Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Gravity draws heavy ink to the revolving ball tip of common pens. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Yes. It sits on the Everyday Life shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Standard ballpoint pens rely on gravity to feed ink downward

Gravity draws heavy ink to the revolving ball tip of common pens

Standard ballpoint pens feed thick oil-based ink down a narrow tube toward a tiny revolving tungsten carbide ball. Gravitational force draws the ink downward as rolling action transfers pigment onto paper. Because of this gravity dependency, basic ballpoint pens struggle to write upside down.

Ballpoint Pen DS photograph — Augustus Binu : flickr · CC BY-SA 3.0 · licence · source

Where this comes from

Smithsonian Institution

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Tags: pens, stationery, gravity

Standard ballpoint pens rely on gravity to feed ink downward: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Gravity draws heavy ink to the revolving ball tip of common pens. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a everyday life fact?: Yes. It sits on the Everyday Life shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.