Bet you didn't know that...

My book-of-the month summary for January is “The Handy Science Answer Book” (Visible Ink Press, 1994, 523 pages).

Compiled by the Science and Technology Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, it provides answers to more than 1,200 frequently asked questions.

Excerpts:

• Heating water drives out air bubbles. As a result, heated water forms denser ice — which is why hot-water pipes burst before cold-water pipes.

• Dimples remove air drag on golf balls by making air cling to them longer, reducing the wake effect. which drains their energy. A dimpled ball will travel up to 300 yards, compared to 70 yards for a smooth ball.

• Colors that blend to form white light are red, orange, yellow, green, blue indigo and violet.

• The center of the sun is about 27 million degrees. Its mass is 330,000 times that of Earth. Currently 4.5 billion years old, within 5 billion years it will burn its hydrogen fuel (currently 73.5 percent) into helium (currently 24.9 percent), change from a yellow dwarf into a red giant, extend its diameter beyond Venus and incinerate Earth.

• If a large blood vessel is lacerated, a person can bleed to death in less than a minute.

• A 100-pound man (or catfish) on Earth would weigh 16 pounds on the moon.

• The center of Earth is about 3,956 miles down, and the temperature is about 7,000 degrees.

• Albert Heineken designed a beer bottle to be used when empty as a glass brick.

• Groundhogs have accurately predicted the weather 28 percent of the time on Groundhog Day.

• Five percent of sunlight can penetrate clean ocean water to a depth of 262 feet.

• Temperature can be determined from the frequency of cricket chirps in 14 seconds plus 40.

• The temperature of a lightning bolt is about 54,000 degrees — six times hotter than the sun’s surface.

• Recycling one aluminum can saves the energy of running a TV for four hours.

• It is more economical to turn a car’s engine off if its idling time would exceed 60 seconds.

• The apple, pear, peach, cherry and plum trees are part of the rose family.

• A goldfish can live up to 41 years, a house mouse six years.

• The group name for goldfish is a “troubling” — for crows a “murder.”

• Male mosquitoes do not bite humans because their mouths cannot penetrate human skin.

• The strongest silk has a tensile strength five times greater than steel.

• A crocodile on land can move up to 30 mph — 20 mph in water. A falcon can fly up to 217 mph — a hummingbird up to 71 mph.

• Basketball burns up to 500 calories per hour — golfing with a cart 150.

• It takes 17 muscles to smile — 43 to frown.

• The ultraviolet radiation that causes suntan does not pass through glass.

• Marriage is the sixth leading cause of stress — death of a spouse is first and divorce is second.

• The odds of being killed on a motorcycle is 1 in 1,250.

• In a study of 93 heart attack patients, 1 in 18 pet owners died compared to 1 in 3 non-owners.

• Between the ages of 18-45, males outnumber females as crash victims, 3-1.

• An irrational fear of beards is called “pogonophobia.”

Contact Wendel Sloan at: wendel.sloan@yahoocom