Wondrous Facts about Elements

☼ There are eight times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic Ocean. And if you laid down each water molecule from a teaspoon end to end, you’d end up with a length of 50 billion km – ten times the width of our solar system.

☼ Oxygen is blue! As a gas, oxygen doesn’t smell and has no colour. In its liquid and solid forms, however, it looks pale blue.

☼ The letter J is the only letter that doesn’t appear in the periodic table.

☼ The atmospheres on the four planets Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn have such extreme pressure that they can crystallise carbon atoms and turn them into diamonds.

☼ Diamonds are the hardest natural substance known to man and are made from carbon squashed together at very high pressures (usually deep under the ground). Scientists have succeeded in making artificial diamonds out of many carbon-containing materials, including peanut butter, by squeezing them between the tips of two other diamonds (the only things hard enough to withstand the pressure).