Facts about Corn
Posted by Barrett C. / in Science Facts
There are four types of corn
- Is corn a grain or vegetable? The fact is, sweet corn is actually a fruit. Although some types of corn are used to make flour, which is traditionally a grain.
- A piece of corn has three parts including the husk, Kernel and cob.
- There are four types of corn including sweet corn, Flint corn, popcorn, and dent corn.
- Sweet corn is the most commonly cooked and eaten off the cob or separated from the cob to eat.
- Flint corn is one of the ingredients to make cereal, cornmeal, and animal feed.
- Popcorn has a hard outer shell, but contains a tiny bit of moisture inside each kernel. The moisture expands when it's heated causing the kernel to pop open, revealing a soft white edible food.
- Dent corn is used to make flour, corn bread, tortilla chips, animal feed, and tortillas. Dent corn has hard kernels that are ground up to make the flour to make these foods.
Corn Plant and Corn Cob Facts
- Corn plants typically are harvested when they are between 6 to 8 feet tall. Corn plants, however, can grow up to 25 feet tall. Its roots can grow as deep as six feet.
- Corn grows in a stalk, which move water from the roots to the leaves and ears of corn.
- Corn ears grow inside of leaf-like husks, which wrap around the corn ears.
- Inside the husks, corn ears and silk grow. Silk a long, thin, but strong plant material.
- Corn kernels grow on a corn cob.
- Corn kernels are not seeds. A corn kernel contains a outer hull, protecting the seed. The corn seed is in the center of the hull. The material around the seed contains carbohydrates and sugar.
- An ear of corn can contain over 800 seeds.
- Corn is not found growing wild because the seeds must be removed from the husk to be about to grow into corn plants.
History of Corn
- Corn was a big help to some ancient civilizations.
- Two ancient civilizations with a history of growing corn are the Mayans and the Aztec.
- Many native civilizations called corn maize.
- Ethanol, made by fermentation of corn, then distillation, has been around for a long time.
- Ethanol, was used in some of the very first internal combustion engines. The first Model T Fords were even capable of running on ethanol
- Currently, each year people eat an estimated 2 million tons of corn.
- Farm animals eat more than 160 million tons of corn each year.
- Over 30 billion bushels of corn are grown world-wide.
- A bushel of corn is about 91 ears of corn and weighs fifty-six pounds.
- Today, the annual value of corn crops each year in the United States is over $50 million.
- Iowa, one of the largest producers of corn in the United States, uses more than 50 percent of corn crops to make ethanol to replace petroleum-based gasoline.
- Popcorn has been grown, popped and eaten for thousands of years.
- In 1945, a scientist named Percy Spencer invented microwave popcorn.
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posted by Barrett C.