100 Fun Facts About Elementary School

How many sides does a hexagon have?

The word comes from Greek: hex means six and gonia means corner. Honeycomb cells and most pencils are hexagons.

How many planets are in our Solar System?

There were nine on classroom posters until 2006, when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet.

Which planet is closest to the Sun?

It is also the smallest planet, and a year there lasts only 88 Earth days.

Which is the largest planet in the Solar System?

Jupiter is so big that more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside it.

Which planet is nicknamed the Red Planet?

The red color is rust: iron oxide in the dust and rocks that cover most of its surface.

Which planet is famous for its bright rings?

The rings are made mostly of ice chunks, some as small as grains of sand and some as big as houses.

What kind of object is the Sun?

It is a very ordinary star that only looks huge and bright because it is so much closer to us than any other.

How many natural moons does Earth have?

Mars has two tiny ones and the giant outer planets have dozens each, but Earth makes do with a single large Moon.

About how many hours does it take Earth to spin around once?

That single spin is what gives us day and night; a full trip around the Sun takes about 365 days.

Which star is called the North Star?

It sits almost directly above the North Pole, so it barely moves in the sky while other stars wheel around it.

Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?

He stepped off Apollo 11's ladder in July 1969 while Michael Collins circled overhead in the command module.

How many continents are there?

Asia is the biggest by far, and roughly 60 percent of all the people on Earth live there.

Which is the smallest continent?

Greenland is big, but it counts as an island, which leaves Australia as the smallest continent.

Which is the largest ocean on Earth?

It is also the deepest and covers more area than all the land on Earth put together.

Which ocean lies between North America and Europe?

It is the second-largest ocean and is shaped like a long letter S between the Americas and Europe and Africa.

Which is the longest river in the world?

It flows north through eleven African countries before reaching the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt.

What is the largest hot desert in the world?

It stretches across northern Africa and is nearly as big as the whole United States.

What is the tallest mountain on Earth above sea level?

Its official height was remeasured in 2020 at 8,848.86 meters, and it grows a few millimeters every year.

Which is the largest country in the world by area?

It is so wide that it stretches across eleven time zones.

Which country has the most people?

India passed China to become the most populous country and now has more than 1.4 billion people.

On which continent is the Amazon rainforest?

About 60 percent of the forest is in Brazil, with the rest spread across eight other countries.

What is the capital city of Canada?

Many people guess Toronto because it is the biggest city, but the government sits in Ottawa, on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River.

What is the imaginary line around the middle of the Earth called?

It splits Earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and is about 40,075 kilometers long.

Which of the Great Lakes has the largest surface area of any freshwater lake on Earth?

It holds enough water to cover both American continents a foot deep.

How many states are in the United States?

Alaska and Hawaii were the last two to join, both in 1959.

Who was the first president of the United States?

He served two terms, from 1789 to 1797, and then chose to step down instead of running again.

In what year was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

It was approved on July 4 in Philadelphia, which is why Americans set off fireworks on that date.

Which president's face is on the U.S. penny?

He has been on the one-cent coin since 1909, the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from which country?

French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed it, and it was dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886.

Who painted the Mona Lisa?

The small portrait has hung in the Louvre in Paris since 1797 and is probably the most visited painting in the world.

What is the largest animal that has ever lived?

It is bigger than any dinosaur, and its heart alone is about the size of a small car.

What is the fastest land animal?

A cheetah can hit about 104 kilometers per hour (65 mph), but only for a few hundred meters before it has to rest.

What is the tallest land animal?

A giraffe's neck has only seven bones, the same number as a human neck; each one is just much longer.

Which is the largest living bird?

It cannot fly, but it lays the biggest eggs of any living bird and can outrun most animals on two legs.

Which is the largest living reptile?

Big males can be longer than a car, and they swim far out to sea between islands.

On which continent do emperor penguins live?

They are the tallest and heaviest penguins and huddle together through the coldest winter on Earth.

Which of these animals is a mammal?

Dolphins breathe air, are warm-blooded and feed milk to their babies, just like land mammals.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A newborn joey is only about the size of a jellybean and crawls into its mother's pouch to keep growing.

What is a group of lions called?

Lions are the only big cats that live in groups; the females do most of the hunting.

What is a young frog called before it grows legs?

Tadpoles breathe with gills like fish, then grow legs and lungs and lose their tails.

A frog belongs to which group of animals?

Amphibians usually start life in water and move onto land as adults, which is exactly what a frog does.

How many legs does an insect have?

Six legs, three body parts and an outside skeleton are what make an insect an insect.

How many legs does a spider have?

That is why spiders are not insects: they have eight legs and only two body parts.

What do we call an animal that eats only plants?

Cows, rabbits and elephants are herbivores; bears, which eat both plants and animals, are omnivores.

Which gas do plants take in from the air to make their food?

Plants turn that gas plus water and sunlight into sugar, and release the gas we breathe as a bonus for us.

Which gas do plants give off during photosynthesis?

Nearly all the oxygen we breathe was released by plants, algae and tiny ocean bacteria.

At what temperature does water freeze on the Fahrenheit scale?

On the Celsius scale the same point is 0 degrees, which is why the two scales confuse everyone.

At what temperature does water boil on the Celsius scale?

That is 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level; high in the mountains water boils at a lower temperature.

What is it called when water vapor in the air turns back into liquid water?

It is how clouds form, and why a cold glass gets wet on the outside on a hot day.

What is the hardest natural material?

Diamond is so hard that the only thing that can scratch it is another diamond.

What is melted rock called once it flows out of a volcano?

While it is still underground it is called magma; the moment it reaches the surface the name changes.

What is the chemical symbol for gold?

It comes from aurum, the Latin word for gold; Ag is silver, from argentum.

Which of these is a primary color of paint?

Red, yellow and blue are the primaries in art class; mixing two of them makes the other three colors on the list.

How many colors are usually said to be in a rainbow?

Isaac Newton chose seven partly because he wanted the colors to match the seven notes of the musical scale.

What is the largest organ of the human body?

It makes up about 16 percent of your body weight and replaces itself roughly once a month.

About how many bones does an adult human have?

Babies are born with around 270, but many of them fuse together as a child grows.

How many permanent (adult) teeth do most people have?

Kids have 20 baby teeth, which fall out to make room for the bigger adult set.

Which organ pumps blood around your body?

It beats about 100,000 times a day, and it is roughly the size of your fist.

Sunlight on your skin helps your body make which vitamin?

That is why it is nicknamed the sunshine vitamin; it helps your body use calcium to build strong bones.

What is 7 times 8?

It is the times-table fact kids most often get wrong; a handy trick is 5, 6, 7, 8: 56 = 7 × 8.

What number does the Roman numeral X stand for?

V is 5, L is 50 and C is 100, so XL means 40 and XC means 90.

How many days are in a leap year?

The extra day is February 29, and it comes around almost every four years.

What shape is a stop sign?

Eight sides make it easy to recognize even from the back, so drivers know cars coming the other way must stop.

What is a word that means the opposite of another word called?

Hot and cold are antonyms; hot and warm are synonyms, words that mean nearly the same thing.

Who wrote Charlotte's Web, the story of Wilbur the pig?

White also wrote Stuart Little, and he based the barn on his own farm in Maine.

Who wrote The Cat in the Hat?

He wrote it in 1957 using only 236 different words, after a publisher challenged him to make a fun book for beginning readers.

Which instrument has 88 keys?

Fifty-two of the keys are white and 36 are black, covering more than seven octaves.

How many players does each soccer team have on the field at once?

One of the eleven is the goalkeeper, the only player allowed to use their hands.

How many stages are there in a butterfly's life cycle?

Egg, caterpillar, pupa and winged adult: this is called complete metamorphosis.

How do worker honey bees tell each other where to find food?

The 'waggle dance' points the way to distant flowers, while a simpler 'round dance' means food is close by.

Which substance has the chemical formula H2O?

The formula means every molecule has two hydrogen atoms; water is the only common substance found naturally as a solid, a liquid and a gas.

Which part of speech names a person, place, or thing?

Proper nouns like Paris or Maria get a capital letter; common nouns like city or girl do not.

What force pulls a dropped ball toward the ground?

The same pull keeps the Moon circling Earth and Earth circling the Sun.

Which month has only 28 days in most years?

It gets a 29th day in leap years, so someone born on 29 February has a real birthday only every four years.

Which instrument measures temperature?

Early ones used a liquid rising in a glass tube; many today use an electronic sensor instead.

Which bird is the national symbol of the United States?

It was only made official by an act of Congress in 2024, more than 240 years after it first appeared on the Great Seal.

What is the freezing point on the Celsius scale?

The scale is named after Anders Celsius, whose original 1742 version ran backwards, with 0 at boiling.

Kenya is a country on which continent?

Kenya is named after Mount Kenya, the continent's second-highest peak.

What is the name of the galaxy that contains our Solar System?

Its name describes the hazy band of light it makes across the night sky; from Earth we see it edge-on from the inside.

What is 9 times 9?

81 is also the only number whose square root equals the sum of its digits: 8 + 1 = 9.

The trumpet belongs to which family of instruments?

Like all brass instruments, the sound starts with the player buzzing their lips into the mouthpiece.

Which is the smallest of the world's oceans?

It is also the shallowest, and much of it is covered by sea ice for most of the year.

Who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Dahl published it in 1964; Willy Wonka has since been played on screen by Gene Wilder, Johnny Depp and Timothée Chalamet.

Which planet is farthest from the Sun?

It held the title from its 1846 discovery until Pluto turned up in 1930, and got it back when Pluto was demoted in 2006.

Spiders belong to which group of animals?

Arachnids have eight legs and two body segments, while insects have six legs and three.

Who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone?

Bell's patent was filed in 1876, the same day rival Elisha Gray filed a notice for a similar device.

A seesaw is an example of which simple machine?

The middle support is the fulcrum; the farther from it you sit, the more lifting force you get.

What is the largest bone in the human body?

The thigh bone is also the longest, and it can support many times an adult's body weight.

Which gas makes up most of Earth's air?

Dry air is about 78 per cent nitrogen, with argon a distant third at under 1 per cent.

Which planet is the hottest in the Solar System?

Its thick atmosphere traps heat so well that its surface, at about 464 °C, is hotter than the planet closest to the Sun.

Which is the largest living primate?

Adult males, called silverbacks, can stand over 1.7 m tall, and gorillas share about 98 per cent of their DNA with humans.

Words like 'rain' and 'reign' that sound alike but differ in meaning are called what?

'Rose' the flower and 'rose' the past tense of rise are homophones that also happen to be spelled the same.

Where is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans?

Its deepest spot, the Challenger Deep, lies nearly 11 km down; Earth's tallest mountain would fit inside with room to spare.

What is a young swan called?

The word comes from the Latin cygnus, meaning swan, with a French ending that means 'little'.

Which is the smallest bone in the human body?

It sits in the middle ear, is about 3 mm long, and is named for its stirrup shape.

Which year is written MCM in Roman numerals?

M is 1,000 and C is 100, so writing C before M subtracts it; 1912 becomes MCMXII.

What is the official language of Brazil?

Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas, and it has more Portuguese speakers than Portugal itself.

What is the currency of Japan?

Its symbol is ¥, and the name means 'round object', after the shape of the coins.

Which is the largest African country by area?

It took the title in 2011 when Sudan split in two; most of its 2.38 million square kilometres are desert.

Leukocytes, which attack germs inside the body, are better known as what?

They are outnumbered roughly 700 to one by red blood cells, yet a single drop of blood still holds thousands of them.