What are some scientific misconceptions you had as a child?

I thought the Earth was round

I thought the moon turned into the sun until I was 5

>>7637703
Well meme'd

I don't know. When I found the right answers I forgot the useless shit I assumed to be true

I thought gravity was due to the Earth spinning. This was because my science teacher, who probably was confused by seeing 2001, said spinning objects create their own gravity. I do not recommend raising your children in rural Alabama like my parents did.

I thought urine came from my balls.
I always wondered why we had two, and it couldn't quite figure it out. To me it made more sense if we just had one giant nut.

We could derive morality from science and use it to guide and shape our moral frame work

>>7637700
I was initially taught that there were only 3 states of matter.

I was then taught that there were only 4 states of matter.

I was then taught that atoms are protons and neutrons stuck together with small spheres "orbiting" around the atomic nucleus

>>7637718

I didn't think this but I remember other people did.

I thought the earth was a sphere.

>>7637700

I thought biology was a science

>>7637763
How many states of matter are there?

That a light year was one third less calories than a regular year

Thanks dad...

>>7637916
half the fun of having kids is fucking with them.

>>7637911
there are 5 main phases of matter.
plasma, gases, liquids, solids and Bose-Einstien condensate.
there's a shitload of states of matter though, for example in solids alone there are
amorphous solid, Crystalline solid, Plastic crystal, and Quasicrystal

here's a list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_of_matter

>>7637945
where does supercritical fluid fall?

quantum mechanics provides a realistic view of our universe

I thought homeopathy was just a specific kind of herbal medicine.
feels bad, man

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>>7637700
I knew that movie cameras had a shutter that opened and closed, creating a series of still that made a moving picture.
I assumed our eyes did the same , but so fast you couldn't see them.

Anything that has to do with FTL as in the lightyear stick or the spinning gears shit. AKA half of the threads on here. Then I learned relativity.

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>>7637927

>>7637700
I didn't think planets orbited around the equator of the sun, rather, any circular path around the sun

I also thought by 2005 we would have machines that broke your atoms down, transported them, and re contstructed you somewhere else instantly.

>>7637700
I though mangos were furry animals with long tails which lived up trees until I was 15

>>7638010
...... you had to bring it out of context

>>7637700
Assumed the heat of Earth's core was from pressure, rather than radioactive decay.

I also assumed supercooling a conductive material reduced resistance, and therefore, it simply"worked faster" or more stably or something.

I thought girls peed out of their butts until I was 10

I thought pluto was a planet.

As a kid I was convinced that nothing exploded and as products of explosion of nothing were expanding they created infinite universe

I never thought much about anything as a kid so I never made many misconceptions.

The biggest scientific misconception I had was probably that breathing was somehow your body forcing air inside, and the action was focused around your nose/mouth and lungs.

I only learned about a week ago that it's actually the diaphragm and a buttload of other muscles that forcibly inflate the lungs by stretching them out when they contract. Makes a lot of sense.

>>7638064
At my primary school I was TOLD that the Earth's core was heated by pressure. Australia's science education system in primary schools is fucked up.

>>7639048
But it is. It is the pressure due to gravity which causes the heat.

>>7638956
Pluto's a daawg, man. Even kids know that.

>>7639064
Trying to imagine Disney's Pluto with bling and stuff. No.. that just doesn't fit.

>>7638996
Yes I learned of diaphragm late also. Like in biology when I was 14 or something.

String theory.

>>7639080
But that's very unconfirmed. Mostly mysterical munchy brain-candy which has not been verified by experiments.

>>7637954

It is an equilibrium of its three phases.

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>>7637700
I believed in a christian god

>>7639061

This is only partially true.

The real answer is more multifaceted than that. Involving the heat left over from the Earth's formation, frictional forces from heavy elements like Iron sinking to the core, and the radioactive decay of other elements.

>>7639103
Yes, only like 99.9999% or something.

Heat still left over since over 4 billion years ago, really? Frictional forces are also due to the pressure. There would be no friction if there was nothing pressuring that iron towards something else causing friction.

Although nice try.

>>7639105
You need to remember that space isn't "cold", it just isn't warm. There's very little out there for particle to transfer their energy to, so to lose it most has to be radiated or energetic particles have to be lost. For a body like the earth, that takes a lot.

>>7639105

You seem to lack a basic understanding for how the transfer of heat works. The amount of heat left over from Earth's formation is not insignificant, and that's not even including the energy transmitted by the impact that created the moon.

And when you say pressure, I think you mean to say gravitation. Earth's gravity (especially near the core), causes these materials to come into frictional contact. Pressure in the Earth's core is a byproduct of Gravity's work.

I thought America was on the other planet and you have to take a rocket to get there. I also thought that girls have dicks, but no balls. Not really scientific but whatever.

>>7639111
All bodies radiate heat out mostly by photons when the internal states of the matter drop down to lower energy levels. It does not take "a lot" it happens all the time.

I thought rockets pointed straight at where they wanted to go to in space since I had no concept of what the rotation of the Earth, or its orbit, really meant.

>>7639121
No, I know how these things work. Well trolled, however I don't have more time to waste. Good day.

>>7639146
I don't know why you're choosing to misinterpret me, saying "for a body like the earth" in the context of gradual cooling, makes it fairly implicit what I meant.

>>7639152

Knowing how forces work and knowing how they interact are very different things. My post was meant to educate you.

>>7639146

Isn't most of this energy loss mitigated by our atmosphere and the sun?

>>7639160
Nice von-oben attitude you got there. Surely works very well with the people you try to "educate", or maybe it mostly annoys them.

>>7639167

Most of the company I keep don't really care about physics or how the world works unfortunately. Which is why I come to /sci/.

My posts to you didn't come from a place of arrogance as much as it came from a place of disappointment in people that I feel are just as intellectually capable as I am, and probably more so.

>>7639174
>about physics or how the world works unfortunately.
good, physics does not tell how the world works .

>>7639174
Same here. Most people don't care. Actually sci is a real shitty place for that. Mostly trolls nowadays. There are better more serious forums if you want a real serious interaction.

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>>7637908
Nice meme>>7637908

I thought that that there is dichotomy between science and religion.

>>7639496
Nope. Mankind's greatest delusion tends to be that it has transcended religious thought.

>>7638003
seriously how old were you before you understood

Black holes actively suck things in, like a vacuum cleaner. Many people hold this misconception as adults.

>>7637700
sleep tight Pizzer

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>>7637700
For a long time I didn't know about gravity and thought that air somehow made things fall back to earth.

>>7637945
Fermionic condensate where?

>>7638996
How old are you?

When I was little (5-8) I remember walking to a friends house and him coming out to meet me, and I thought his house was on the side of the street opposite where he was. Rather than think oh, I must have been wrong about which house was his, I assumed this was because the Earth had rotated and he ended up on the other side.
Maybe I thought the Earth was a spin 1/2 system idfk

I didn't know whether babies came from the vagina or the ass for a while.

History is a social science, right?
I thought germany killed six million jews during WWII.

>>7637700
I believed "galaxy" referred to the solar system. Imagine the holy shit moment I had when I dropped that idea

>>7637700
I thought females were as intelligent as males.

>>7637700
Was raised by devout fundamentalist Christians so I believed everything from evolution being a lie to dinosaur bones being fake. And was taught to think "If it can't be answered just assume God did it"

>>7639951
>>7639937
I thought africans were comparable in intelligence and behavior to humans, rather than chimpanzees or bonobos.

>>7639945
Had a coworker in my summer job say, no word of a lie,
>"hey you know that crippled scientist?"
"...Stephan hawking?"
>"yeah, apparently some Russian billionaire is funding some telescopes and working with that guy, they wanna look super far into space."
"alright"
>"wouldn't it be cool if we could find other galaxies?"
He was >30. Heart was in the right place though

I thought cars were pushed forward by their exhaust. Cars with side facing tailpipes were going to take some serious sciencing to figure out. I was like 5 or something so give me a break.

I had an elementary school teacher who said as a kid she imagined people as basically bags of blood with bones floating around freely inside.

>>7639945
Growing up I met adults who got still called star systems galaxies. It is or at least was a pretty common mistake.

>>7637703
Hehe

>>7638028
>I didn't think planets orbited around the equator of the sun
is this true? do all the planets orbit on the same plane?

>>7637763
>I was then taught that atoms are protons and neutrons stuck together with small spheres "orbiting" around the atomic nucleus

h-h-how is this wrong?

>>7637908
kek

>>7640163
No, one of the outer planets has a very inclined orbit compared to the rest. However, the rest generally do orbit on the same plane more or less.

>>7639958
i thought muslims are kinda not the worst shit on earth

>>7637700
I thought anyone could be as smart as they want as long as they put enough effort into it.

>>7640203
why? could there be planets we're missing out because of their orbits then?

>>7637911
infinite.
Don't you know your calculus!

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>>7640203
>mfw i first learned the moon isnt made of cheese

>>7640173
What do opposite charges do anon?

I thought that given sufficient fuel you can actually smelt steel beams.

>>7637700
That the whole global warming histeria was real

>>7640226
>Believing in infinity, despite that it's near certainly neither falsifiable nor provable when applied to the real world.

When will this madness end.

>>7640173
There are no little balls, there is no zipping around. Everything is fields and densities.

Electricity flows from positive to negative

>>7639511
About 9

>>7640213
The dust that formed the solar system had an angular momentum which had to be conserved

>>7637700
I thought that the moon was mars until like 10 years old, I think.

>>7639509
I'm going to quote you on this, thanks anon.

>>7640365
There is positive charge flow though

>>7637700
that the earth had a flat and infinite surface

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I couldn't concieve of waves as being anything other than an emergent property of particles
so when I read that light was a wave and a particle, i imagined as a wave moving through a sea electrons, and that the peak of the wave gained the properties of a partical.

I also couldn't understand how any forces besides gravity could "pull" things together as i assumed that at some fundamental level everything was particles which can only bounce off each other.
was 10 at the time

I thought /sci/ was about science.

I thought girls peed out of their butts.
All I knew was that my sister peed sitting down, and I sat down to poop. So I put 2+2 together.

One day, she made a really big deal out of how she managed to pee standing up. My mind was blown. I thought girls could "choose" where it came out of.

>>7637700
That science is the answer to the worlds problems

>>7637700
I thought that rationality told the truth

>>7638039
thats fucking adorable

>>7641271
this is my fetish
more stories please

White Cows = Milk
Brown Cows = Chocolate Milk
Until I was like, 11.

I thought material was literally created when organisms breed.

>>7640208
underrated post

>>7637700
I still have a hard time accepting that countries in the Southern Hemisphere have summer in December-March.

Also centrifugal force.

>>7637722
>>>/his/

I used to think that suns and stars were different things.
A couple years ago my mom asked me if the moon was a star and I had to teach her the difference between planets, moons, and stars, as well as that stars and suns are the same.

>>7639815
Yep. That and gravity. I now know that it is dark energy repulsing matter in direct proportion to mass, still fucking my mind up, that one.

I thought the moon followed me
I thought the wind would blow my hair off my head (this was very stressful)
I thought rainbows appeared when you turn your back to the sun

>>7639176
That's probably why he listed them as two different things.

>>7639937
>>7639951
>>7639958
what are /pol/ doing here?

>>7641917
> omg everyone with opinions is a nazi
>>>/x/

Did you know the sun is made of LAVA?! Just a big old lava ball...

>>7641921
>muh opinions
there's opinions and then there's being an idiot

>i thought fungi were plants
>I thought fire was alive
>I thought electricity and fire were the same thing
>i thought dinosaurs were still alive and that's why dragon mythology existed
I actually believed in a lot of cryptozoology shit when I was a kid. Surprising that I didn't turn out to be a conspiracy theorist.

>>7642258
You must be at least 18 to post on this site

>>7641921
You can have opinions on subjective things. Science is objective, anon. There is only experimentally/observationally observed truth, no place for opinions.

>>7642501
Some hypotheses are sufficiently unclearly proven that it can be an opinion whether they are true or not

I thought we knew what was outside the universe.
I blame popsci media spewing imaginary bullshit like multiverses as if they were facts.

>>7640203
AHEM
None of the 8 planets have highly inclined orbits.

>>7637700
When I was in elementary school I though earth was (although really slowly) growing bits by bits -at least- because of decomposing fallen leaves and things like that that were "produced" seemingly out of nowhere and produced soil.

So I though it was cool and that after thousands of years earth would have gained like 3 meters in radius.

>>7638010
kek

that blackholes were impossible to detect
i used to have nightmares about the earth being destroyed by a black hole

>>7642778
Don't worry anon, there are still gamma ray bursts to instantly annihilate us, and there's one aiming right at us.

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Better than 47 years old.

>>7642822 meant for
>>7641028

>>7639531
Wait, is a black hole a singularity of near infinite mass or is it a fucking hole in space time that leads to another baby universe or white hole

Inb4 trolling, people can't make up their minds yet and I want to know. As all I think I know is that they are fucking dense and weigh 3 Shit tonnes so they draw stuff in via gravity and absorb the matter

>>7642840
It's just a body so heavy not even light can overcome its gravitational pull.

>>7640365
Electrons go negative to positive carrying negative charge, so positive current flow will be going positive to negative

>>7642840
More like the first thing seems to create the second thing under certain conditions if you interpret the maths in a somewhat speculative way.

>>7642848
Thank you, because I was unsure about the possibilities of worm holes, well sort of. As far as I can comprehend it they can't exist because space doesn't fold in on it self, apparently

If it sounds like I'm talking out my arse it's because I'm merely interested in space, never studied it past secondary/high school

>>7642869
>>7642869
Oh god, to me this is like working out what light is, cheers for letting me in on the cool stuff.

>>7639096
how is that scientific at all

>>7637700
I didn't understand the concept of gravity and I couldn't understand how there isn't a place on earth where people don't fall off because they're upside down.

>>7638979
I'm not sure I parsed that sentence correctly

>>7640353
>there is no zipping around
There is a certain amount of zipping

>>7642765
>8

>>7642751
almost all things popsci is bs.

I thought it was 6,000 years old

>>7640274
Just saying that "opposite charges attract each other, so eventually the electron would have to fall into the proton" is misleading. Massive bodies also attract each other, but the moon isn't going to crash into the Earth any time soon.
Classically, however, there was still a problem with the "orbiting electron" view of the atom, because the electron would radiate away its kinetic energy due to synchrotron radiation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation), and THEN fall into the nucleus.

>>7637718
I thought this too. I remember seeing diagrams of the bladder when reading biology non-fiction books, but the reason I thought it was there was because it was a gender-neutral way of representing the urinary system (I guess I knew that girls didn't have balls).

The scientific misconception that sticks out most in my mind is that if you insulate things, they'll get warmer. I was like 6 or 7 when our primary school teacher did an experiment where we wrapped 2 polystyrene cups in wool; one filled with ice water and one hot. I predicted that both of them would get warmer, but they both stayed at (around) the same temperature.
It blew my fucking mind.

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>>7642851
Here. As I said, I thought the circuit was +ve to -ve

That if you tried hard enough you could split an atom with a knife

>>7644222
>He's never split an atom with his bear hands

>>7637700
I thought everyone's brains were biologically the same.

I thought that burning something would destroy the matter permanently.

I thought electronic devices would work the exact same in space as on Earth.

I thought organisms developed evolutionary mutations based on need.

>>7637700
I thought black holes were like giant magnets that pulled all metal inside so a wooden/plastic spacecraft could be used to probe it safely

also I thought africa was a planet in a different star system. made perfect sense at the time since I've never seen a black person as a kid

>>7644315
>also I thought africa was a planet in a different star system
Bullshit.

>>7644318
nope, that's what I thought

at first I assumed it was just another planet but then I've learned other planets' names and there was no africa. so I've decided it must be in some other star system

I've even come up with a way to go there - it involved giant elevator-like structures because I was afraid of spaceships

>>7637700
When I was a child I thought the moon followed me.

>>7644331
It technically does since all matter has gravitational fields.

>>7642767
I actually thought that until right now..

>>7638915
Up until now I thought I was the only one who thought this

>>7637718
This. I knew urine came from kidneys, and the urinary tract has something to do with the penis area. I also knew that people said getting hit in the kidneys hurt, so I just kind of figured boys had kidneys on the outside and girls had kidneys in their backs/sides.

Tl;Dr I thought testicles were kidneys

I can into science without math because they're completely diffrent subjects in school.

>>7644744
But it's true.
Math is imaginary "art" with no real-world applications.

>>7644751
Yes, I thought this as a child as well

>>7639509
Please elaborate

>>7644270
>I thought electronic devices would work the exact same in space as on Earth.
T-they don't?

>>7642840

A black hole is a body that has had its radius compressed to below it's calculated Schwarschild radius (r_Schawschild = 2*G*M/c^2) . Because the general theory of relativity treats gravitation as a geometrical space (intepreted by length intervals called metrics) as opposed to a force like in Newtonian theory, the spatial coordinates of the spacetime interval (which just means an interval that includes, typically, a time component and three spatial components like x,y,z) become "warped" as gravitation increases.

When people (incorrectly) say that black holes "suck" light in, what they really mean is that light (think photons) follow a curved path around the black hole that leads more and more towards the center of the black hole. In fact, it is probably better to say that light "falls" into the black hole the same way a marble would roll around and fall towards the center of a large bowl. Because of the mathematical solution for the metric of a black hole, also called the Schwarzschild metric or Schwarzschild geometry, is such that the path of an incoming photon -- once it has crossed the event horizon -- only points towards the center of a black hole would mean that light can never physically escape a black hole.

An interesting thing that most people misinterpret is the thing called wormholes. If we were to change our coordinates from the Schwarszchild geometry to using a new set of coordinates called Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates (which assumes that light has a linear relation to time), you can obtain a set of solutions to the metric for "outgoing light" in a black hole; these are called white holes, aka worm holes. One must be careful in thinking about white holes, these are just solutions for an ASSUMED behavior of light coming out of a black hole, we don't know or ever will know how light would behave if it were to somehow over come the physical limitations of the geometry of a black hole.

>>7645045
Cont...

So we now have solutions modelling the behavior of light, both incoming and outgoing from a black hole. If you were to graph these solutions, you would find that spacetime behaves oddly in that it looks like a funnel called an Einstein-Rosen bridge. Spacetime looks as if it was split inside a black hole and the two regions of the Einstein-Rosen bridge are connected "physically" (again, we don't know really how it is connected, just mathematically) by a wormhole.

>>7645045
Bloody hell, you're a right legend. I can't comprehend half of it, but it all just falls into place. Learnt more from you than I have from bloody school.

This is why I love this board. I just wish I could actually join in on the real discussions rather than have to ask questions. Cheers mate.

>>7645064
Asking questions is perhaps the best way to learn apart from actually studying the subject. The reason why many people do not understand things like black holes is that they never truly study them. A high level of math is needed to begin even discussing general relativity but if you ever up to the challenge I suggest opening up a general relativity book (or even checking out a wikipedia page)

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>>7637700
Growing up in a highly conservative and Christian family with no sisters and female friends, and no access to any nude material, I thought that women had a penis until I was 11 years old. My older brothers knew this and would take advantage of how naive I was. For example, one when I inquired as to why there were no urinals in the women's restroom, they explained that their penis' were smaller than men's and thus harder to control when urinating. This is why I'm a firm athiest.

I used to think when I was in elementary school that gays had sex by one of them putting their penis inside the other ones' penis/urethra, and so I also assumed they must have very thin penises.

>>7645077
Oh I will, it will get me away from electronics for a bit and I could do with a refresh in maths. It will be something that will forever interest me, but I don't have the right gears in my head to do it at a high level.

Thanks again

>>7645079
topkek

>>7637700
I thought that the sky was somehow "covering" the earth like a dome. Also, actually understanding why the sky is blue came very late. Back then I imagined it was due to some sort of (natural) colourants.

>>7637703
O B L A T E S H E P A R D
B
L
A
T
E

S
H
E
P
A
R
D

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>>7637908

>>7645079
BAILEY JAY
YOU TAKE MY HEART AWAY

>>7645497
Oblate Shepard? Is this some kind of meme?

>>7645079
This is copypasta, right?

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I thought matter and energy where the same until i was 15

then i thought they even existed until i was 24

>>7637703
I can't believe I used to think billiard balls were round.

I believed in God until i was 14
The i realized what God truly was and didn't believe in him until 30

>>7642322
Says the guy who doesn't understand why holocaust deniers are told to go back to /pol/.

>>7642767
the earth is gaining mass though
a little bit of atmosphere is lost into space regularly but it's more than made up for by falling meteors and such

>>7645079
https://youtu.be/9t3TzSnwCn4?t=44s

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>>7637916
>>7637916
>>7637927

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I was most of the way through high school before I was taught that plants need oxygen to live too.

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Virtually everything my elementary school science teachers tried to tell me. I remember failing a test because I put plasma as a state of matter. My dad got mad, but the teacher told my dad that plasma was something in blood, and was definitely not a state of matter.

I ended up transferring schools, but the new teacher was no better. She was obsessed with teaching us the truth about Atlantis, and about weird alien supercontinents where the Aztecs had the wheel and were actually from Atlantis.

Luckily, I never paid much attention in class, and I'm here now, aren't I?

I considered heat and temperature to be the same thing.

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>>7645842
>I ended up transferring schools, but the new teacher was no better. She was obsessed with teaching us the truth about Atlantis, and about weird alien supercontinents where the Aztecs had the wheel and were actually from Atlantis.

I've spent a lot of my life passively compiling stories in the back of my head, and I never thought of that.

I think I can use this, thanks. Now I just need to reconcile the existence of new world apes that seemingly independently incurred the same CMAH mutation.

I used to think math was important, but then I realized numbers aren't real so math doesn't really matter at all desu

>>7645845
Ayy same here. Took me till stat thermo to teach me otherwise.

>>7645512
No. This really happened to me.

>>7637700
I used to buy into the anti gmo crap.

>>7637700
I thought Nuclear Power was bad and kills everything, everywhere

>>7646469
Tell that to Fukushima and Chernobyl. :^)

I thoight that in the space between two magnets of the same pole there was void.

>Though that if you gad a perfectly sealed and perfectly stable (it would not crumple up) room and pumped out all the air eventually the room would have to create air.
>The sun liked me because every time I walked out into a bright day, after a minuet or too it wouldn't be as bright.

>>7637700

Thought black and white photos of my grandparents meant they were really living in a monochrome reality.

>It's still REAL to me, damnit!

>>7637700
I thought That God existed, like a person.

>>7647606
fedora/10 bait.

>>7637717
Artificial gravity can be produced by rotating bodies.

that nuclear power was safe because engineers had thought of everything

>>7637700
I used to think happiness was actually achieveable, rather than simply being an imaginary concept created by our minds to keep us perpetually in action.

>>7647919
I used to think information was real, rather than being simply a particle state within a given system being interpreted by a suitable decoder.

I used to think that worms living in fruit was a common occurrence. I would only eat fruits as a kid if they were thinly sliced so i could examine each slice.

i used to think "acid" had something to do with your "ass"

>>7637718
I thought the exact same thing
so I squeezed my balls so the urine can come out faster

I thought we were going to live in space by now.

I was still an adult when I was thinking that atoms looked a bit like tiny billiard balls spinning around a raspberry, like it is in the magazines.
I just assumed scientists new what atoms look like because they built a giant microscope or something.