160 Fun Facts About High School

Whose theorem says the square of a right triangle's hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other sides?

Babylonian clay tablets show the relationship was known a thousand years before Pythagoras was born; he just got the naming rights.

Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to what?

That makes the circumference of any circle just over three times its width, which is why 3.14 gets you surprisingly far.

What do the interior angles of any triangle add up to?

On a sphere the total is more than 180, which is how surveyors first proved the Earth is curved without leaving the ground.

What is the only even prime number?

Every other even number is divisible by 2, so it has a factor besides itself and 1 and cannot be prime.

In the quadratic formula, the expression b² − 4ac is called what?

If it is below zero, the equation has no real solutions; if it equals zero, the parabola just touches the x-axis once.

The imaginary unit i is defined by which equation?

It lets every polynomial have a full set of roots, and it shows up in real-world electrical engineering as the letter j.

What is the highest possible score on the SAT?

Two sections score 200 to 800 each; the test briefly ran to 2400 between 2005 and 2016 when a writing section was added.

Which organelle is nicknamed the 'powerhouse of the cell'?

The phrase comes from a 1957 Scientific American article, and mitochondria carry their own separate DNA, inherited only from your mother.

Adenine, cytosine and guanine are three of the four bases in DNA. What is the fourth?

In RNA the fourth base is uracil instead, which is one of the quickest ways to tell the two molecules apart on a test.

What shape do the two strands of DNA form?

Watson and Crick proposed the shape in 1953, using X-ray images taken in Rosalind Franklin's lab.

Gregor Mendel worked out the basic laws of heredity by breeding which plants?

He grew tens of thousands of pea plants in a monastery garden between 1856 and 1863, and his results were ignored for decades.

Robert Hooke gave cells their name in 1665 because they reminded him of what?

He was looking at a thin slice of cork under an early microscope and saw a grid of tiny empty boxes.

Which type of cell division produces sperm and egg cells?

It involves two rounds of division and ends with four cells, each carrying only one copy of every chromosome.

Which pigment do plants use to absorb light for photosynthesis?

It reflects green light instead of absorbing it, which is the only reason leaves look green to us.

People with which blood type are called universal donors for red blood cell transfusions?

AB positive is the mirror image: those patients can receive red cells from anyone.

Which element has atomic number 1?

It is also the lightest and most abundant element, making up about three-quarters of all normal matter in the universe.

On the pH scale, what value is neutral?

Below 7 is acidic and above 7 is basic; each step is a tenfold change, so pH 5 is a hundred times more acidic than pH 7.

Helium, neon, argon and krypton belong to which group of elements?

They sit in group 18 and almost never react, which is why helium balloons are safe where the Hindenburg was not.

Which Russian chemist published the first widely accepted periodic table in 1869?

He left gaps for elements nobody had found yet and predicted their properties; gallium and germanium later filled two of them.

How many chemical elements are on the modern periodic table?

The first seven rows were completed by 2010; everything past uranium (92) was made in a lab.

Avogadro's number, the number of particles in one mole, is about 6.022 times ten to what power?

A mole of water is only about 18 grams, which gives you a sense of how small molecules are.

Newton's third law says that for every action there is what?

It is why a rocket can push itself through empty space: it throws exhaust one way and gets shoved the other.

Roughly how fast does light travel in a vacuum?

The exact figure, 299,792,458 meters per second, is now the definition of the meter rather than a measurement.

The Ring of Fire, home to about 90 percent of the world's earthquakes, surrounds which ocean?

It is roughly 40,000 kilometers long and holds around two-thirds of the planet's active and dormant volcanoes.

What is the capital of Australia?

It was purpose-built as a compromise after Sydney and Melbourne both demanded the title.

Which language has the most native speakers in the world?

Nearly a billion people speak it from birth; only when you add people who learned it later does another language come out ahead.

In which year did the American Civil War end?

Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9 of that year.

Which amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery?

It was ratified in December 1865; the 14th granted citizenship and the 15th protected the right to vote regardless of race.

How many amendments make up the Bill of Rights?

Congress actually sent twelve to the states in 1789; the two that failed dealt with congressional pay and the size of the House.

The United States bought the Louisiana Territory in 1803 from which country?

The price was about fifteen million dollars, roughly eighteen dollars per square mile, and it doubled the size of the country.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address opens with 'Four score and seven years ago.' How many years is that?

A score is twenty, so he was counting back from 1863 to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

In which city did the Constitutional Convention meet in 1787?

The delegates worked from May to September behind closed windows in summer heat to keep the debates secret.

Which amendment recognized women's right to vote nationwide in 1920?

Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it, by a single vote, after a legislator changed his mind on his mother's advice.

The Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903 was near Kitty Hawk, in which state?

They lived in Ohio but chose the Outer Banks for its steady winds and soft sand to crash into.

The Wall Street crash that helped tip the world into the Great Depression happened in which year?

Historians still argue about how much the crash itself caused; bank failures over the following three years did much of the damage.

Which 1954 Supreme Court case ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional?

It overturned the 'separate but equal' doctrine that Plessy v. Ferguson had established in 1896.

How many members does the US Senate have?

Two per state, serving staggered six-year terms, so only about a third of the seats are contested in any election.

How many voting members sit in the US House of Representatives?

The number has been fixed since 1913; seats are shuffled between states after every census, but the total does not grow.

How many justices sit on the US Supreme Court?

The number is set by Congress, not the Constitution, and has been nine since 1869; it was as low as six and as high as ten before that.

How many electoral votes does a candidate need to win the US presidency?

There are 538 electors in total, a number unchanged since 1964, so 270 is the smallest possible majority.

The assassination that triggered World War I killed the heir to which throne?

Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914; the war began exactly one month later.

World War II in Europe began in September 1939 when Germany invaded which country?

Britain declared war two days later; the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east on 17 September.

Bastille Day, the national holiday marking the 1789 storming of a Paris prison, falls on which date?

It marks the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris in 1789, where the mob found only seven prisoners inside.

Which monarch sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?

He agreed to it under pressure from rebel barons and had the pope annul it within ten weeks, which restarted the civil war.

In which year did the Berlin Wall open?

An East German spokesman bungled the announcement at a press conference on 9 November, saying the border was open 'immediately', and crowds took him at his word.

Most chronologies date the fall of the Western Roman Empire to which year?

That was when the teenage emperor Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate by the Germanic warlord Odoacer.

Romeo and Juliet is set in which Italian city?

The city now maintains a 'Juliet's balcony' for tourists even though the character never existed.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a prince of which country?

It is Shakespeare's longest play, and Elsinore castle, its setting, is a real fortress at Helsingør.

Who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird?

It was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize; Lee did not publish another book for 55 years.

Who wrote The Great Gatsby?

It sold poorly in 1925; the book only became a classic after free copies were shipped to soldiers during World War II.

In what year was George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four published?

Orwell reportedly arrived at the title by swapping the last two digits of the year he finished the manuscript.

In Orwell's Animal Farm, the pig Napoleon is an allegory for which leader?

Snowball, the rival he drives off the farm, stands in for Trotsky, and Old Major mixes Marx with Lenin.

Who wrote Of Mice and Men?

He wrote it in 1937 as a 'play-novelette' so it could go straight to the stage, and it opened on Broadway the same year.

In Lord of the Flies, what object do the boys use as a horn to call meetings?

Whoever holds it has the right to speak, so its eventual shattering marks the end of order on the island.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus is king of which island?

He takes ten years to get home from Troy while his wife Penelope holds off a houseful of suitors.

Who wrote Frankenstein?

She started it at 18 during a rainy summer on Lake Geneva after Lord Byron challenged his guests to each write a ghost story.

Arthur Miller's play The Crucible dramatizes which historical event?

Miller wrote it in 1953 as an allegory for McCarthyism, and was himself called before Congress three years later.

Holden Caulfield narrates which 1951 novel?

J. D. Salinger published almost nothing after 1965 and spent the rest of his life avoiding the fame the book brought him.

The epic poem Beowulf was written in which language?

Its 3,182 alliterative lines survive in a single manuscript that was scorched in a library fire in 1731.

What is the chemical symbol for gold?

It comes from the Latin word aurum. Gold is element 79 on the periodic table.

Which two scientists published the structure of DNA in the journal Nature in 1953?

Their model relied on X-ray images taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling, including the famous Photo 51.

What is the largest organ of the human body?

It makes up roughly 16 per cent of body mass and covers 1.5 to 2 square metres on an adult.

Who narrates The Great Gatsby?

Nick tells the story of his mysterious millionaire neighbour, obsessed with winning back Daisy Buchanan, on Long Island in the Jazz Age.

In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, what is Winston Smith's job at the Ministry of Truth?

He alters old newspapers so the past always matches the Party's current line.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, what is the name of the Party's dictatorial leader whose face is everywhere?

Goldstein is the Party's official enemy, and O'Brien is the Inner Party member who betrays Winston.

Who was the principal author of the US Declaration of Independence?

He wrote most of it in about 17 days in June 1776. Congress adopted it on July 4 in the building now called Independence Hall.

How long was Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, delivered in November 1863?

The main speaker that day, Edward Everett, talked for two hours first. Lincoln opened with 'Four score and seven years ago'.

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

Its official height was remeasured in 2020 at 8,848.86 metres. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented ascent in 1953.

What is the largest hot desert in the world?

Only the cold deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic are bigger. It covers most of North Africa.

In which English town was William Shakespeare born in 1564?

His surviving works run to some 39 plays and 154 sonnets. His company built the Globe theatre in London in 1599.

The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, hangs in which museum?

It was stolen in 1911 by a museum worker, Vincenzo Peruggia, and recovered two years later in Italy.

According to Beethoven himself, his hearing loss began in 1798 during what?

He kept composing anyway, including the Ninth Symphony, and contrary to popular belief never became totally deaf.

About how many bones does an adult human skeleton have?

Babies are born with around 270, but many fuse together as they grow.

The binary number system used by almost all computers has which base?

It uses only the symbols 0 and 1, which map neatly onto switches that are off or on.

The Nile flows north and empties into which sea?

Its two major tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, meet at Khartoum in Sudan.

At a pressure of one atmosphere, water boils at what temperature?

That is 212 °F. Its formula is H2O: two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?

He circled alone in the command module Columbia while the lunar module Eagle sat in the Sea of Tranquility.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is appointed to defend which character?

Robinson is a Black man falsely accused of assaulting Mayella Ewell. Boo Radley is the reclusive neighbour who saves the children.

How does Newton's first law describe a body on which no force acts?

That property is inertia. Friction and air resistance are why everyday objects seem to slow down on their own.

How deep is the Challenger Deep, the lowest known point in the world's oceans?

It lies in the Mariana Trench, and it is deeper than Everest is tall.

In which Greek city is Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' set?

Its subplots revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta.

The title of 'A Raisin in the Sun' comes from a poem by which writer?

Lorraine Hansberry's play debuted on Broadway in 1959.

Which river is the largest in the world by discharge volume?

Its claim to be the longest river system is still disputed with the Nile.

Which document served as the first constitution of the United States?

It came into force on March 1, 1781, after all 13 states ratified it.

Chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of which particle?

That count is the element's atomic number.

Which bacterium caused the Black Death?

Spread mainly by flea bites, it killed up to 50 million people, half of Europe's population.

On what date did the Boston Tea Party take place?

The Sons of Liberty initiated the protest in the Massachusetts capital.

Who wrote the 1932 dystopian novel 'Brave New World'?

The outsider character John the Savage challenges its engineered World State.

The Byzantine Empire ended with the fall of Constantinople to which power in 1453?

Its own citizens never used the word Byzantine; they called themselves Romans.

Which molecule stores the energy released by cellular respiration?

Adenosine triphosphate keeps chemical energy in a biologically accessible form.

With whom did Charles Darwin jointly present the theory of natural selection?

Darwin contrasted natural selection with the artificial selection of selective breeding.

What is a line segment through a circle's centre connecting two points on it called?

The radius is the distance from any point on the circle to the centre.

Which type of chemical bond involves sharing electron pairs between atoms?

Ionic bonding instead relies on attraction between oppositely charged ions.

How many days did the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 last?

It is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to full-scale nuclear war.

Who is the protagonist of Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman'?

The two-act tragedy is set in late-1940s Brooklyn and told through memories and dreams.

Which physicist first described the change in pitch of a passing vehicle's sound in 1842?

The Doppler effect applies to any wave whose source moves relative to an observer.

Which band of the electromagnetic spectrum has the highest frequency?

From low to high the bands run radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, gamma.

Electrons have roughly how many times less mass than the other two atomic constituents?

A proton is approximately 1836 times as massive as an electron.

On what date did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation?

It changed the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved people in Confederate states.

What are the molecules that enzymes act upon called?

Enzymes accelerate reactions without being consumed in the process.

Roughly how long is the equator?

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

What is the name of the fireman protagonist of 'Fahrenheit 451'?

In Bradbury's future America, firemen burn outlawed books.

Under what collective pseudonym were the Federalist Papers written?

Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote 85 essays to promote ratifying the Constitution.

In the Fibonacci sequence, how is each element after the first two produced?

It starts 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.

The French Revolution ended with which 1799 event?

It began a decade earlier with the Estates General of 1789.

What is the name of the orphan whose education 'Great Expectations' depicts?

It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, told fully in the first person.

What term describes the time for a radioactive quantity to drop to 50% of its starting value?

It is also used more generally for any exponential decay.

Which four empirical laws combine to form the ideal gas law?

Clapeyron and Mendeleev each stated it in 1834.

In which country did the Industrial Revolution begin around 1760?

It had spread to continental Europe and the US by about 1840.

Under what pen name was 'Jane Eyre' first published in 1847?

Charlotte Brontë's sisters Emily and Anne published as Ellis and Acton Bell.

Which two senators lead the conspiracy in Shakespeare's play about Caesar?

Shakespeare drew mainly on Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch.

What is the formula for the kinetic energy of a non-rotating object?

It equals the work needed to accelerate the object from rest to its speed.

By what other name is the citric acid pathway of respiration known?

It releases energy stored in nutrients through acetyl-CoA oxidation.

What is the logarithm of 1000 to base 10?

A logarithm is the exponent to which the base must be raised to produce the number.

Which Shakespeare tragedy, first performed around 1606, is his shortest?

It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book.

Which archbishop first drafted Magna Carta?

It was meant to make peace between King John and a group of rebel barons.

Which 19th-century belief held that Americans were destined to expand westward?

It is considered one of the earliest expressions of American imperialism.

Which 1803 Supreme Court case established judicial review?

It gave courts the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution.

About how much aid did the Marshall Plan transfer to 17 European countries?

Officially the European Recovery Program, it began on April 3, 1948.

Which stage of interphase, when DNA replicates, precedes mitosis?

Mitosis is followed by telophase and cytokinesis, which split the cell in two.

Which SI base unit measures amount of substance?

One of them contains exactly 6.02214076 times ten to the 23rd elementary entities.

Which US foreign policy opposes foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere?

Originally aimed at European colonialism, it shaped American grand strategy in the 20th century.

What are the electric signals fired by neurons called?

Neurons form networks mainly in the central nervous system.

Who discovered the neutron in 1932?

The discovery led to nuclear fission in 1938 and the first reactor, Chicago Pile-1, in 1942.

Which president introduced the phrase 'New Deal' when accepting his party's 1932 nomination?

He won in a landslide over the incumbent Hoover.

Ohm's law states current is directly proportional to what?

The constant of proportionality is the resistance, giving V = IR.

In osmosis, solvent moves through a membrane toward which region?

It tends to equalize concentrations on the two sides of a selectively permeable membrane.

Which anti-war Picasso painting depicts a 1937 bombing during the Spanish Civil War?

Picasso co-founded Cubism and spent most of his adult life in France.

In the periodic table, what are the rows called?

Columns are called groups.

Oxygenic photosynthesis releases oxygen as a byproduct of splitting what?

Plants store the converted energy in carbohydrates like glucose and starch.

Which earlier idea does the theory of plate tectonics build on?

Geoscientists accepted plate tectonics after seafloor spreading was validated in the 1960s.

Who is the protagonist of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'?

Austen wrote it aged 20-21; it was published in 1813.

A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called what?

5 is prime because its only factorisations, 1 × 5 and 5 × 1, involve 5 itself.

A proton has approximately how many times the mass of an electron?

Protons and neutrons, each about one dalton, are jointly called nucleons.

Who devised the square diagram used to predict genotypes of a cross in 1905?

The Punnett square remains a staple of introductory genetics.

Which method of solving quadratics gives the same solutions as the quadratic formula?

The formula is a closed-form expression for the roots of ax² + bx + c = 0.

How many constitutional amendments were added during Reconstruction?

Former Confederate states tried to get around them with poll taxes and literacy tests.

Which movement was characterized by the revival of classical antiquity's achievements?

It is variously dated to the 15th-16th centuries or more broadly the 14th to 17th.

In what year did the Russian Revolution begin?

Two revolutions and a civil war ended the monarchy and brought socialist government.

Roughly how far did the Silk Road span on land?

The name itself was only coined in the late 19th century.

Which pope commissioned Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling?

The chapel itself was built for Sixtus IV, for whom it is named.

In mathematics, slope is the ratio of rise to what?

It is commonly denoted by the letter m.

About how fast does sound travel in air at 20 °C?

That works out to about one mile every 4.69 seconds.

Where has Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' hung since 1941?

It shows the view from his asylum window at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence with an imagined village.

Huckleberry Finn's story is the direct sequel to which Mark Twain novel?

It was among the first major American novels written throughout in vernacular English.

Pilgrims in 'The Canterbury Tales' travel to the shrine of which saint?

Chaucer wrote the 24 Middle English tales between 1387 and 1400.

Which family is at the center of Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'?

Tenant farmers driven from Oklahoma, they embody the Great Depression's dispossessed.

Into how many books are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey each divided?

Both epics are among the oldest surviving works of literature.

What is the name of the aging fisherman in 'The Old Man and the Sea'?

It was the last major fictional work Hemingway published in his lifetime.

Who wears the scarlet letter 'A' in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel?

The story is set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1642 to 1649.

Which 1830 law set the Trail of Tears in motion?

About 60,000 people from the 'Five Civilized Tribes' were forcibly displaced.

On what date was the Treaty of Versailles signed?

It was signed exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Trigonometry takes its name from Greek words meaning what?

The field emerged in the Hellenistic world in the 3rd century BC from astronomical geometry.

On which day is the Sun directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer?

It is Earth's northernmost circle of latitude where the Sun can be seen directly overhead.

About how many artworks did Van Gogh create in just over a decade?

Around 860 of them were oil paintings, most made in his last two years.

In which city was Mozart born?

He completed more than 800 works before dying at 35.

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised in which year?

His style drove the transition from Classical to Romantic music.

Which biological principle holds that all cells come from pre-existing cells?

It was first formulated in the mid-nineteenth century.

Which 16th-century movement marked the beginning of Protestantism?

It is counted among the events that closed the Middle Ages.

The ACT college admissions test was introduced in 1959 by a professor in which US state?

Everett Franklin Lindquist created it as a rival to the SAT; each section is scored from 1 to 36.