Here are 50 facts from FunFact's “Science” topic, all checked. Each one cites its source (sciencehistory.org, nobelprize.org, naturalhistory.si.edu…) and the date it was checked. This topic is free in the app.
About 7 meters (23 ft) tall and weighing over 6 metric tons (13,000 lb), it dates from the Gupta dynasty, around AD 400–450.
Its phosphorus content helped form a thin protective layer of oxides and phosphates that slows corrosion, aided by Delhi's dry climate. It is not magic iron: it is simply protected by that layer.
Source: Britannica — Iron pillar of Delhi · Checked on October 24, 2026
Magnetism always comes as an inseparable north–south pair at the macroscopic scale.
No matter how many times you cut a magnet into pieces, each fragment instantly forms a new north pole and a new south pole.
Source: American Physical Society — Magnetic Monopoles · Checked on October 24, 2026
In 1984, Barry Marshall drank Helicobacter pylori; a few days later he had gastritis. He received the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Robin Warren.
Until then, stress and spicy food were blamed, and the medical community was doubtful. Marshall treated himself with antibiotics. A risky experiment that should absolutely not be repeated; his work later made it possible to cure ulcers.
Source: Nobelprize.org · Checked on October 24, 2026
On April 16, 1943, chemist Albert Hofmann felt strange effects after handling a small dose. Three days later, he cycled home.
On April 19, he took a small dose on purpose. Wartime restrictions banned cars, hence the bicycle. Gripped by anxiety, he thought he had gone mad, then he saw “fountains of colors.” April 19 has remained “Bicycle Day.”
Source: swissinfo.ch · Checked on October 26, 2026
He collected taxes for the Ferme générale, a tax-collecting body; condemned with 27 other tax farmers, he was executed in Paris on May 8, 1794, at age 50.
As early as 1795, his property was returned to his widow, the conviction having been recognized as unjust. The line “the Republic has no need of scientists,” attributed to the court, is probably a legend. The mathematician Lagrange reportedly said it would take a century to produce a head like that.
Source: Science History Institute — Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier · Checked on October 24, 2026
He shared the physics prize with his father for analyzing the structure of crystals with X-rays.
Born in Australia in 1890, he worked with his father at Cambridge. He remains the youngest winner of a science prize: the youngest winners in chemistry and medicine were 35 and 31.
Source: Nobelprize.org · Checked on October 26, 2026
Jacques Dubochet (University of Lausanne) shared the prize for cryo-electron microscopy, which freezes molecules in vitrified water.
In the vacuum of the microscope, water evaporates. It had to be frozen without forming crystals, like glass. “We are bags of water,” he joked. His work was nearly 30 years old when the prize came.
Source: Université de Lausanne (UNIL) · Checked on October 26, 2026
Nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier,” its rapid melting worries climate scientists.
About 120 km (75 mi) wide, it supplied roughly 4% of global sea level rise between 1992 and 2017; its complete loss would raise the oceans by about 65 cm (26 in).
Source: International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration · Checked on October 24, 2026
The DNA of every bacterium, plant, or animal is built on the same four fundamental nitrogenous bases.
Whether an amoeba, a sequoia, or a human, the letters A, C, G, and T combine to encode the whole of our planet’s biological diversity.
Source: National Human Genome Research Institute — Genetic Code Basics · Checked on October 24, 2026
The history of life on Earth is marked by major mass extinction crises.
The fossil record shows that the living world has gone through five major extinction crises, wiping out whole swaths of biodiversity before rebounding.
Source: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Mass Extinctions · Checked on October 24, 2026
At the Sun’s core, protons do not have enough energy to overcome their electric repulsion; they get through it by tunneling.
In classical physics, fusion would not happen at 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million °F). George Gamow paved the way in 1928 by explaining alpha radioactivity. Because these crossings are rare, the Sun burns through its hydrogen slowly, over about 10 billion years.
Source: ScienceDaily (TU Wien) — Fusion by strong lasers · Checked on October 24, 2026
The real vapor is in the transparent zone just at the spout's exit; the white appears when it cools and condenses.
The same phenomenon produces fog, clouds and the white plume of cooling towers: they are suspended droplets of liquid water, not vapor.
Source: Indiana Public Media — A Moment of Science: Clouds in the Kitchen · Checked on October 24, 2026
The geometric arrangement of atoms radically changes a mineral's physical properties.
While graphite's carbon atoms form slippery, crumbly sheets, those of diamond form an ultra-rigid tetrahedral lattice, the hardest material on Earth.
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry — Carbon Allotropes · Checked on October 24, 2026
On September 19, 1783, in front of King Louis XVI at Versailles, the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon carried the three animals for about eight minutes.
They had to check that people could survive in the air. On November 21, 1783, Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes became the first humans to fly freely, for more than twenty minutes over Paris.
Source: Château de Versailles — Le premier vol en montgolfière · Checked on October 24, 2026
Cement hydrates and forms crystals that fuse together; the reference strength is measured at 28 days, but it keeps changing afterward.
Concrete that dried too fast would crack and stay brittle, so on construction sites it is sprayed with water or protected. That is what makes it possible to pour bridge piers or dikes directly into the water.
Source: Encyclopædia Universalis — Béton : le béton durci · Checked on October 24, 2026
It took 277 cell-fusion attempts at the Roslin Institute to get a single viable lamb, from a mammary gland cell.
Hence her name, a nod to the singer Dolly Parton. Dolly had six lambs naturally, then was euthanized in 2003 at age six because of a lung disease. Her birth showed that an adult cell can become “young” again.
Source: University of Edinburgh, Roslin Institute — The Life of Dolly · Checked on October 24, 2026
Demineralized water is a very good insulator, whereas tap water or seawater lets current through thanks to its dissolved ions.
Our body, rich in water and salts, conducts electricity well. That is why you should keep any electrical appliance not designed for it away from a bathtub or shower.
Source: USGS Water Science School — Conductivity, electrical conductance, and water · Checked on October 24, 2026
The chemist Claude Louis Berthollet discovered the bleaching properties of chlorine in 1785, which were put to use by a factory set up in Javel.
Javel was west of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, and is now part of the 15th arrondissement (district). The name stuck for this disinfecting and whitening product, and a metro station still bears it.
Source: Paris Zigzag — L'eau de Javel, une solution d'origine parisienne · Checked on October 24, 2026
A University of Wyoming team inserted the spider silk gene into goats: of 7 kids born in February 2010, 3 carried the gene.
Raising spiders to harvest their silk is impossible: they eat each other. The idea is therefore to purify the protein from the milk, to make very strong threads, notably for medicine.
Source: Phys.org (Université du Wyoming) · Checked on October 26, 2026
The circular shape of rainbows is only visible from the sky, from an airplane.
Sunlight is refracted and reflected by raindrops, forming a perfect cone around the observer's eye, which makes a complete circle when seen from the air.
Source: National Weather Service USA — Circular Rainbows · Checked on October 24, 2026
Fungus-growing ants have practiced a complex form of agriculture for millions of years.
These insects cut leaves to feed underground fungus gardens, which they then harvest, long before human agriculture was invented.
Source: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Fungus-Farming Ants · Checked on October 24, 2026
The bubble's wall is only a few hundred nanometers thick, over a hundred times thinner than a hair.
Light reflects off both faces of the film and the two reflections combine. Depending on thickness, some colors reinforce each other and others cancel out. The hue changes as the film thins, just before the bubble pops.
Source: Experimentarium — Colours in soap bubbles · Checked on October 24, 2026
Above ground, its trunk renews itself every few centuries.
Known as Old Tjikko, this spruce renews its above-ground trunk every few centuries, while its underground roots have kept cloning the same organism since the Ice Age.
Source: Umeå University Sweden — Oldest Trees · Checked on October 24, 2026
This popular fruit contains an unstable isotope of potassium that emits tiny amounts of radiation.
The potassium-40 in bananas is radioactive, which even inspired physicists to coin a humorous unit of measurement called the “banana equivalent dose.”
Source: World Nuclear Association — Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material · Checked on October 24, 2026
The Jungfraujoch station (3,454 m / 11,332 ft) is the highest in Europe. The Sphinx laboratory sits right next to it, at 3,572 m (11,719 ft).
At the Sphinx, pressure has been measured since 1933. The gust record there since 1981 is 267 km/h (166 mph, January 6, 1998), and the temperature has ranged from -36.6 °C (-33.9 °F) in 1971 to +12.8 °C (55.0 °F) in 2012.
Source: Fondation HFSJG (station de recherche du Jungfraujoch) · Checked on October 26, 2026
It is an “extra-spectral” color: we perceive it when the eye receives red and blue together, two colors that aren’t next to each other in the spectrum.
Red and violet sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, so we never see this pinkish purple in a rainbow. Screens produce it by mixing red and blue at equal intensity.
Source: MIT — Color Theory · Checked on October 26, 2026
Pockets of salt-saturated water form genuine deadly pools on the seafloor.
Denser than the surrounding water, these salty brines form distinct basins at the bottom of seafloor depressions, instantly killing any fish that stray into them.
Source: Oceanography Society — Deep Sea Brine Pools · Checked on October 24, 2026
Soap molecules have a water-loving head and a fat-loving tail: they insert into the virus's envelope and break it apart.
SARS-CoV-2 is a virus “enveloped” in lipids. Scrubbing for twenty seconds with soap thus helps inactivate it, then water carries it away. Non-enveloped viruses resist better, but rubbing and rinsing remove them too.
Source: Futura-Sciences · Checked on October 24, 2026
Édouard Van Beneden, of the University of Liège, studied the egg of a parasitic worm of horses, the roundworm Ascaris, one variety of which has only two chromosomes.
He showed that fertilization is the fusion of two half-nuclei, one from the sperm, the other from the egg, each carrying half the chromosomes. This work prepared the way for understanding meiosis, a name coined in 1905.
Source: Encyclopædia Universalis · Checked on October 26, 2026
With at least 10.5% chromium, steel gets covered with a film of chromium oxide a few nanometers thick, which re-forms when it is scratched.
This layer disappears if the stainless steel is deprived of oxygen or attacked by certain products (concentrated bleach, very salty water), and it can then develop pits. Also, 18/10 stainless steel cutlery doesn't always stick to a magnet.
Source: Cedinox — Stainless steel protects itself · Checked on October 24, 2026
Yet it fits inside a nucleus only a few thousandths of a millimeter across, thanks to very tight coiling.
DNA wraps around proteins called histones, then folds into 46 chromosomes. Laid end to end, the DNA of all the cells of an adult would make the round trip between Earth and the Sun many times, but this calculation depends on estimates of the number of cells.
Source: eCampusOntario – Biologie cellulaire · Checked on October 24, 2026
He measured that these waves travel at the speed of light and studied their reflection and refraction, confirming Maxwell's theory.
He is credited with the phrase “It's of no use”: according to Wikipedia, when asked about applications, he reportedly answered “Nothing, I suppose.” Today his waves are used in radio, Wi-Fi, and telecommunications.
Source: Electrical Communication — Pioneers of Electrical Communication part 5 – Heinrich Rudolph Hertz · Checked on October 26, 2026
In 1719, René-Antoine de Réaumur noticed that wasps build their nests from chewed wood and suggested making paper from it.
At the time, paper was made from rags, which were running short. It would take more than a century for wood paper to be industrialized, in the 19th century. Réaumur is also the scientist who gave his name to a temperature scale.
Source: University of Houston Engines of Our Ingenuity — No. 1052: Of Wasps Making Paper · Checked on October 24, 2026
These sounds are passed down from mother to daughter, like a culture.
Each orca clan makes specific whistles and clicks that other groups don’t necessarily understand, forming truly distinct acoustic cultures.
Source: Whale and Dolphin Conservation — Orca Dialects · Checked on October 24, 2026
Grand'Maison, in the Isère département, can deliver up to about 1,800 MW from its turbines, roughly the power of two nuclear reactors.
When electricity is plentiful, the plant pumps water from a lower lake to an upper lake. At peak hours, the water flows back down and spins the turbines. About 75 to 80% of the energy is returned.
Source: Futura-Sciences — STEP : qu'est-ce que c'est ? · Checked on October 24, 2026
A chlorine product mixed with an acid gives off dichlorine, a gas that irritates the eyes and airways.
Never mix two household products, and ventilate the room when you use them. If you have trouble breathing or feel unwell, get out into fresh air and call 15 (France's emergency medical number) or a poison control center.
Source: INRS · Checked on October 24, 2026
An underground mycelium network spreads over square kilometers in the forest.
In Oregon, a honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae), a tree parasite, covers roughly nine square kilometers (3.5 square miles) of forest and probably weighs thousands of metric tons. It is thought to be at least 2,000 years old.
Source: USDA — A Fungus Among Us (Oregon's Humongous Fungus) · Checked on October 24, 2026
His ammonia synthesis, scaled up by Carl Bosch, supplies the nitrogen in many fertilizers; he also directed the use of chlorine at Ypres in 1915.
Haber received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which caused controversy. By some estimates, between 40 and 50% of the world’s population is fed thanks to synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. A vital invention, but one also tied to the history of explosives.
Source: Science History Institute — Fritz Haber · Checked on October 24, 2026
He realized afterward that it was the lesser rhea, known as Darwin's rhea, and saved its head, neck, legs, one wing and some feathers.
He sent these remains to the botanist John Stevens Henslow in Cambridge. In 1837, ornithologist John Gould described the bird under the name Rhea darwinii, now considered a synonym of Rhea pennata.
Source: Wikipédia (Darwin's rhea) · Checked on October 26, 2026
The low frequencies emitted by cetaceans take advantage of layers of water to carry far.
Thanks to a deep underwater sound channel, the calls of large rorqual whales travel across entire ocean basins without losing their signal.
Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — Whale Vocalizations · Checked on October 24, 2026
With composer George Antheil, she filed US patent No. 2,292,387, based on synchronized frequency hopping.
The US Navy did not use the idea at the time. The frequency-hopping principle she had imagined turns up later in wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, but her patent is not their direct origin.
Source: The National WWII Museum New Orleans — Hedy Lamarr's WWII Invention Helped Shape Modern Tech · Checked on October 24, 2026
Outside, it can be −45 °C (−49 °F); inside, body heat alone keeps the temperature between −7 °C and 16 °C (19 °F and 61 °F).
Packed snow contains many air pockets, which slow the passage of heat. It's the same principle as clothing that traps air around the body.
Source: PBS NOVA — Arctic Passage: Igloo answers · Checked on October 26, 2026
The chemist Roy Plunkett (DuPont) found that the gas had turned into a white powder, very slippery and chemically inert.
The first nonstick pan was born in France: engineer Marc Grégoire bonded PTFE to an aluminum pan in 1954, then founded Tefal. Today, PTFE is also used in seals and cables.
Source: Science History Institute — Roy J. Plunkett · Checked on October 24, 2026
A University of Bristol study (Science Advances, February 2024) shows that tiny wax structures scatter blue and UV light, despite the red skin.
Without this wax, the fruit's skin would look dark red. It is a “structural” color, due to the shape of the material rather than a dye. The same effect applies to sloes, damson plums and juniper berries.
Source: Université de Bristol · Checked on October 26, 2026
In his “Essay on the Philosophy of the Sciences,” Ampère used it for the art of governing; Norbert Wiener took it up in 1948 for the science of machines.
The word comes from the Greek kubernêtikê, “the art of steering a ship.” Ampère, whose name became the unit of electric current, was also interested in the classification of knowledge and the philosophy of science.
Source: La Jaune et la Rouge — Étymologie à propos de la robotique et de la cybernétique · Checked on October 24, 2026
Earth receives about 170,000 terawatts of solar power, while world energy consumption is around 20 terawatts.
But solar energy is diffuse, intermittent and unevenly distributed. About 30% is reflected back into space, and solar panels capture only a fraction of the rest, with an efficiency of 15 to 25%.
Source: MIT News — Shining brightly · Checked on October 24, 2026
The Sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away.
This wonderful mathematical proportion means the Moon covers the Sun's disk exactly during perfect alignments, creating total darkness.
Source: NASA Eclipse Website — Geometric Coincidence · Checked on October 24, 2026
His experiments launched the study of electricity in living tissue. He spoke of “animal electricity.”
His rival Alessandro Volta thought the contractions came from the metals used, and “galvanism” takes its name from Galvani. Galvani's work was among the things Mary Shelley read before “Frankenstein.”
Source: newadvent.org — CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Luigi Galvani · Checked on October 26, 2026
These huge marine mammals feed mostly on very small prey.
Instead of teeth, baleen whales have frayed, horn-like plates that trap tons of krill and plankton while letting the swallowed water escape through them.
Source: Smithsonian Ocean Portal — Baleen Whales Feeding · Checked on October 24, 2026
Defined as the volume of a kilogram of pure water, the liter was worth about 1.000028 dm³.
In 1964, the liter was redefined as another name for the cubic decimeter, which removed the gap of 28 millionths: invisible to the eye, but a nuisance for precision measurements.
Source: BIPM — Declaration 1 of the 3rd CGPM (1901) · Checked on October 24, 2026
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