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Street Smart #1

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Street Smart #1




1. Why don't sleeping birds fall off their perches?

They have a good sense of balance.
They have special brains.
Clenching the branch is a relaxed state.
They have a drill-like appendage that anchors them to the perch.

2. What is the fastest animal on earth?

the gazelle
the cheetah
the zebra
the porpoise

3. What makes a jumping bean jump?

A tiny creature in the bean.
Little legs-little, tiny legs.
The soul of the bean.
Something like popcorn.

4. How much dust does a house collect in a year?

3 pounds
10 pounds
40 pounds
127 pounds

5. How many volts can an electric eel dish out?

20 volts
120 volts
650 volts
no volts, they produce watts

6. How many muscles do we use when we stand?

4
2
none, it's so easy
300

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ANSWERS:

Sleeping Birds?

For birds, clenching is a relaxed position. They have flexor tendons in their talons that respond to the pressure of a branch by automatically gripping. Unlike birds, humans would have to continuously concentrate on flexing their muscles in order to hang on, and it just doesn't seem worth it to sleep on a stick.

Fastest Animal?

The cheetah can catch both the gazelle and the zebra. The sure-footed cheetah is able to achieve an incredible 60 miles per hour, accelerating at the rate of a sports car. However, it cannot maintain that speed for long. It's simply too fast to last.

Jumping Bean?

Inside each bean is a tiny moth larva. The bean, which is really a seed from a weed originally found in Mexico, is a temporary home to the moth larva. Warmth stimulates the larva to jump and jiggle. It's great at parties, a real crowd pleaser.

Dust?

The average home collects about 40 pounds of dust per year. The dust material is composed of many kinds of solids carried in the air. Although it's annoying in the home, dust particles do help raindrops to fall and contribute to the beautiful colors seen at twilight-something to think about when you're dusting for the hundredth time.

Electric Eel?

This six-foot-long South American beast can deliver up to 650 volts and can stun a horse at 20 feet. Yes, it came as a shock to us, too.

Muscles?

We use an incredible 300 muscles in the simple act of standing! And we have more than twice that many (639 muscles have been named) in our entire body. Furthermore, there are more than six billion muscle cells, each thinner than a human hair but capable of supporting a thousand times its own weight-truly pumped up!

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Educational materials developed with the National Science Teachers Association.
NEWTON'S APPLE is a production of KTCA Saint Paul/Minneapolis. Made possible by a grant from 3M.