50 Fun Facts About Sixth Grade

The name Mesopotamia means the land 'between' what?

The Tigris and Euphrates flow through what is now Iraq, where the Sumerians invented cuneiform writing and the wheel.

Which ancient people developed cuneiform, one of the world's first writing systems?

It began as picture symbols pressed into clay around the late 4th millennium BC.

The Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest written law codes, comes from which region?

It was composed around 1755-1750 BC and carved on a tall stone pillar.

The Rosetta Stone carries the same decree in three scripts: hieroglyphs, Demotic and which language?

French soldiers found it in 1799 and Jean-François Champollion used it to crack hieroglyphs in 1822.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built as a tomb for which pharaoh?

It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still largely standing, and stayed the world's tallest structure for more than 3,700 years.

Which Greek city-state is credited with founding the world's first democracy?

Ancient Greece was made up of several hundred independent city-states, or poleis, separated by mountains.

The Parthenon, the great temple on the Acropolis, was dedicated to which goddess?

It was built during the city's Golden Age in the 5th century BC.

The ancient Olympic Games were held every four years at Olympia in honour of which god?

The modern Olympic flame is still lit there, using sunlight and a mirror in front of the Temple of Hera.

Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC on a date known as what?

His adopted heir Octavian became Augustus, Rome's first emperor, in 27 BC.

According to legend, which twins founded Rome in 753 BC?

The Western Roman Empire lasted until AD 476, when the emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed.

Roughly how long is the Great Wall of China, counting all its sections?

The best-known stretches were built by the Ming dynasty, and despite the myth it cannot be seen from the Moon with the naked eye.

The Terracotta Army was discovered in 1974 by farmers doing what?

More than 8,000 clay soldiers were buried to guard China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the afterlife.

Which layer of the Earth is the thickest?

The mantle reaches down about 2,890 km; the crust beneath your feet is only 5 to 70 km thick.

Earth's inner core is a solid ball made mostly of iron and which other metal?

The outer core around it is liquid, and its churning creates Earth's magnetic field.

Which scientist proposed the idea of continental drift in 1912?

His idea became modern plate tectonics in the 1960s; plates creep along at about the speed your fingernails grow.

What is the zone around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's active volcanoes sit?

Earth's lithosphere is broken into seven or eight major plates plus many smaller ones.

In the water cycle, what is the name for water vapour turning back into liquid droplets to form clouds?

About 97% of Earth's water sits in the oceans, and the Sun's energy drives the whole cycle.

Which type of rock forms when magma or lava cools and hardens?

Granite cools slowly underground while basalt forms from lava at the surface; sedimentary rocks are the ones that hold fossils.

Marble is a metamorphic rock formed when heat and pressure change which rock?

Slate is made the same way from shale; the endless changing of one rock type into another is called the rock cycle.

Which gas do plants take in from the air to carry out photosynthesis?

Combined with water and sunlight it makes sugar, and oxygen is released as the leftover.

Why do most plant leaves look the colour they do?

Chlorophyll soaks up red and blue light for energy and bounces the green back to your eyes.

Which part of the cell holds the chromosomes and DNA?

Robert Hooke named cells in 1665 because the tiny boxes in cork reminded him of monks' rooms in a monastery.

Which two structures do plant cells have that animal cells lack?

The wall is made largely of cellulose and the chloroplasts hold the chlorophyll for photosynthesis.

In a food chain, what are the plants and algae at the very bottom called?

Only about ten percent of the energy at one level passes to the next, which is why food chains rarely go beyond five levels.

Which of these lists the eight planets in the correct order from the Sun?

The four inner planets are rocky, the four outer ones are giants, and the asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter.

Roughly what share of the Solar System's total mass is in the Sun?

Jupiter and Saturn together make up more than 90% of what is left over.

Using the order of operations, what is 1 - 2 x 3^4?

Exponents come first (3^4 = 81), then multiplication (2 x 81 = 162), then subtraction; PEMDAS is the usual memory aid.

In the mnemonic PEMDAS, what does the P stand for?

Multiplication and division share the same rank and are worked left to right, as are addition and subtraction.

Which of these numbers is prime?

A prime has no factors except 1 and itself; 1 is not counted as prime, and Euclid proved there are infinitely many primes.

The word 'percent' comes from Latin words meaning what?

So 45% is simply 45 out of every 100, or 0.45.

A bowl holds eight oranges and six lemons. In simplest form, what is the ratio of oranges to lemons?

Two equal ratios written together, such as 6:8 = 3:4, form a proportion.

What do you get when you multiply two negative numbers together?

Negative numbers were being used in China during the Han dynasty, long before European mathematicians accepted them.

What is the formula for the area of a triangle?

A triangle is exactly half of a parallelogram with the same base and height; a circle's area is pi times the radius squared.

Which is the largest continent by both area and population?

Australia is the smallest continent, and Greenland, though huge, only counts as the world's largest island.

Which river carries more water than any other on Earth?

It flows through Peru, Colombia and Brazil into the Atlantic, and no bridge crosses its main course.

The Nile's two main branches, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, meet at which capital city?

The river flows north through eleven countries' territory before emptying into the Mediterranean.

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

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented climb to its 8,849-metre summit in 1953.

The US Constitution divides the government into how many branches?

Legislative, executive and judicial, each able to check the others; the document was signed in Philadelphia in 1787 and opens with 'We the People'.

How many members sit in the US House of Representatives?

Representatives serve two-year terms, while the 100 senators, two per state, serve six years.

'Her smile was like sunshine' is an example of which figure of speech?

Drop the 'like' and say 'her smile was sunshine' and it becomes a metaphor instead.

Words such as buzz, meow and hiccup, which imitate the sounds they describe, are examples of what?

The term comes from Greek words meaning 'name-making', and the sounds differ by language: a clock goes 'tick tock' in English but 'kachi kachi' in Japanese.

'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers' is a classic example of which device?

It is the repetition of the sound at the start of nearby words; John F. Kennedy used it 21 times in his inaugural address.

In the sentence 'She sang loudly', which part of speech is 'loudly'?

Adverbs usually describe how, when or where something happens, and many end in -ly.

Percy Jackson discovers he is the son of which Greek god?

Rick Riordan invented the stories at bedtime for his son and gave Percy ADHD and dyslexia like him.

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

Auggie has Treacher Collins syndrome and had been home-schooled until then; Jacob Tremblay played him in the 2017 film.

In Hatchet, how many days does Brian survive alone in the wilderness before rescue?

The only tool he has is the hatchet his mother gave him before the flight; the book won a Newbery Honor in 1988.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid's Greg Heffley first appeared where before the books were published in 2007?

Jeff Kinney posted daily entries online from 2004 to 2005; the series has since sold more than 250 million copies.

How many letters of the alphabet are used to name musical notes?

A to G repeat every octave, and middle C sits between the treble and bass staves.

In traditional art class colour theory, which three colours are the primary colours?

Screens mix light from red, green and blue instead, and printers use cyan, magenta and yellow ink.

The Moon's surface gravity is roughly what fraction of Earth's?

At 1.62 m/s² it is also about half the gravity of Mars, which is why astronauts bounced across the lunar surface.