Science and technology
286
Google processes more than
5 billion
searches every day.
The smallest particle scientists have
found is the quark. It is so small that
nobody has seen one, and we only
know it is there because of its effect
on things around it.The number zero
was first used in India
around 875 bce.
The smallest Standard International
(SI) unit of weight is the yoctogram,
which was added to weigh sub-atomic
particles. The largest unit, the
yottagram, is used to weigh stars
and planets – Earth weighs in at
6,000 yottagrams.A jiffy is a unit of time equal
to one hundredth of a second.
The Internet
domain name
business.com
was bought by Marc
Ostrofsky in 1999 for
$7.5 million.
The first ever email was sent
by American Ray Tomlinson
in 1971. The message was
sent from one computer
to another right next to it.
The study of large numbers is called googology.
One byte in a computer’s memory is made up of
eight bits. A group of four bits is called a nibble.With the help of computers, more recorded
data has been produced in the last 10 years
than in all of previous recorded history.Hydrogen is the lightest, simplest, and
by far the most common element in the
Universe – 93 per cent of all atoms are
hydrogen atoms.In June 2018, Summit
became the world’s fastest
supercomputer. It can operate
at a speed of 200 petaflops –
that is 200 million billion
calculations per second.There are six kinds of
quarks, which scientists
have named up, down,
top, bottom, charm,
and strange.
Atoms are mostly made of empty space. If the
nucleus were a fly in the middle of a football
pitch, the electrons would be like dust
particles flying around in the stands.A proton is 1,835
times heavier
than an electron.The densest naturally-
occurring element, osmium,
weighs 23 g/cm^3 (13 oz/in^3 ).Scientists in Europe are
developing a laser that will
produce light ten trillion
times as bright as sunlight.Thomas Babbage came up with his idea for
a computer when he was just 19 years old.Airships float because
they are filled
with helium,
a gas that is
many times
lighter
than air.
At atmospheric pressure, carbon
dioxide turns from a solid into a
gas, without melting, at -78^0 C (-108^0 F).When a gas condenses into a
liquid, it takes up, on average,1,300
times less space.
The metal lithium is so light that it floats on water.Diamonds are formed from carbon
that is compressed 150 km (90 miles)
below Earth’s surface.Tungsten has the highest
melting point of any metal.
It remains a solid until the
temperature reaches 3,422oC
(6,192oF), when it finally melts.
Acid rain caused by industrial pollution
was first noticed in the Midlands, UK, in
the 19 th century.Pure water has a neutral pH of 7, but
rainwater is acidic, with a pH of 6 or less.286_287_ScienceFacts.indd 286 03/01/19 12:11 PM