About Earth

FAST FACTS about EARTH:

circumferance: 24,901.5 miles
diameter: Nearly 8,000 miles
surface area: 196,935,000 sq miles
percent of earth’s ocean approximatly 70% *
percent of earth’s land: approximatly 30%
highest point:Mt Everest 29, 028 above sea level
lowest point: Dead Sea 1,302 below sea level
* of the 70 percent of water; 97 percent is salt water, 3 percent is fresh water

The EARTH is made of the following CHEMICAL ELEMENTS:

oxygen 46.6 %
aluminum 8.1
iron 5
sodium 2.8
magnesium 2.1
calcium 3.6
potassium 2.6
silicon 27.7
other 1.5

Here is an example of how long it takes garbage to break down:

plastics take 500 years
aluminum cans take 500 years
organic materials take 6 months
cotton, rags, and paper take 6 months.

Other Interesting FACTS:

Earth is referred to as the BLUE PLANET. WHY? Because from space,
the oceans combined with our atmosphere make our planet look blue.

Earth is estimated to be 3-5 Billion Years old.

Earth is estimated to weigh 6,585,600,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
The area of the earth is almost 200 million square miles.

Earth travels through space at 66,700 miles per hour.

Earth’s oceans are an average of 2 Miles deep.

Earth’s rotation on its axis makes a day at 24 hours…

Earth’s orbit around the sun makes a year at nearly 365 and 1/2 days
Earth is tipped at 23 and 1/2 degrees in orbit. That axis is what causes our seasons.

Antarctica is the coldest place on earth. The continent is almost entirely covered in ICE !

Only 11 percent of the earth’s surface is used to grow food.
Breeze carries about 100 Million tons of sand particles around the earth yearly.
That means if you live in America-you could have Sand that came from the Gobi desert in China.

The highest place on Earth is at the top of Mount Everest 8850 meters above sea level.

The Dead Sea is the lowest point on land sitting at 417.27 meters below sea level.

Only 29.2% of the Earth is land the rest of the globe is water.

Our journey around the sun every year takes 365 days, but in fact it takes a quarter of a day longer resulting in a leap year every four years.

The earth spins just a fraction over 1000mph, The planet Earth orbits around the sun at 67,000 mph….

There are 195 countries in the world…

Our atmosphere starts 500km’s above the Earths surface but stretches up to 10,000km’s after this point of the atmosphere called the exosphere, gravity releases its pull.

The core of our planet is made of molten iron and this is what gives us the magnetic field that surrounds our planet. The terminology for this magnetic field is called the magnetosphere.

This magnetosphere prevents us from the harsh radiation from the sun.

The Equator that stretches around the globe measures 40,075km in length.

The Earths surface is just over 8 miles deep.

The worlds longest river is the River Nile in Africa.

Desert areas are the driest places on Earth and they make up 14% of all land mass, and they continue to claim land to this day.

The biggest desert in the world is the Sahara Desert it covers just over 3 million sq miles.

Angel Falls in Venezuela is highest waterfall in the world it has a 979meter drop off….

Mt Etna in Italy is home to the most active volcano on our planet.

The Pacific Ocean is the biggest ocean on the planet and could hold the entire lands surface area in its boundaries. The Pacific Ocean has the deepest point too, in the Marianas Trench the sea bed can be found 11,033 meters below its surface.

The oceans tides are controled by the gravitational pull of our moon.

The first picture of Earth from space was taken in 1966.

A map of the Earths surface and ocean floor was completed in 2007 from space.