8th February 2016
The average mobile phone contains about 24 mg of gold. Gold does not corrode and therefore, is a good transmitter of small amounts of currents in the mobile phone. It is estimated that in the United States alone, 130 million mobile phones are retired every year. Recycling these alone would yield about 3.4 metric tons of gold.
8th February 2016
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and the largest pyramid in Egypt. It was built for the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek) and took 20 years to complete. The length of each side at the base averages 755.75 feet (230 metres). Its original height was 481.4 feet (147 metres) and present height is 455.4 feet (138.8 metres). It is made of about 2.5 million blocks of stone.
8th February 2016
Badminton is a popular sport played with lightweight racquets and a shuttlecock. It is said to have been originated in Poona, now Pune, where the British army officers picked it up in the 1860s. The sport was called Poona. It was introduced in England in about 1873 at the country estate of the Duke of Beaufort in Gloucestershire, England. The estate was called Badminton, after which the name ‘badminton’ was given to the sport.
8th February 2016
Asteroids are small rocky bodies that orbit the sun. Most asteroids orbit in a belt between Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt. They are sometimes called planetoids or minor planets. There are an estimated 400,000 asteroids. However, the large asteroids of about 100 km diameter are few. Some large asteroids have their own moon, such as the asteroid Ida, which has a tiny moon named Dactyl.
8th February 2016
The earth spins or rotates on its axis every day. It takes 24 hours to rotate once on its axis. To calculate the rate of rotation, the circumference of the earth at the equator, which is 25,000 miles, is divided by the total time taken per rotation, which is 24 hours. The value comes to be approximately 1,000 miles per hour or 1,600 km per hour, which is equivalent to covering the distance between Delhi and Mumbai in 52 minutes (approx.)—quite a high speed indeed.
8th February 2016
The Olympic gold medals are mostly made of silver, not gold. Only six grams, or 0.19 ounce, of gold is required to coat the medal. The medal itself is made of 92.5 per cent or 550 grams of pure silver. The medals are usually circular with a diameter of a minimum of 60 mm and a thickness of a minimum of 3 mm. These specifications are as per the Olympic Charter. The last time a pure gold medal was awarded in the 1912 Olympics in Sweden.
