The educational system should be a citadel of
education and enlightenment, an abode of learning
where anyone can safely discover the truth about
everyday facts. This system given us the opportunity
to become mature and responsible adults, securing
our knowledge in science, mathematics and history.
Except, of course, for all the ridiculously irresponsible
lies we’re being fed. Here are nine of the biggest lies
taught to us in school.
1. There are three states of matter
You might remember being taught that there are three
states of matter namely; solid, liquid and gas. Well that
is not entirely true. Your teacher might have lied to
you because you were probably too young to
comprehend the other states of matter. Although it
wouldn’t hurt your science teacher to say something
like “there are three popular states of matter” or “we
are going to learn three state of matter at this stage”,
your science teacher had to ram a lie to your throat
not minding how difficult it would be for you to
unlearn such a prevarication.
Four states of matter are observable in everyday life:
solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Many other states are
known such as Bose–Einstein condensates and
neutron-degenerate matter but these only occur in
extreme situations such as ultra cold or ultra dense
matter. Other states, such as quark–gluon plasmas,
are believed to be possible but remain theoretical for
now. For a complete list of all exotic states of matter
click here.
2. Bats are blind
Despite the old adage “blind as a bat” it would surprise
you to know that absolutely every bat has eyes and
can see better at night than humans.
Yes! You can close your mouth now. True they use
echolocation, but it is simply to augment their vision,
not to replace it.
Interestingly, bats will even rely on their eyes over
their echolocation results. In some studies, they have
flown directly into a window through which light is
shining, ignoring the echolocation telling it that the
path was not all clear.
3. You have five senses
Humans do not have just five senses, there are at least
nine senses and most researchers think there are
more like twenty one or so.
Humans have more than the commonly cited five
senses. The number of senses in various
categorizations ranges from 5 to more than 20. In
addition to sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing,
which were the senses identified by Aristotle, humans
can sense balance and acceleration (equilibrioception),
pain (nociception), body and limb position
(proprioception or kinesthetic sense), and relative
temperature (thermoception).Other senses
sometimes identified are the sense of time, itching,
pressure, hunger, thirst, fullness of the stomach, need
to urinate, need to defecate, and blood carbon dioxide
levels.
Each time a teacher says there are five senses, the
teacher is referring to Aristotle’s classification of the
senses, which if you ask us is a very old text to teach a
student in the 21st century.
4. People thought the earth was flat
If you learned in school that Christopher Columbus
sailed from Spain in 1492 and crossed the Atlantic
Ocean, disproving a common belief in those days that
the Earth was flat, then the lesson was wrong.
Several books published in Europe between 1200 and
1500 discussed the Earth’s shape, including “The
Sphere,” written in the early 1200s, which was required
reading in European universities in the 1300s and
beyond. It was still in use 500 years after it was
penned.
It is not true that people thought the earth was flat
and that was the reason why they refused to travel
thinking that they would get to the end of the earth
and fall off. And this was the reason why Christopher
Columbus was not allowed to sail round the world in
1942
It’s well documented that we’ve known the world is
round since the days of the mathematical geniuses of
ancient Greece. People like Pythagoras (6th century
B.C), Euclid, and Aristotle (4th century B.C) all wrote
works indicating that clearly, the Earth was round.
5. Humans evolved from apes
It is true that humans do belong to the same
taxonomic family as the great apes, like gorillas. It is
also true that the closest known living relative to
Homo sapiens is the chimpanzee. However, this does
not mean humans “evolved from monkeys”. We share
a common, humans and the great apes—
chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—started with a
common ancestor, and then evolved in separate
directions over the years.
So next time someone claims you evolved from a
monkey, correct his mistake. Better yet, if this person
is a political or cultural leader, inquire why he is
spreading misinformation. The truth may be
surprising.
6. Diamonds are formed from coal
You might have been made to believe that diamonds
come from pressurized coal. This misconception
stems from the fact that diamonds and coals
are made of carbon.
If you believe that diamonds are made from highly
compressed coal, don’t worry—so does everyone else.
But it’s completely false: diamonds are found in
vertical shafts filled with rocks formed by volcanoes,
while coal is mainly found among other types of rocks
—like limestone and shale.
Coal is almost never found in the same type of
environment as diamonds. Coal is formed near the
surface from plant matter, while diamonds are formed
in the Earth’s mantle—over ninety miles (145 km)
closer to the core—and then carried up to the crust
during volcanic eruptions.
It’s true that diamonds are formed from carbon by
intense heat—2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees
Celcius)—and high pressure, but it’s unlikely that the
carbon comes from coal. So while the idea of a lump
of coal becoming a beautiful diamond makes a pretty
picture, it’s still one big spoonful of lies.
On the other hand, modern science can pretty much
turn anything into a diamond in the lab: even the
corpse of your recently deceased loved one. Aww.
7. There are different taste areas for taste on
your tongue
All different tastes can be detected on all parts of the
tongue by taste buds, with slightly increased
sensitivities in different locations depending on the
person, contrary to the popular belief that specific
tastes only correspond to specific mapped sites on the
tongue. The original tongue map was based on a
mistranslation of a 1901 German thesis by Edwin
Boring.
In addition, the current common categorical
conception is there are not 4 but 5 primary tastes. In
addition to bitter, sour, salty, and sweet, humans have
taste receptors for umami, which is a savory or meaty
taste.
8. Mother birds will abandon their chicks if
they are touched by human
Popular belief claims that if mothers smell the scent of
human on their chicks, they will leave them to die. But
it turns out that the touch of a human isn’t enough to
drive a mother away from her maternal duties.
“Birds don’t have a very strong sense of smell, so you
won’t leave a scent that will alarm the parent,” Cornell
biologist Miyoko Chu tells Livescience.com.
In reality, mother birds can be just as devoted as
human parents.
“Usually, birds are quite devoted to their young and
not easily deterred from taking care of them,” Chu
said.
But experts still advise not to poke through bird nests.
“The fact is, birds don’t abandon their young in
response to touch, [but] they will abandon [their
offspring and their nest] in response to disturbance,”
University of Montana biologist Thomas Martin tells
Scientific American.
9. Lightning never strikes the same place
twice
This myth is actually an old idiom meant to explain
that unfortunate occurrences will not happen twice in
the same way to the same person. While the old saying
is comforting, lightning can actually strike anywhere
twice – the main question is the probability of this
occurring. For a random object in your backyard, this
might be fairly low.
But the 1,454-foot-tall Empire State Building is actually
struck about 25 times per year. Humans are no
exception: US park ranger Roy Sullivan was struck by
lightning seven times between 1942 and 1977, and
lived to tell the tale (or rather all seven of them).
Lightning is more likely to strike taller objects because
they carry the upward channel better than shorter
ones. But the probability of a lightning strike also
depends on other factors, such as the presence of salt
water, metal, or moisture in or near the ground.
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