Questions about how the earth works are about as old as the earth itself. That’s probably because it’s always fascinating to learn about what makes our planet go round! In fact, I still have my old, doodled-upon, dog-eared copy of the question-and-answer book How Come? from when I was in fourth grade (aww). So, in celebration of Earth Month (April!) and the daffodils I saw blooming on my way to work this morning, here are some fun facts about our wonderful Mother from another book in the series, How Come? Planet Earth:
Tall, anvil-shaped clouds usually mean a thunderstorm is on its way.
The largest lava flow in history was in Iceland in 1783. The vent that the lava pushed through was nearly 20 miles across. The lava streamed 40 miles from one end of the vent and 30 miles from the other end. Scooped up, the lava would have filled a box 2 miles wide by 2 miles high.
Occasionally, in places like the Arctic, ice fogs may form. Walk through an ice fog, and you will be surrounded by tiny, glittering ice crystals.
The Amazon River pours out more than 456 million cubic feet of water each minute.
Honeybees may eat up to 30 pounds of the honey stored in their hives over a long winter.
Terpenes are what give pine and fir trees their Christmas-tree fragrance; orange peels get their scent from terpenes, too.
A patch of quicksand isn’t really a bottomless pit. The average “pit” is only a few inches to a few feet deep.
The dinosaur with the longest name–micropachycephalosaurus–was one of the smallest dinosaurs, a mere 20 inches long. (Its name means “small, thick-headed lizard.”)
If all the ice covering the Antarctic and Greenland suddenly melted, oceans all over the world would rise about 215 feet, enough to cover a 21-story building.
Birds travel routes scientists call “flyways,” nearly as regular as the routes cars take on a drive south. There are several big flyways crossing North America, including one down each coast of the United States.
At night, when there is no light, plants actually behave more like we do: absorbing some oxygen from the air and giving off carbon dioxide as a waste product. In daylight, plants still “breathe in” a little oxygen, but mostly they photosynthesize, giving off far more oxygen than they take in.
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