In the second grade, students begin a more systematic study of subjects. But at this age children learn more effectively the knowledge that interests them. It is one thing to know that a person needs water to maintain life, and it is quite another thing to know that a person drinks a whole railway tank of water in his life. Here is a very small selection of facts that can make studying natural history more interesting.
1. In one of the US states, a species of apple tree grows with very deep roots, penetrating the ground for more than a kilometer. And the total length of the roots of such an apple tree can exceed 4 kilometers.
2. There are 200 thousand species of fish in nature. If you add together the number of species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and animals, there will be fewer of them, so fish are so diverse.
3. The science of fish is called ichthyology. Scientists have found that fish of even one species adapt to the reservoir in which they live, the color of the bottom, the purity of the water and its contamination. Fish can change color, shape and even size.
4. During his life, a person drinks 75 tons of water. And a sunflower needs 250 liters to grow and bear fruit. At the same time, the sunflower will not dry out, having stood for a couple of weeks without water, and during this time a person will inevitably die.
5. Potatoes, carrots, radishes are not fruits, but roots. Nature and man have changed them for their own purposes. Without human participation, these roots, they are also called root crops, would remain nondescript roots. And with proper care, root crops can become huge - in Tajikistan, they somehow grew a radish weighing 20 kg.
6. Water covers 71% of the earth's surface. However, out of millions of cubic kilometers of water, only about 2% is fresh water, and even then not all of it is suitable for humans. Therefore, every seventh inhabitant of the Earth is deprived of free access to drinking water.
7. Only fish have a unique sense organ - the lateral line. It runs approximately in the middle of the fish's body on both sides. With the help of the lateral line, the fish controls the situation around them without using their eyes.
8. Each fish scale is similar to annual rings on a cut of a tree, only the rings on the scale do not indicate years, but seasons. The narrow gap between the rings is winter and the wider one is summer. To find out the age of the fish, you need to count the rings and divide the resulting number by 2.
9. Trees 100 meters and more meters high are very rare. But for one of the types of brown algae, this is quite a common length. Some of them grow up to 300 meters. The thickness of these algae and the current in which they sway make them remarkably similar to mythical sea snakes.
10. The longest fish in the world is the herring king, or belt fish. The average fish of this species is about 3 meters long, and the record holders grow up to 11 meters. The shortest fish is found in the Philippines and grows to only 12 millimeters.
11. In Italy, near the crater of Mount Etna, he rubbed a chestnut tree, whose trunk diameter at the ground is 58 meters - this is half the length of a football field. According to legend, the queen passing by and her huge retinue were caught in a thunderstorm and managed to hide under one tree, so it is called the chestnut of hundreds of horses. The queen and her companions, most likely, did not know about the simplest rules of survival - in no case should you hide under trees, especially tall ones, in a thunderstorm. Tall trees attract lightning.
12. In Brazil, there is a species of palm called Rafia Tedigera. Each leaf of a palm tree is a stalk 5 meters long, on which a leaf up to 20 meters long and up to 12 meters wide grows. Such dimensions make it comparable to the entrance of a 5-storey building.
13. Scientists have studied natural water for purity in more than 120 countries around the world. The cleanest water was found in Finland. There is a cold climate, a huge amount of water resources (Finland is also called the "Land of a Thousand Lakes") and harsh environmental legislation contribute to the purity of the water.
14. Amazing Velvichia, growing in Africa, produces only two leaves in a lifetime. But each of them grows in length at least 3 meters, and maximum more than 6. The trunk of Velvichia is similar to a stump - growing in height by only one meter, it can be up to 4 meters in diameter.
15. On the Italian island of Sicily there is a source, the water of which is deadly - it is diluted with sulfuric acid from volcanic sources.
16. 1 meter - this is the diameter of the largest flower on our planet. At the same time, Rafflesia Arnold - as it is called - has neither root, nor stem, nor leaves - it parasitizes on large tropical plants, clinging to them.
17. The smallest flower in the world can hardly be seen without optics - the diameter of a flower of one of the duckweed species is only half a millimeter.
18. Antarctica is famous not only for the South Pole and cold weather. There is a lake with very salty water on the continent. If ordinary sea water, due to its salinity, freezes not at 0 degrees, but at -3 - -4, then the water of the Antarctic Lake turns into ice only at -50 degrees.
19. In Japan hundreds of people die every year from puffer fish poisoning. This fish is a great delicacy for the Japanese, but some parts of its body are deadly poisonous. The chefs remove them, but sometimes they are wrong. Despite its deaths, fugu continues to be a popular treat.
Puffer fish
20. In oil-rich Azerbaijan there is a lake with such a high content of oil and gases that the water from it burns.
