Learning Every Day

I've got some Snapple bottles lined up on my desk. Let's take a look at the "Real Facts" in the lids...

"The temp. of the sun can reach 15 million degrees F."
Sounds about right, but is it? A quick search finds solarviews.com where they say: "The Sun's outer visible layer is called the photosphere and has a temperature of 6,000°C (11,000°F)." Not quite 15 million, but that's just scratching the surface. If we delve deeper: " Solar energy is created deep within the core of the Sun. It is here that the temperature (15,000,000° C; 27,000,000° F)..." Ahah! 15 million degrees C and 27 million degrees F. I suppose somewhere in between the surface and the core the temperature would be 15 million F, so technically the lid is correct, but I don't think that's what they meant.

"The most sensitive parts of the body are the mouth and fingertips."
Now, some of you romantic types may be thinking there's something else more sensitive, but have your ever seen a blind person pull down their pants to read? I didn't think so. I happen to know this one is correct, so we'll move on.

"Swimming pools in the U.S. contain enough water to cover San Francisco."
At first glance you might think "Wow, that's a lot of water." or "Wow, that's a lot of pools." But what exactly are they saying? They don't say "All the swimming pools combined." The implication is that each and every swimming pool in the U.S. has enough water to cover San Francisco. "Yeah, right!" you say, and possibly with good reason. But notice also they did not specify how deeply San Francisco would be covered. According to answers.com, S.F. covers a 47 square mile area. If you assume an average pool size of 10,000 gallons and trust my math, that comes out to a depth of 3.109692907397719148936170212766x10^-7 meters, or 0.3 micrometers. A water molecule measures close to 2 picometers, less than 1/150000 the depth, so it's not like there wouldn't be enough water, and it's also obvious that any size pool will do. Looking at it practically, though, that's like 1/100000 inch of rain, which would probably evaporate pretty quickly unless San Francisco was experiencing one of its famous fogs at the time. If that were the case, however, the damp on everything might be more than the pool water. Technically, though, I say this one's correct.

Final score: 2/3