1. You Can Make About 9,000 Pencils From The Carbon In Your Body
Mass of pencil: ~5g Mass of average human: 62,000g 12,400 times bigger than a pencil. Why is anyone amazed that you could make 9,000 small things out of the second most abundant element in a relatively bigger thing? Maybe people don't realise how much bigger we are than pencils. Or maybe they suffer from Alice in Wonderland Syndrome! It's a condition that affects how you perceive the relative sizes of objects. It gets its name from the fact that it's often associated with migraines, and Lewis Carroll was a well-known migraine sufferer. Dr. John Todd posited that Carroll may well have suffered from AIWS, and used it as inspiration for his famous stories. Unfortunately, as Carroll had been dead for over half a century, he couldn't just ask him to pop in for an appointment to find out for sure. See? We can do much better with facts if we really try. Want to write for What Culture Science? Click here to find out how you could get paid to write about what you love.Like you science with a side of sociability? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for loads of science all up in your brain bits.
