Zahlen
9 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- A fair-weather cloud weighs as much as a hundred elephants.
A typical cumulus cloud holds about half a gram of water per cubic meter. For a cloud one kilometer on each side, a …
- Every cell holds two meters of thread.
Your genome has about 3.1 billion base pairs. Stretched out, the DNA of a single cell would run roughly two meters …
- For every human there are 2.5 million ants.
A 2022 analysis estimates 20 quadrillion ants on Earth, a 2 followed by 16 zeros. Together they weigh in at around 12 …
- How an IBAN catches a typo before money moves.
Digits three and four of an IBAN are check digits. To verify, the IBAN is rearranged, letters become numbers and the …
- In India, a million is written 10,00,000.
The Indian numbering system has its own words: 1 lakh = 100,000, 1 crore = 10,000,000. Digits are grouped in twos after …
- Magnitude 7 isn't "a bit stronger" than 6.
The magnitude scale is logarithmic. One step up means ten times the ground motion and about 32 times the energy …
- The odd marathon distance comes from a castle in London.
At the first modern Olympics in 1896 the marathon was about 40 kilometres, and the distance varied afterwards. In …
- You have fewer genes than a rice plant.
Humans carry only about 20,000 protein-coding genes. Before the Human Genome Project, estimates ran to 100,000. Rice …
- You pay more by card. For the very same thing.
In an experiment by economists Prelec and Simester, participants bid up to twice as much for sought-after sports …