8 Underrated Scientific Facts I Regret Not Learning In High School
If only I knew these, I would have been a smarter Kid!
Do you ever read something on the internet and immediately think, “God I wish I knew this in high school!”? Well, that is about to happen to you right now! Here we have listed 15 of the most life-changing facts that you may be unaware of, so buckle up and get ready to have your mind blown.
1- One letter that is just way out of the element?
The letter ‘J’ does not show up in the periodic table at all. Don’t believe us? Check for yourself!
If only I had known this, I would have been the jazziest kid in my chem class.
2- The song “Radioactive” was actually written about bananas
Okay, that isn’t entirely true. But bananas are radioactive! They contain potassium, and since this element is known to decay, it also makes bananas radioactive. You don’t need to fret though, it is nothing close to fatal.
For sure would have made one heck of a science school project!
3- Fungi are our distant and strange relatives!
Cambridge University conducted a study in 2015 that suggested that the genes mankind evolved from may have originated from plants. Due to these suggestions, scholars agreed that at least 1% of the human genome was derived from plants.
Gives a deeper meaning to the popular school jock’s saying, “I’m just a fun guy”
4- It’s raining cats and dogs….and diamonds?
Our Milky Way shares our love for diamonds. Research has looked into the potential of planets such as Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn hold for producing diamonds. These planets have such immense pressures that they can crystalize carbon atoms and convert them into diamonds, much like we do with coal!
Researchers were able to accurately replicate the atmosphere of Uranus and Neptune to prove their theory.
Other scientists have theories that about 2.2 million pounds of diamonds must rain on parts of Saturn annually.
Now at least you know where to move in case those student loans start kicking in! (winks)
5- The only mammal to fly
While humans spent decades researching wing architecture and anatomy, there is one mammal that doesn’t require aircraft to be among the clouds; bats.
Bats are winged mammals, who otherwise are very much like the others. They give birth and breastfeed their young but these creatures also are blessed with natural wings!
6- Popping knuckles is not as bad as your teachers made it out to be
While certainly a nuisance mid-lecture, popping knuckles have very few long-term side effects. A study showed that popping the knuckles of one hand while not of the other for 60 years left little difference between them both. The probability of developing arthritis if you do or do not pop your knuckles is easily dismissable.
Knowing this may have saved me the amount of time I spent in detention for being a menace during lectures and the stressful nights I spent awake thinking about crooked fingers at 70.
7- You are Half-Bacteria
Your friend may not have meant to be on target when they jokingly called you a germ back in school, but they were right! You are just as much germ as you are human. Inside of you resides about 39 trillion bacteria and 30 trillion human cells. While previously, based on more vague data, the estimated ratio of bacterial to human cells was 10:1, this new research is believed to be more true to the actual number.
Knowing this would have given me brownie points with the science teacher, and maybe then I would have made it to the science club!
8- Men likely to be colorblind than a woman!
Hey, you already kind of know this! While women can differentiate between 100 different shades of lipsticks, some of which are honestly the same color with just different tones, men tend to stick to the primary colors.
The reason for this is genetic, the genes coding for color blindness are on the X chromosome. While females have two X chromosomes, men only have one. This makes them more susceptible to the condition. Even if a woman has one faulty X chromosome, the other can still be normal leading the woman to be a carrier of colorblindness but she won’t suffer from the condition. Whereas for men, even inheriting one faulty X chromosome makes them colorblind, as they only have one X chromosome.
Interesting right? Genetics are so cool, understanding them gives you an edge over your classmates, not to mention how much more sense everything makes once you know the fundamentals of the things that make you who you are.
I don’t know about you all, but science was always my favorite subject. It is always fascinating to learn about how our world works, and how we work. Let me know which fact surprised you the most!
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