Lowell Heddings

Despite what cartoons have taught us, the coyote can run up to 43 miles per hour while the roadrunner can only run up to 20 miles per hour.

Dextrose is another name for glucose, so if you see it listed prominently on the ingredients list of a particular food, then you’ll know where the sugary sweet taste is coming from.

We think of espresso as having more caffeine than drip coffee, but we don’t drink espresso in drip-coffee quantities. A single 1 oz shot of espresso only has approximately 40 mg of caffeine whereas a 12 oz cup of coffee has approximately 120 mg (or more) of caffeine. Ounce for ounce, the espresso is stronger, but we don’t drink a giant mug of it at a time.

A “moment” used to be an actual measure of time and corresponded to roughly 90 seconds. It was used during the Medieval era and was derived from the solar hour (the hour on the sundial’s face was divided into 40 “moments”).

Sounds travels slowest in gases (air), faster in liquids, and faster still in solids. Sound waves travel approximately 4.3 times faster in water than air and approximately 15 times faster when passing through iron as opposed to air.

Vision acuity is often expressed as a fraction. If you have 20/20 vision, then you can see what people with normal vision see at 20 feet. If you have 20/40 vision, then you need to be 20 feet away to see what other people can see at 40 feet. At 20/60, you must be as close as 20 feet away to see what others see clearly at 60 feet, and so on. Legal blindness is defined as a medically diagnosed central visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye (with the best possible correction) and/or a visual field of 20 degrees or less.

The original metal Slinky toy was made from exactly 80 feet of metal wire.

The letter J is the only letter that makes no appearance on the Periodic Table—Q appears, but only in temporary placeholder names like ununquadium (which later officially became Flerovium and lost the Q).