Have you ever wondered, Is that even possible? Or, was that statement really true? Amazing facts can sound too incredible to believe.
Our projects will show some of these amazing facts and feats. Take for instance the fact that "Humans breathe about 23,000 times a day!" If you measured a person breathing for one minute you may find that they breathe about 20 times. That same person would breathe about 1200 times in an hour, and 28,800 times in a day. The Math and Data Displays behind the fact helps us to judge whether this sounds believable or not.
We will be able to find information to support the amazing facts and feats from books, computers sources, or teachers/librarians/adults that we know. For example, a website called, Interesting Facts lists some Science related facts:
• Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.
• Koalas sleep an average of 22 hours a day, two hours more than the sloth.
• Light would take .13 seconds to travel around the Earth.
• The largest desert in the world, the Sahara, is 3,500,000 square miles.
21facts.com also has some interesting facts about the Civil War that you may or may not believe?
• The total deaths in the United States Civil War was over 1,000,000 people
• During the Battle of Cold Harbor in the Civil War there were 7,000 people that died within 20 min.
• There were over 550 generals who served during the Civil War.
• A Confederate prison camp called Andersonville had 12,000 people die.
Books like the World Almanac, Atlases, as well as Encyclopedias could be used to find out more about these amazing facts. There is often a lot of background information and facts that can help to make the amazing facts more believable. On the other had the research often helps us point out errors or misconceptions. Either way our projects will have fun with the investigations.
I like how this website, (http://www.eszlinger.com/facts/humanbodyfacts.html) shows the math behind some amazing science facts. For example, it breaks down the unit rate. "Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin" The fact that we loose 1.5 pounds a year helps the amazing fact seem more believable.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to check out this fact on other websites as well. Answers.com equated the 105 lbs. lost in a lifetime to about 2/3 of a person's body weight. In this way the amount of skin shed becomes an equation of 2/3 times a person's weight(w).