Tuesday, September 14, 2004

You can learn a lot in school!

"The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop." - Mark Twain

The following beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from students' essays, exams, and class room discussions.

* One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.
* Thunder is a rich source of loudness.
* You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind.
* When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.
* When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting.
* While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the sun, it is really only centrificating.
* Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.
* A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.
* Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils, others preferred to be oil.
* Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.
* Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers.
* We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on.
* H2O is hot water and CO2 is cold water.
* Water is composed of two gins. Oxygin and hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.
* I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.
* In making rain water, it takes everything from H to O.
* Rain is saved up in cloud banks.
* Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dog's tongue will kill the strongest man.
* Isotherms ~isobars are even more important than their names sound.
* It is so hot in some parts of the world that the people there have to live other places.

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