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098: When the moon is directly overhead, you weigh slightly less. True, because you have two gravitational forces pulling in opposite directions. Something has to give, and your weight will lessen. Just don’t use this as a Weight Watchers’ trick to get extra points.
106: You would weigh less on the top of a mountain than at sea level. True… The Earth’s gravitational force of attraction which determines your weight decreases as the inverse square of the distance from the Earth’s center. At the summit of a mountain, you are farther away from the middle of the Earth and must weigh less. Here is a missed or future Snapple cap. A person weighs less at the equator than at Earth’s poles. Since the Earth rotates, it actually bulges at the equator and is flattened at its poles. The difference is nearly 26 miles between Earth’s polar diameter (7900 miles) and its equatorial diameter (7926 miles). Your best bet would be to find a tall mountain near the equator for an even greater micro weight loss. May I suggest Kilimanjaro in northeastern Tanzania at 19,340 feet or 20,548-foot Chimborazo in Ecuador. Because you are near the equator, you are also moving at a groundbreaking speed of 1040.4 miles per hour due to the Earth’s rotation. Can’t you feel your weight just flying off?
162: The temperature of the sun can reach up to 15 million degrees Fahrenheit. Untrue: The sun’s core temperature is about 26 million degrees F, 15 million Kelvin or 15 million degrees Celsius.
192: Jupiter spins so fast that there is a new sunrise every 10 hours. True, if you were close enough to the cloud tops so that the sun would be visible. A Jovian day equals 9 hours, 56 minutes.
206: Over one million Earths would fit inside the sun. True… A better estimate would be 1.3 million Earths which is more than one million Earths. I’ll give you that one, Snapple.
283: A compass needle does not point directly north. True… For most locations on the Earth, this answer is correct because the North Magnetic Pole is not in the same position as Earth’s Geographic North Pole, the point about which the Earth rotates. If you are in a location where the North Magnetic Pole is in the same line of sight as the Geographic North Pole, a compass works perfectly. Currently, the NMP is located on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada and is slowly moving towards Siberia. In the Lehigh Valley a compass needle points about 11 degrees to the west of true north. Scouts, beware! Follow the North Star (not the Drinking Gourd) which is a far better north indicator than a simple compass. At the North Pole a compass needle would point south, but then all directions at the North Pole point south.
I have got to stop here because my StarWatch articles have to fit into a box in their syndicated version. There are only 31 more caps left to discuss.
War of the Worlds: The Hubble Space Telescope's first high resolution image of the dwarf planet Pluto revealed a big surprise. Adapted from Rock News, Vol. 58, No. 4, Pennsylvania Earth Sciences Association... |