Science Facts That Will Blow Your Tiny Mind

When science and technology meet, amazing things happen. Take the Renault ZOE for instance: an electric supermini with a maxi personality.

1. Pregnancy tests used to be made out of frogs.

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Until the 1960s, doctors would use live frogs as pregnancy tests. The mum-to-be's urine was injected into an African clawed frog; if it ovulated within 12 hours, the woman was pregnant.

2. You can drive into space in your lunch hour.

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If you drove your car upwards for one hour at 60 mph it would only take one hour to drive into space.

3. But you wouldn't be there for long…

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...humans can only survive 90 seconds in space. Even if you wind up those car windows.

4. Electricity moves at ~6,696,000mph.

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Fast, but that's approximately 1/100th the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second, hence, lightning.

5. Cashew nuts grow on the top of an apple-like fruit.

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6. Electric eels are five times more powerful than a wall socket.

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They can shock their prey or predators with 600 volts of electricity – that's five times more than your power plug can handle.

7. Your body contains enough carbon to make 900 pencils.

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You also contain enough iron to make a 3-inch nail, enough potassium to set off a small firework, and enough fat to make seven bars of soap.

8. You share 50% of your DNA with a banana.

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And 95% with chimps and 25% with a rice plant. Which means that at some point, you and the banana evolved from the same substance.

9. Snakes are some of the only "true" carnivores.

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Because they only eat animal products. Even cats and wolves have been known to chew on grass and vegetables from time to time.

10. It's possible to eat mammoth meat.

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Though this doesn't happen too often, because most remains are rotten.

11. It snows metal on Venus.

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That's not all; the surface is covered in metallic "snowcapped" mountains made from lead sulfide and bismuth sulfide.

12. You can't remember being a baby because when you were a baby you didn't know that you were a baby.

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There's actually several reasons for this. Babies don't have any concept of "self", which means that they have no idea of what is relevant to them, or what is happening to other people. They have underdeveloped brains that aren't yet recording, and you didn't yet have the language skills to "frame" what was happening to you, so you were unable to "memorise" anything in a way that would make sense to your adult self.

13. Your brain generates enough electricity to power a light bulb.

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But only when you're awake.

14. 33% of all known dinosaurs were made up.

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This includes one of your top 10 faves – the Brontosaurus. The problem was, a lot of baby dinosaurs didn't look an awful lot like their parents, so got classified as separate species. Also, Victorian explorers weren't above faking exotic dinosaur finds for fame and glory.

15. If you put your finger in your ear and scratch, it sounds just like Pac-Man.

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Maybe this one isn't strictly science, but it's true…

16. Space has a smell.

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Barbecued meat, hot metal, and petrol, since you asked.

17. Clouds AREN'T light and fluffy.

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A cumulus cloud weighs as much as 80 elephants.

18.

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Your saliva is packed with a painkiller called opiorphin: a substance six times more powerful than morphine.

19. Lightning can contain 3 million volts of electricity.

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Which means a large thundercloud potentially holds 100 million volts. That's the equivalent of two high-powered police stun guns going off at once.

20. You're made of stars.

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Sort of – pretty much every element of your body was made in an exploding star.

21. Crying in space is especially sad...

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...because tears can't fall from your face, as demonstrated by former ISS Commander Chris Hadfield. Thanks to the zero gravity on spaceships, they kind of just stick to your face in a really annoying blob. If that's not reason enough to cheer up, we don't know what is.

22. There's a jellyfish that could prove the secret to immortality.

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In 1988, scientists found a type of jellyfish – the medusa of Turritopsis dohrnii – that can transform into a younger version of itself and has inspired scientists to make stem cells in a similar way to the jellyfish's process of cell transdifferentiation.

23. The moon was created when a Mars-sized object smashed into the Earth, 4.5 billion years ago.

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That's also why the Earth's axis is tilted. So it's thanks to an intergalactic wrecking ball that we have seasons – science is weird like that.

24. During a hurricane, up to 200 trillion watts of heat energy are released.

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In case you're keeping count, that's the same as a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.

25. There's a sound that can kill you.

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160 decibels of sound will cause deafness, and 200 decibels can rupture your lung. That's a sound three times higher than a smoke alarm.

26. Crunching sugary sweets can create electricity.

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Scientists don't quite understand why, but crunching crystals (such as those found in sugar) can cause a flash of blue electrical light thanks to triboluminescence.

Want to see something else amazing that electricity can do?

It can power the Renault ZOE: a zippy, stylish vehicle that's always ready to go.