170 Fun Facts About 5th and 6th Grade

Which is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceans?

Its deepest spot, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, goes down 10,928 metres, deeper than Everest is tall.

Which river carries more water than any other on Earth?

Whether it or the Nile is the longest is still argued about, but on volume of water it wins easily.

The Nile River flows north and empties into which sea?

At about 7,088 km it is usually counted as the world's longest river, fed by the White Nile and the Blue Nile.

The Sahara is the largest hot desert, but which two deserts are bigger overall?

A desert is defined by how little precipitation falls, not by heat, so the frozen poles count.

Mount Everest sits on the border between Nepal and which other country?

A 2020 survey by the two countries put its height at 8,848.86 metres.

Which of these numbers is a prime number?

A prime is a number greater than 1 that cannot be made by multiplying two smaller whole numbers; 21 is 3 x 7, 25 is 5 x 5 and 27 is 3 x 9.

A right angle measures exactly how many degrees?

It is a quarter of a full turn, and the corner of a square is the classic example.

Pi (about 3.14159) is the ratio of a circle's circumference to what?

Its decimals never end and never repeat, which is what makes it an irrational number.

In the fraction 3/4, what is the number 4 called?

The word fraction comes from the Latin fractus, meaning 'broken'.

What do we call the total distance around the outside of a shape?

For a circle, the same measurement gets a special name: the circumference.

Plants make their own food using sunlight, water and which gas from the air?

The process, photosynthesis, gives off oxygen as a by-product, which is the air we breathe.

Which part of a cell is nicknamed the 'powerhouse' because it makes energy?

It was first spotted in 1857 in the muscles of insects, and it makes a fuel molecule called ATP.

Who discovered cells in 1665 and named them after the small rooms in a monastery?

He was looking at a thin slice of cork under an early microscope.

A baby is born with about 270 bones. Roughly how many does an adult have after some fuse together?

Bones make up about 14% of your body weight and are at their heaviest between ages 25 and 30.

Which of these is one of the six classical simple machines?

The others are the lever, wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge and screw; a bicycle combines several of them.

The fixed point that a lever pivots on is called what?

Archimedes supposedly said that with a long enough lever and a place to stand, he could move the world.

Which is the smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest to the Sun?

A single day there, sunrise to sunrise, lasts about 176 Earth days, twice as long as its year.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is what kind of feature?

It has been observed since 1831, and Jupiter itself has 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets combined.

Which planet was found by mathematics before anyone saw it, from its tug on Uranus's orbit?

It is the eighth and farthest planet and cannot be seen without a telescope.

Which four planets are the rocky 'terrestrial' planets of the inner Solar System?

Only Earth and Mars orbit inside the Sun's habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface.

Earth's outer shell is broken into large moving pieces. What are they called?

There are seven or eight major ones, and they have been drifting for three to four billion years.

Where are most of Earth's volcanoes actually found?

They cluster where crustal plates pull apart or crash together, and most of those boundaries are on the ocean floor.

Which organ makes up most of the digestive tract's job of absorbing nutrients into the body?

Digestion begins before you even take a bite, when the sight and smell of food triggers your stomach glands.

The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on which date?

Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft after John Adams talked the Committee of Five into giving him the job.

Who wrote the original draft of the Declaration of Independence?

He was one of a five-man committee; Congress then edited his draft.

About how many chests of tea were thrown into the harbour at the 1773 Boston Tea Party?

They were protesting the Tea Act, and Britain called it treason; the Battles of Lexington and Concord followed less than two years later.

Which 1783 agreement ended the American Revolutionary War with Britain recognising US independence?

The last big battle had been at Yorktown in 1781, where the French navy blocked Cornwallis's escape.

The US Constitution was written at a convention held in 1787 in which city?

It is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world.

The Bill of Rights is the name for how many amendments to the US Constitution?

James Madison drafted them to answer Anti-Federalists who worried the new government had too much power.

In 1803 the United States bought the huge Louisiana Territory from which country?

Napoleon sold it for $15 million, roughly $18 a square mile.

Which young Shoshone woman travelled with the Lewis and Clark expedition as it crossed the West?

President Jefferson had sent the Corps of Discovery to explore the land bought in the Louisiana Purchase and find a water route to the Pacific.

The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 declared enslaved people free in which part of the country?

It declared more than 3.5 million people free, though it could only be enforced as Union armies advanced.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is famous partly for being very short. Roughly how many words long is it?

He read it in under two minutes to a crowd of around 15,000 people at the dedication of a soldiers' cemetery.

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech at which 1963 event?

He won the Nobel Peace Prize the next year for fighting racial inequality without violence.

The largest of Egypt's pyramids was built as a tomb for which pharaoh?

At 146.6 metres it stayed the tallest human-made structure on Earth for more than 3,700 years.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the only one still mostly standing?

It was built from about 2.3 million blocks weighing six million tonnes in total.

Ancient Egypt's farms depended on the yearly flooding of its great river, which left behind what?

The surplus crops from that rich soil fed a dense population and paid for pyramids, temples and scribes.

Who became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?

He was Octavian before the Senate granted him the title, after defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium.

Can the Great Wall of China really be seen with the naked eye from space?

Astronauts also report it blends into the landscape because it is built from local materials; the whole system stretches 21,196 km.

Which part of speech is a word that describes an action, like 'run' or 'read'?

Verbs can also show a state of being, such as 'be' or 'exist'.

A word that describes a noun, such as 'tall' or 'blue', is called what?

Its whole job is to change the information the noun gives you.

'Her smile was as bright as the sun' is an example of which figure of speech?

A metaphor makes the same comparison without 'like' or 'as': 'her smile was the sun'.

'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers' is the classic example of what?

It means repeating the same starting consonant sound in nearby words.

Words like 'buzz', 'oink' and 'hiccup' that imitate a sound are examples of what?

They differ by language: a clock goes 'tick tock' in English but 'kachi kachi' in Japanese.

A traditional Japanese haiku has three lines with syllables in what pattern?

Classic haiku also include a 'cutting word' and a reference to a season.

In 'The Lightning Thief', Percy Jackson discovers that his father is which Greek god?

Percy has dyslexia and ADHD, and his favourite teacher Mr. Brunner turns out to be the centaur Chiron.

In 'Wonder' by R. J. Palacio, Auggie Pullman starts fifth grade at which school?

He had been homeschooled by his mother because of the many surgeries for his Treacher Collins syndrome.

What was the first Harry Potter book retitled for its 1998 US release?

Bloomsbury published it in the UK on 26 June 1997, and Scholastic followed in the US the next year.

In Louis Sachar's 'Holes', Stanley Yelnats is sent to which correctional boot camp in the Texas desert?

The book won both the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal, and Disney filmed it in 2003.

In Gary Paulsen's 'Hatchet', what leaves 13-year-old Brian Robeson alone in the wilderness?

The pilot of his small bush plane has a heart attack, and Brian's only tool is the hatchet his mother gave him.

Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, about a Jewish friend's escape in 1943, is set in which country?

It was inspired by the real rescue of Danish Jews, who were smuggled across the water to neutral Sweden.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid follows middle-schooler Greg Heffley, who insists his diary is really a what?

Author Jeff Kinney first put the story online in 2004, where it drew nearly 20 million views before it became a book.

Which gas makes up about 78% of the air you breathe?

Oxygen is only about a fifth of the air; most of every breath is nitrogen, which your body simply breathes back out.

Which state was the most recent to join the United States, in August 1959?

Alaska became the 49th state in January of the same year, so 1959 added two stars to the flag.

The Preamble to the US Constitution begins with which three words?

The Preamble was mainly written by Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania at the 1787 convention in Philadelphia.

How many members are there in the United States Senate?

Every state gets two senators no matter how many people live there, so Wyoming has as many as California.

Solid, liquid and gas are three everyday states of matter. What is the fourth?

Plasma is what stars are made of, so it is actually the most common state of ordinary matter in the universe.

How many fully recognised countries are there in Africa?

That is more than any other continent; Asia comes next with fewer than 50.

Which part of your bloodstream picks up oxygen in the lungs and carries it around the body?

They get their colour from hemoglobin, the iron-rich protein that grabs the oxygen.

Who wrote the play Romeo and Juliet?

It is a tragedy about two teenagers from feuding families in Verona, Italy, and it is still one of the most performed plays in the world.

In the math memory aid PEMDAS, what does the P stand for?

The rest is Exponents, Multiplication and Division, then Addition and Subtraction; the UK version is BODMAS.

On the Fahrenheit scale, at what temperature does water boil at sea level?

Freezing and boiling are exactly 180 degrees apart on the Fahrenheit scale, but only 100 apart in Celsius.

Which is the largest country in the world by area?

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

How many presidents' faces are carved into Mount Rushmore?

They are Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, each head about 60 feet tall.

Which scientist is best known for developing the theory of relativity?

His equation E = mc² has been called the most famous equation in the world.

Marie Curie won Nobel Prizes in which two subjects?

She was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, and she is still the only person to win them in two different sciences.

In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across which ocean?

She disappeared five years later while trying to fly all the way around the world.

Which gas do plants release as a byproduct of photosynthesis?

Water is split during the process, releasing oxygen into the air.

About what share of the world's evaporation comes from the ocean?

Evaporation, condensation and precipitation are key steps in the water cycle.

How many chambers does the human heart have?

They are the left and right atria and the left and right ventricles.

A blue whale's diet consists almost entirely of which tiny creatures?

Blue whales are filter feeders and the largest animals ever known to exist.

A cheetah can run at roughly what top speed?

Its long limbs and flexible spine are built for speed.

Bats are the only mammals capable of what?

Their wings are long spread-out fingers covered by a thin membrane.

Which is the smallest bird species, weighing less than 2 grams?

The largest hummingbird, the giant hummingbird, is 23 cm long.

Which flightless bird is the fastest bird on land, running at about 70 km/h?

Ostriches also lay the largest eggs of any living land animal.

Sloths live in the tropical rainforests of which two regions?

They spend most of their lives hanging upside down in trees.

Roughly how many teeth does a great white shark have, continuously replaced?

The teeth are triangular and serrated.

Scientists estimate there are roughly how many species of ants in the world?

More than 13,800 have been formally described.

A butterfly's complete metamorphosis has how many stages?

Egg, caterpillar (larva), chrysalis (pupa) and adult.

Which Antarctic seabird is the largest of its kind, standing about 1.1 metres tall?

Adults weigh about 35 kg on average.

Why must an owl turn its whole head to look in a new direction?

Owls have forward-facing eyes with binocular vision.

Which bird builds the largest nest of any North American bird?

Nests up to 4 metres deep and weighing a ton have been recorded.

The Sun makes up about what percentage of the Solar System's total mass?

Its mass is around 330,000 times that of Earth.

The Moon's diameter is roughly what fraction of Earth's?

At 3,474 km across, it is about as wide as the contiguous United States.

Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the Solar System, is on which planet?

It stands about 21.9 km tall.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot storm has been recorded since which year?

Jupiter has nearly 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets combined.

Which moon of Saturn is the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere?

Titan is larger than the planet Mercury but less massive.

Which planet is the hottest in the Solar System, with a surface around 464 °C?

Its thick atmosphere traps heat; Mercury is only the second hottest.

Which planet has the strongest sustained winds in the Solar System, up to 2,100 km/h?

Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun.

Uranus was the first planet discovered with a telescope, by whom in 1781?

It is visible to the naked eye but very dim.

What is the name of Pluto's largest moon?

Pluto has five known moons; Charon is over half Pluto's diameter.

A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about how far?

That is roughly 5.88 trillion miles.

How many patents did Thomas Edison register in the United States?

His Menlo Park lab is considered the first industrial research laboratory.

Where did the Wright brothers make the first powered airplane flight in 1903?

The site is now known as Kill Devil Hills.

Isaac Newton's laws of motion and gravity appeared in which 1687 book?

Its full title is Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Galileo is called the father of which field for his telescope discoveries?

He also observed the phases of Venus, sunspots and lunar craters.

Charles Darwin developed his ideas after a five-year voyage aboard which ship?

The voyage lasted from 1831 to 1836.

Louis Pasteur developed vaccines against anthrax and which deadly disease?

Pasteurization is also named after him.

Marie Curie won her 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering which two elements?

She was the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice.

Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining what?

His equation E = mc² comes from special relativity.

Benjamin Franklin held which job as the first person in the role for the United States?

He also wrote Poor Richard's Almanack under the name Richard Saunders.

George Washington served as president during which years?

He had commanded the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War.

Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre how many days after the surrender at Appomattox?

He was the first US president to be assassinated.

Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase did what to the size of the United States?

Jefferson was the third president, serving from 1801 to 1809.

Who was the youngest person ever to become US president, at age 42?

He was the 26th president and a champion of national parks.

Franklin D. Roosevelt served as president from 1933 until what?

His first two terms fought the Great Depression; the last two, World War II.

Harriet Tubman made about 13 rescue missions freeing roughly how many enslaved people?

She later served as a scout and spy for the Union Army.

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard which shuttle in 1983?

At 32 she was the youngest American astronaut to fly.

Columbus first landed in 1492 on an island in which group?

Its native inhabitants called the island Guanahani.

Whose company built the metal framework inside the Statue of Liberty?

Bartholdi designed the copper-clad statue, dedicated in 1886.

British forces set fire to the White House during which war?

The 1814 blaze destroyed the interior; every president since John Adams has lived there.

Which sculptor oversaw the carving of Mount Rushmore from 1927 to 1941?

Each presidential head is about 60 feet tall.

How long is the Grand Canyon?

It is up to 18 miles wide and over a mile deep.

Which is the largest of the three waterfalls that make up Niagara?

It straddles the border between Ontario and New York.

The Mississippi River traditionally begins at which body of water in Minnesota?

It flows 2,340 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Which is NOT one of the five Great Lakes?

The other two are Superior and Michigan.

Yellowstone, the first national park, is mainly in which state?

Small portions extend into Montana and Idaho.

A 2020 survey measured Mount Everest at what height?

It sits on the China–Nepal border in the Himalayas.

Antarctica is on average the coldest, driest and what else of the continents?

Its ice sheet averages 1.9 km thick.

Australia is the world's sixth-largest country and its flattest and what?

Aboriginal Australians arrived 50,000 to 65,000 years ago.

How is Canada divided politically?

It has the world's longest coastline.

Brazil is a federation of how many states plus a Federal District?

Its capital, Brasília, sits in the Federal District.

Japan's archipelago consists of four major islands and over how many smaller ones?

Tokyo is the capital and largest city.

All the fortifications of the Great Wall of China total roughly what length?

The best-known sections were built by the Ming dynasty.

Which Roman ruler began building the Colosseum in AD 72?

His son Titus completed it in AD 80.

The Eiffel Tower was built as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair to mark what?

Its nickname is 'La dame de fer', the Iron Lady.

In 2012, the London clock tower housing Big Ben was renamed after whom?

The name Big Ben strictly refers to the Great Bell inside.

Which living animals are feathered dinosaurs that outlived the extinction 66 million years ago?

They evolved from theropods during the Late Jurassic.

Tyrannosaurus rex lived on which island continent, now western North America?

It probably preyed on hadrosaurs and young armored herbivores.

Volcanoes of the Pacific Ring of Fire are caused by what kind of plate boundary?

Mid-ocean ridges, by contrast, have volcanoes from divergent plates.

The most extreme tornadoes can reach wind speeds above what?

They can be more than 2 miles wide and travel over 60 miles.

Air around a lightning flash heats to roughly what temperature?

The sudden expansion of the heated air creates thunder.

Why is the number 1 not considered a prime number?

Among 1 to 6, the primes are 2, 3 and 5.

The internal angles of any octagon add up to how many degrees?

A pentagon's angles add up to 540 degrees.

A word like 'quickly' that describes how a verb is done is called what?

Adverbs answer questions such as how, when, where and to what extent.

Words like 'to', 'too' and 'two' that sound alike but are spelled differently are what?

Homophones spelled differently are also called heterographs.

How does a metaphor differ from a simile?

A simile makes the comparison explicit with extra wording.

In Roald Dahl's Matilda, who is the tyrannical headmistress?

Kind teacher Miss Honey tries to move Matilda to a higher class.

In James and the Giant Peach, what are the names of James's two cruel aunts?

A mysterious man gives James a bag of magic crystals.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published in which year?

It was the first written of the seven Chronicles of Narnia.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo joins Gandalf and how many dwarves on their quest?

They aim to reclaim treasure from the dragon Smaug.

Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a $50 bet that he could not use only how many words?

His editor Bennett Cerf made the wager.

In Bridge to Terabithia, Jesse becomes friends with Leslie after she does what?

Katherine Paterson's novel won the Newbery Medal in 1978.

In The Giver, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen for which role?

His society has erased pain and emotion through 'Sameness'.

Island of the Blue Dolphins is based on a real woman left alone on an island for how long?

Juana Maria lived on San Nicolas Island off California.

In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murry travels through space and time to rescue whom?

Madeleine L'Engle's novel won the 1963 Newbery Medal.

Anne of Green Gables is set in which Canadian province?

Orphan Anne Shirley is sent by mistake to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in which German city?

His Ninth Symphony premiered in 1824.

By what age could Mozart already play keyboard and violin and had begun composing?

He was born in Salzburg in 1756.

Van Gogh created some 2,100 artworks; roughly how many were oil paintings?

Most were made in the last two years of his life.

Picasso's painting Guernica protests a bombing during which war?

German and Italian air forces bombed the town in 1937.

Who founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894?

The first modern Games followed in Athens in 1896.

Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in which city?

Naismith was a Canadian-American gym teacher.

Which man is known as the 'Father of American Football' for rules he drew up from 1880?

His rules established the snap, the line of scrimmage and downs.

Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented a way to mass-produce what?

It began the Printing Revolution in Europe.

Papermaking was developed in China at least as early as 105 CE by which court official?

Paper-like material from the 2nd century BCE has also been found.

Plasma makes up about what percentage of blood?

Plasma itself is about 92% water.

What are the three types of muscle tissue in vertebrates?

Skeletal muscle is striated and moves the body.

Gold's chemical symbol Au comes from which Latin word?

Gold has atomic number 79.

Diamond is a mineral form of which element?

Graphite is another solid form of the same element.

Which element is the lightest and most abundant in the universe?

It makes up about 75% of all normal matter.

What determines which chemical element an atom is?

Any atom with 11 protons is sodium; 29 protons is copper.

Which four bases make up the 'letters' of DNA?

DNA's two chains coil into a double helix.

Which disease was eradicated worldwide thanks to vaccination?

Inoculation against smallpox was practised in China as early as the 16th century.

How many base units does the modern metric system (SI) have?

They are the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole and candela.

The Celsius scale is named after an astronomer from which country?

Anders Celsius proposed the first version in 1742.

How many Fahrenheit degrees separate water's freezing and boiling points?

Water freezes at 32 °F and boils at 212 °F.

About how long is Earth's equator?

It lies at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the poles.

In the usual seven-continent model, which continent is the second largest by area?

Asia comes first and tiny Australia last; some models merge Europe and Asia into a single Eurasia.

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

It has up to seven layers of tissue and only the lining of the intestines beats it for surface area.