Our bodies are amazing. It does so many different things, and as well as the stuff you learned about from school (either in lessons or from the legendary Life Bus, with Harold the Giraffe), it does hundreds of other cool things. Some of these we don’t even think about, but if we were unable to do them, our lives would be much more difficult. Here’s a list of 10 weird and wonderful facts about the human body.
1. Our brains can withhold a lot of information. You know how you can remember small details about random events in your life? That’s because our brains can store more information than most encyclopaedias.
2. Just one strand of your hair can support almost 100 grams. And that’s just one strand alone!
3. Stomach acid can dissolve some types of metal. If you’ve even been in chemistry and used hydrochloric acid to dissolve things, this is actually the type of acid you’ll find in your stomach. Strong stuff!
4. People fart and burp about 14 times a day. I’m not saying it’s ok to let one rip in public and not apologise for it, but if someone tries to laugh at you for having wind, you can come back at them with this little fact. Everybody does it!
5. Our noses can retain over 50,000 different smells. Each person also has their own individual scent, and though it’s not immediately obvious on everybody you meet, you can often recall the smell of your parents and close family.
6. Sleep is actually more important than food. You can last between 3 weeks to two months without food, but if you are sleep deprived, you’ll undergo significant personality changes. You might even start to hallucinate! Even if it’s only a few hours, a sleep or a short nap is important for your health.
7. One quarter of the bones in our body are in our feet. Think about how much your foot flexes, compared to your forearms or skull – you need all those tiny bones for moving about.
8. The amount of heat our body releases could potentially be enough to boil water. Because our body spends so much energy keeping our bodies at 37 degrees, it has to get rid of some of the heat we generate when we exercise.
9. Our bodies have so much iron, it could make a 3-inch nail. This is why iron is an important part of your diet – not that you should be eating ingots of iron, but if you are unsure you’re getting enough iron, iron supplements can be easily bought. If your blood doesn’t have enough iron, you get can anaemia, which causes tiredness and maybe some loss of strength.
10. Information travels from our brain and to our nerve endings (and vice versa) very, very quickly. If you burn yourself or bash against something hard, you’ll feel it instantly. That’s because your brain registers this information, which travels from the affected area to the brain at about 170 miles an hour. That’s about the same speed that a plane takes off at!
Source: http://icantseeyou.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/100-very-cool-f.html
Image from: http://new.homeschoolmarketplace.com/homeschool-human-body/
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