50 Fun Facts About 5th Grade

What causes Earth's seasons, giving the Northern Hemisphere summer while the south has winter?

Its tilted axis is the cause: Earth leans about 23.4 degrees, so each half of the planet gets more direct sunlight for part of the year. Earth is actually closest to the Sun in January.

Which animal, whose heart alone can weigh about 400 pounds, is the largest known ever to have lived?

The blue whale can stretch about 100 feet and weigh up to 200 tons. On a deep dive its heartbeat can slow to just 2 beats a minute.

Which city on the Hudson River, rather than New York City, is the capital of New York State?

Albany grew from a Dutch fur-trading post called Fort Orange. New York's lawmakers moved between several towns before settling there for good in 1797.

Following the order of operations, what is the value of 2 + 3 × 4?

14 is correct because multiplication comes before addition: 3 × 4 makes 12, and then the 2 is added. Adding first, in the order written, gives the common wrong answer of 20.

Where is most of Earth's fresh water stored, even though it makes up under 3 percent of all water?

Ice caps and glaciers hold about 69 percent of Earth's fresh water, and groundwater holds most of the rest. All the lakes, rivers and swamps together add up to only about 0.3 percent.

Which animals are the only mammals capable of true flight rather than gliding between trees?

Bats are the only mammals that truly fly, on wings made of a thin membrane stretched over long finger bones. Flying squirrels and sugar gliders can only glide.

Which U.S. state, home to North America's highest mountain, Denali, is the largest by area?

Alaska covers more area than Texas, California and Montana put together, and they are the next three largest states. The United States bought it from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million.

Which president and former Continental Army commander is the only one a U.S. state is named after?

George Washington gave his name to the state when Congress created its territory in 1853. Lawmakers had first planned to call the place Columbia, after the river.

Which organ, making up roughly 16 percent of body mass, is the largest in the human body?

Skin is the largest organ, an outer covering that wraps the whole body. The liver, a common guess, is the largest organ on the inside.

Which ship carried the Pilgrims to America in 1620 after a second, unseaworthy vessel stayed behind?

Mayflower sailed alone because the Speedwell proved unfit for the ocean. The crossing took about 10 weeks, with 102 passengers packed below deck.

Which planet, home to a giant storm called the Great Red Spot, is the largest in the solar system?

Jupiter has nearly two and a half times the mass of all the other planets put together. Astronomers have been watching its Great Red Spot since 1831.

Which process lets green plants make food from sunlight, releasing the oxygen that animals breathe?

Photosynthesis turns the energy in light into sugars a plant can live and grow on. It also keeps Earth's air supplied with oxygen.

Which ocean, bigger than all of Earth's land put together, is the largest and deepest in the world?

The Pacific covers about one-third of Earth's surface. Its Mariana Trench holds the deepest known point in any sea, nearly 11 kilometers down.

Which Founding Father from Virginia was the main author of the Declaration of Independence?

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration largely alone, and Congress approved it in July 1776. He went on to become the third president.

Which figure of speech compares two things using 'like' or 'as', such as 'as brave as a lion'?

A simile makes its comparison out in the open, with a signal word. A metaphor drops the signal and says one thing simply is another.

What is the bottom number of a fraction called, such as the 5 in two-fifths?

Denominator comes from the Latin for namer, because it names the size of the parts. The top number, the numerator, counts how many of those parts there are.

Which woman escaped slavery, then returned about 13 times to free others on the Underground Railroad?

Harriet Tubman rescued about 70 enslaved people, family and friends among them, traveling by night in great secrecy. In the Civil War she was a scout and spy for the Union Army.

Which continent, the lowest and flattest of the seven, is also the smallest?

Australia is the smallest continent and also the second-driest. Only Antarctica gets less rain and snow.

Which group in a food chain, including fungi and bacteria, breaks down dead plants and animals?

Decomposers release the nutrients locked inside dead matter back into the soil and water around them. Earthworms and woodlice help with the same job.

In which city did disguised colonists dump over 300 chests of British tea into the harbor?

Boston was where the Sons of Liberty boarded three tea ships on December 16, 1773, and threw the cargo overboard. They were protesting a new law called the Tea Act.

Which step of the water cycle, powered by the Sun's heat, turns liquid water into an invisible gas?

Evaporation leaves salt and other particles behind, so the vapor that rises is clean. The oceans supply about 86 percent of it.

Which galaxy, seen from Earth as a hazy band of light in the night sky, contains our solar system?

The Milky Way holds somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars. Galileo was the first to pick out single ones in its glow, using his telescope in 1610.

Which scientist, famous for three laws of motion, also built the first reflecting telescope?

Isaac Newton also showed that a prism splits light into a spectrum of colors. He shares the credit for inventing calculus as well.

Which Virginia settlement, founded in 1607, was the first permanent English colony in the Americas?

Jamestown nearly failed: only about 60 settlers lived through the winter of 1609 to 1610, known as the Starving Time. The river beside it was named for King James I.

Which silversmith made a midnight ride in 1775 to warn that British troops were on the march?

Paul Revere became a folk hero decades later, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow retold the ride in an 1861 poem. The alarm came just before the battles of Lexington and Concord.

What name is given to the U.S. Constitution's first ten amendments, protecting freedoms such as speech?

The Bill of Rights was added in 1791, largely through the efforts of James Madison. Congress had sent twelve amendments to the states, and ten were approved at the time.

Which country sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, nearly doubling the nation's size?

France, then led by Napoleon Bonaparte, let the land go for $15 million. That works out to only a few cents an acre.

Which Native American woman, still in her teens, helped Lewis and Clark explore the West?

Sacagawea traveled with her baby, and the sight of a mother and infant showed the tribes they met that the explorers came in peace.

Which explorer left Spain in 1519 to begin the first trip around the world but died in the Philippines?

Ferdinand Magellan died in battle in 1521, so the Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the crew home the following year.

Which river flows south from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to reach the sea beyond New Orleans?

The Mississippi and the streams that feed it drain about 40 percent of the continental United States. It is the second-longest river in the country, just behind the Missouri.

Which mountain range, spanning five countries including Nepal and India, contains Mount Everest?

The Himalayas were pushed up when the Indian plate of Earth's crust collided with the rest of Asia. The range divides India's plains from the high Tibetan Plateau.

Which imaginary line, about 40,075 kilometers around, splits Earth into northern and southern halves?

The Equator sits at 0 degrees latitude, exactly halfway between the North and South Poles. Every other line of latitude is measured from it.

What is the volume of a rectangular box measuring 5 cm long, 4 cm wide and 2 cm high?

40 cubic cm is the answer because volume is length times width times height, here 5 × 4 × 2. Adding the three measurements, a common slip, gives only 11.

What do you get by adding 1/2 and 1/4, after first rewriting the half as two quarters?

3/4 is the total: two quarters plus one more quarter make three of them. Adding the tops and the bottoms separately gives the tempting wrong answer 2/6.

What is a triangle called when all three sides are the same length and every angle measures 60 degrees?

An equilateral triangle has three matching angles because the angles of any triangle add up to 180 degrees, and 180 shared three ways is 60.

What is 10 to the third power, which can also be written as 10 × 10 × 10?

1,000 is what you get by multiplying three tens together. Multiplying 10 by 3 instead gives the common wrong answer, 30.

Which part of speech, as in 'She sang loudly', tells how an action is done and often ends in -ly?

An adverb can describe a verb, an adjective or even another adverb, telling how, when or where. Not every one ends in -ly: fast and slow can do the same job.

What is a book called when a real person writes the story of their own life, as Benjamin Franklin did?

An autobiography is told from the writer's own memory, while a biography is written by somebody else. Franklin worked on his from 1771 to 1790 and never finished it.

Which instrument measures air pressure, giving forecasters a clue to short-term changes in the weather?

A barometer shows how hard the air is pressing down, and a reading that keeps falling or rising hints at what the weather will do next.

Which artist painted the Mona Lisa, the portrait on display at the Louvre museum in Paris?

Leonardo da Vinci painted it in oil on a panel of poplar wood rather than on canvas. The portrait grew far more famous after a thief stole it in 1911.

Which planet, wrapped in thick clouds that trap heat, is the hottest in the solar system?

Venus is about 464 degrees Celsius at the surface. Mercury is closer to the Sun but has no blanket of air to hold its heat in, so it comes second.

Which gas, pumped into food packages to keep snacks fresh, makes up about 78 percent of Earth's air?

Nitrogen fills nearly four-fifths of every breath, while oxygen makes up only about 21 percent. Argon, the third most common gas in dry air, is just under 1 percent.

Which Virginia town saw Cornwallis surrender in 1781 after the Revolutionary War's last major land battle?

Yorktown ended with more than 7,000 British soldiers captured. Peace talks followed, and the Treaty of Paris formally closed the war in 1783.

Which lawyer wrote the words of the U.S. national anthem after watching Fort McHenry bombarded in 1814?

Francis Scott Key first wrote a poem, which was then sung to a popular British tune. It did not become the official national anthem until 1931.

Which Great Lake, home to the port of Chicago, is the only one entirely inside the United States?

Lake Michigan is shared by four states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. It is also the largest lake in the world that lies inside a single country.

Which city, founded as Bytown and renamed in 1855, is the capital of Canada?

Ottawa stands in Ontario where the Rideau River joins a larger one, with the Quebec city of Gatineau just across the water.

About how long does sunlight, moving at roughly a billion kilometers an hour, take to reach Earth?

8 minutes is about right, and the closer figure is 8.3. So the Sun we see in the sky is always the Sun as it looked a short while ago.

Which Gary Paulsen novel strands 13-year-old Brian alone in a Canadian forest after a plane crash?

Hatchet begins when the pilot of a small bush plane has a heart attack in mid-air, leaving Brian to bring it down in a lake. It was named a Newbery Honor book in 1988.

Which author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little also worked for The New Yorker magazine?

E. B. White also co-wrote The Elements of Style, a well-known guide to clear writing. His third children's book was The Trumpet of the Swan.

Which family of orchestra instruments, played mostly with a bow, includes the violin and cello?

Strings are the most numerous group in a standard orchestra. The family also includes the double bass, whose players usually sit behind the cellos.