

Which sculptor oversaw the carving of Mount Rushmore from 1927 to 1941?

Gutzon Borglum led the work from 1927 until his death in March 1941, when his son Lincoln finished it; Borglum had earlier begun the Stone Mountain carving in Georgia.

How long is the Grand Canyon?

The canyon runs 277 miles along the Colorado River, up to 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep.

Which is the largest of the three waterfalls that make up Niagara?

Horseshoe Falls, the Canadian falls, carries about 90% of the Niagara River's flow, and the international border runs through it between Ontario and New York.

The Mississippi River traditionally begins at which body of water in Minnesota?

It flows 2,340 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Which is NOT one of the five Great Lakes?

Lake Champlain, between Vermont and New York, is not one of the five; the Great Lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario.

Yellowstone, the first national park, is mainly in which state?

About 96% of Yellowstone lies in Wyoming, with small portions in Montana and Idaho; it was established in 1872 as the first national park.

A 2020 survey measured Mount Everest at what height?

The joint China–Nepal survey announced 8,848.86 metres in December 2020, about 86 cm above the long-used figure of 8,848 metres.

Antarctica is on average the coldest, driest and what else of the continents?

Antarctica is also the windiest continent: katabatic winds pouring off its ice sheet, which averages 1.9 km thick, have gusted past 320 km/h at Commonwealth Bay.

Apart from Antarctica, which is the driest continent on Earth?

Australia is the driest inhabited continent: about 70% of it is arid or semi-arid, and only Antarctica receives less precipitation. Aboriginal Australians arrived 50,000 to 65,000 years ago.

How is Canada divided politically?

Canada has ten provinces and three territories, the newest being Nunavut, carved from the Northwest Territories in 1999; it also has the world's longest coastline.

Brazil is a federation of how many states plus a Federal District?

Brazil has 26 states plus the Federal District, home to the capital Brasília, inaugurated in 1960; Tocantins, created in 1988, is the newest state.

All the fortifications of the Great Wall of China total roughly what length?

A 2012 state survey counted 21,196 km of walls, trenches and natural barriers built over more than two thousand years, spread across 15 provinces from the Yalu River to Xinjiang.

Which Roman ruler began building the Colosseum in AD 72?

Vespasian began the amphitheatre around AD 72 on the site of Nero's palace lake, paid for with spoils from the Jewish War; his son Titus opened it in AD 80.

The Eiffel Tower was built as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair to mark what?

The 1889 Exposition Universelle marked 100 years since the French Revolution of 1789; the 300-metre tower went up in just over two years as its entrance arch.

In 2012, the London clock tower housing Big Ben was renamed after whom?

It became the Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee; the name Big Ben strictly refers to the Great Bell inside.

Which living animals are classified as dinosaurs, having survived the extinction 66 million years ago?

Birds are living theropod dinosaurs, descended from small feathered relatives of Velociraptor in the Late Jurassic; Archaeopteryx, about 150 million years old, is the classic transitional fossil.

Tyrannosaurus rex lived on which island continent, now western North America?

Laramidia was the western landmass left when the Western Interior Seaway split North America in two; T. rex roamed it 68–66 million years ago, preying on hadrosaurs and young armoured herbivores.

Volcanoes of the Pacific Ring of Fire are caused by what kind of plate boundary?

Convergent plates: around the Ring of Fire oceanic plates dive beneath others in subduction zones, and the melting slab feeds volcanoes; mid-ocean ridges, by contrast, erupt where plates diverge.

The most extreme tornadoes have produced wind speeds of roughly what?

Doppler radar measured winds of about 300 mph in the 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado in Oklahoma; such storms can be more than 2 miles wide and travel over 60 miles.

Air around a lightning flash heats to roughly what temperature?

Lightning heats its channel to about 30,000 °C, roughly five times the surface of the Sun; the sudden expansion of that air creates thunder.

How many positive divisors does every prime number have?

A prime has exactly two positive divisors, 1 and itself; that is why 1, with only one divisor, is not prime, and why 2 is the only even prime.

The internal angles of any octagon add up to how many degrees?

An octagon's eight interior angles total 1080 degrees, from the formula (n − 2) × 180; a pentagon's add up to 540 and a hexagon's to 720.

Which part of speech is a word like 'quickly' or 'gently'?

Adverbs answer questions such as how, when, where and to what extent.

What are words like 'to', 'too' and 'two' called?

Homophones means 'same sound'; ones spelled differently are also called heterographs, while homographs, like 'lead' the metal and 'lead' the verb, are the reverse.

'I've told you a million times' is an example of which figure of speech?

Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration for effect; 'a million times' is not meant literally, unlike personification, which gives human traits to things.

In Roald Dahl's Matilda, who is the tyrannical headmistress?

Miss Trunchbull, a former Olympic hammer-thrower who swings pupils by their pigtails, runs Crunchem Hall; the kind teacher Miss Honey turns out to be her niece.

In James and the Giant Peach, what are the names of James's two cruel aunts?

Aunt Spiker, thin and bony, and Aunt Sponge, fat and greedy, are squashed flat by the peach as it rolls away; a mysterious old man had given James the bag of magic crystals.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published in which year?

Geoffrey Bles published it in October 1950, the first of the seven Chronicles of Narnia to be written and released; The Magician's Nephew later became the prequel.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo joins Gandalf and how many dwarves on their quest?

Thirteen dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield, with Bilbo as the 'lucky fourteenth', set out to reclaim the treasure of the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug.

Green Eggs and Ham was written on a bet limiting Dr. Seuss to how many words?

Just 50 different words: publisher Bennett Cerf bet Dr. Seuss $50 that he could not do it, and the 1960 book became one of his best sellers.

In Bridge to Terabithia, Jesse becomes friends with Leslie after she does what?

Katherine Paterson's novel won the Newbery Medal in 1978.

In The Giver, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen for which role?

Jonas is selected as the Receiver of Memory at the Ceremony of Twelve and trains with the Giver, who holds all the memories his society erased through 'Sameness'.

Island of the Blue Dolphins is based on a real woman left alone on an island for how long?

Juana Maria survived alone on San Nicolas Island off California from 1835 to 1853, eighteen years, before being brought to Santa Barbara, where she died weeks later.

In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murry travels through space and time to rescue whom?

Madeleine L'Engle's novel won the 1963 Newbery Medal.

Anne of Green Gables is set in which Canadian province?

Prince Edward Island, author L. M. Montgomery's home, is the setting; orphan Anne Shirley is sent by mistake to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert's farm at Avonlea.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in which German city?

Beethoven was born in Bonn in December 1770 and moved to Vienna at 21; his Ninth Symphony premiered there in 1824.

Mozart was born in 1756 in which city?

Mozart was born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756, where his father Leopold was a court musician; he later settled in Vienna and died there in 1791.

Van Gogh created some 2,100 artworks; roughly how many were oil paintings?

About 860 oil paintings, alongside more than 1,300 watercolours, drawings and sketches; most of the oils date from the last two years of his life, 1888–1890.

Picasso's painting Guernica protests a bombing during which war?

The Spanish Civil War: German and Italian warplanes supporting Franco bombed the Basque town of Guernica on 26 April 1937, and Picasso painted his mural for that year's Paris Exposition.

Who founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894?

Pierre de Coubertin, a French baron, founded the IOC at the Sorbonne in June 1894; the first modern Games followed in Athens in 1896.

Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in which city?

Naismith, a Canadian-born gym teacher, nailed two peach baskets to the balcony of the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts in December 1891.

Which man is known as the 'Father of American Football' for rules he drew up from 1880?

Walter Camp of Yale drew up the rules from 1880, establishing the snap, the line of scrimmage, eleven-a-side teams and the system of downs.

Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented a way to mass-produce what?

It began the Printing Revolution in Europe.

Papermaking was developed in China at least as early as 105 CE by which court official?

Cai Lun, a eunuch official at the Han court, reported his paper made from bark, hemp, rags and fishing nets to the emperor in 105 CE; paper-like fragments from the 2nd century BCE have also been found.

Plasma makes up about what percentage of blood?

Plasma is about 55% of blood by volume, with red cells making up most of the remaining 45%; plasma itself is about 92% water.

Gold's chemical symbol Au comes from which Latin word?

Au is short for aurum, the Latin for gold; the metal has atomic number 79 and was among the first worked by humans.

Diamond is a mineral form of which element?

Diamond is pure carbon, its atoms bonded in a rigid lattice that makes it the hardest natural material; graphite is another solid form of the same element.

Which element is the lightest and most abundant in the universe?

Hydrogen, with a single proton, is the lightest element and makes up about 75% of all normal matter by mass; helium is a distant second.

What determines which chemical element an atom is?

Any atom with 11 protons is sodium; 29 protons is copper.

Which four bases make up the 'letters' of DNA?

Cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine pair up across the double helix, C with G and A with T; RNA swaps thymine for uracil.

Which disease was eradicated worldwide thanks to vaccination?

Inoculation against smallpox was practised in China as early as the 16th century.

How many base units does the modern metric system (SI) have?

They are the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole and candela.

The Celsius scale is named after an astronomer from which country?

Anders Celsius of Uppsala, Sweden, proposed the scale in 1742 with 0 as boiling and 100 as freezing; it was flipped to its modern form after his death in 1744.

How many Fahrenheit degrees separate water's freezing and boiling points?

180 degrees: water freezes at 32 °F and boils at 212 °F, whereas the same span is 100 degrees on the Celsius scale.

About how long is Earth's equator?

The equator is about 40,075 km around, slightly more than a circle through the poles because Earth bulges at its middle; it lies at 0 degrees latitude.

In the usual seven-continent model, which continent is the second largest by area?

Africa, at about 30 million square km, is second only to Asia's 44 million; Australia is the smallest, and some models merge Europe and Asia into a single Eurasia.

Which organ is the largest in the human body, making up roughly 16% of body mass?

The skin is the largest organ at roughly 16% of body mass and about 2 square metres in area, built from the epidermis, the dermis and the underlying hypodermis.