Fun_People Archive
3 Jan
Science Update

Date: Tue,  3 Jan 95 14:34:31 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Science Update

Forwarded-by: Ben Herman <cnatzke@lsil.com>
From: cnatzke@lsil.com (Chris Natzke)

The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from
essays, exams, and class room discussions; most were from fifth-
and sixth-graders. They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that
the "most interesting information comes from children, for they
tell all they know and then stop."

-       One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a
        horse 500 feet in one second.

-       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.

-       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.

-       Thunder is a rich source of loudness.

-       Isotherms and 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.

© 1995 Peter Langston