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Palestine Scores One of World's Highest Literacy Rates

In this May 26, 2019 file photo, a teacher supervises while school children attend a final exam during the last day of the school year, at the UNRWA, Hebron Boys School, in the West Bank. (AP)
In this May 26, 2019 file photo, a teacher supervises while school children attend a final exam during the last day of the school year, at the UNRWA, Hebron Boys School, in the West Bank. (AP)
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Palestine Scores One of World's Highest Literacy Rates

In this May 26, 2019 file photo, a teacher supervises while school children attend a final exam during the last day of the school year, at the UNRWA, Hebron Boys School, in the West Bank. (AP)
In this May 26, 2019 file photo, a teacher supervises while school children attend a final exam during the last day of the school year, at the UNRWA, Hebron Boys School, in the West Bank. (AP)

On the occasion of International Literacy Day, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) published a report saying Palestine has one of the world's highest literacy rates.

Illiteracy rates among Palestinian population aged 15 years and above in Palestine fell in the period from 13.9% in 1997 to 2.8% in 2018, said the PCBS report.

For males, the rate fell from 7.8% in 1997 to 1.3% in 2018, while for females it fell from 20.3% to 4.3% over the same period.

By region, the rate fell from 14.1% in 1997 to 3.0% in 2018 in the West Bank while the rate fell in the Gaza Strip from 13.7% in 1997 to 2.4% over the same period.

The illiteracy rate varies considerably between age groups, where the age group 65 years and above got the highest rate, while the lowest rate was among the age groups 30-44 years and 15-29 years.

In 2018, the illiteracy rate among rural locales reached 3.7% (18,000 illiterate persons), while scored 2.8% in the refugee camps (7,100 illiterate persons) and 2.6% (57,700 illiterate persons) in urban areas. In 2018, the female illiteracy rate was the highest in rural localities, followed by refugee camps and urban areas respectively. Male illiteracy rate did not vary by type of locality.

In 2018, the highest illiteracy rate among persons aged 15 years and above was in the Salfit governorate with 5.4%, followed by Jericho and Al Aghwar with 3.9%. The lowest rate was in Gaza governorate with 2%.

By gender, the highest illiteracy rate among males aged 15 years and above was in Jerusalem governorate with 2.9% while the highest illiteracy rate among females for the same age group was in Salfit with 9.2%.

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Eggs Are Less Likely to Crack When Dropped on Their Side, According to Science

Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)
Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)
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Eggs Are Less Likely to Crack When Dropped on Their Side, According to Science

Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)
Fresh eggs are delivered along with chickens and a portable chicken coop to a client’s house as part of the "Rent The Chicken" service in La Crescenta, California, on April 21, 2025. (AFP)

Eggs are less likely to crack when they fall on their side, according to experiments with over 200 eggs.

What does this mean for the best way to crack an egg for breakfast? Not much, since a break around the middle is the best way to get the golden yolk and runny whites to ooze out.

But scientists said it could help with hard-boiling eggs in a pot: Dropping eggs in horizontally may be less likely to cause a stray crack that can unleash the egg's insides in a puffy, cloudy mess.

It's commonly thought that eggs are strongest at their ends — after all, it's how they're packaged in the carton. The thinking is that the arc-shaped bottom of an egg redirects the force and softens the blow of impact.

But when scientists squeezed eggs in both directions during a compression test, they cracked under the same amount of force.

"The fun started when we thought we would get one result and then we saw another," said Hudson Borja da Rocha with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped run the experiments.

The researchers also ran simulations and dropped eggs horizontally and vertically from three short heights up to 0.4 inches (10 millimeters).

The egg result? The ones dropped horizontally cracked less.

"The common sense is that the egg in the vertical direction is stronger than if you lay the egg down. But they proved that's not the case," said materials scientist Marc Meyers with the University of California, San Diego who was not involved with the new study.

Scientists found that the egg's equator was more flexible and absorbed more of the energy of the fall before cracking. The findings were published Thursday in the journal Communications Physics.

Eggs are also usually nestled top-down into homemade contraptions for egg drop challenges as part of school STEM projects, which partially inspired the new study. It's not yet clear whether the new results will help protect these vulnerable eggs, which are dropped at much loftier heights.

It's a bit counterintuitive that the oblong side of an egg could hold up better against a tumble, said study co-author Tal Cohen with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Countless broken eggs show "the courage to go and challenge these very common, accepted notions," Cohen said.