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I came across this cool Wiki article that busts myths on nearly every topic. Since this is a science focused space, I’ll share the science related part of the link. I’ll also list a few interesting ones I found. It’s a long read, but I think it’s worth your time—at least, I found it interesting! Link: List of common misconceptions.
1 The dark (far) side of the Moon receives about the same amount of light from the Sun as the near side. It is called "dark" not because it never receives light but because it had never been seen until humans sent spacecraft around the Moon, since the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth due to tidal locking.
2 Astronauts in orbit are weightless because they are in free fall around the Earth, not because they are so far away from the Earth that its gravitational pull is negligible. For example, on the International Space Station the Earth's gravity is nearly 90% as strong as at the surface. Objects orbiting in space would not remain in orbit if not for the gravitational force, and gravitational fields extend even into the depths of intergalactic space.
3 The Sun is not yellow; rather, it emits light across the full spectrum of visible colors, and this combined light appears white when outside of Earth's atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere scatters shorter wavelengths of light, particularly blues and violets, more than longer wavelengths like reds and yellows, and this scattering is why the Sun appears yellow during the day or orange or red during sunrise and sunset.
4 The Big Bang model does not fully explain the origin of the universe. It does not describe how energy, time, and space were caused, but rather it describes the emergence of the present universe from an ultra-dense and high-temperature initial state.
5 Bats are not blind. While about 70% of bat species, mainly in the microbat family, use echolocation to navigate, all bat species have eyes and are capable of sight. In addition, almost all bats in the megabat or fruit bat family cannot echolocate and have excellent night vision.
6 Porcupines do not shoot their quills. They can detach, and porcupines will deliberately back into attackers to impale them, but their quills do not project.
7 Mice do not have a special appetite for cheese, and will eat it only for lack of better options; they actually favor sweet, sugary foods. The myth may have come from the fact that before the advent of refrigeration, cheese was usually stored outside and was therefore an easy food for mice to reach.
8 Sharks can get cancer. The misconception that sharks do not get cancer was spread by the 1992 book Sharks Don't Get Cancer, which was used to sell extracts of shark cartilage as cancer prevention treatments. Reports of carcinomas in sharks exist, and current data does not support any conclusions about the incidence of tumors in sharks.
9 Piranhas do not eat only meat but are omnivorous, and they only swim in schools to defend themselves from predators and not to attack. They very rarely attack humans, only when under stress and feeling threatened, and even then, bites typically only occur on hands and feet.
10 Mushrooms, molds, and other fungi are not plants, despite similarities in their morphology and lifestyle. The historical classification of fungi as plants is defunct, and although they are still commonly included in botany curricula and textbooks, modern molecular evidence shows that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants.
11 Cooling towers in power stations and other facilities do not emit smoke or harmful fumes; they emit water vapor and do not contribute to climate change.
12 The Amazon rainforest does not provide 20% of Earth's oxygen. This is a misinterpretation of a 2010 study which found that approximately 34% of photosynthesis by terrestrial plants occurs in tropical rainforests (so the Amazon rainforest would account for approximately half of this). Due to respiration by the resident organisms, all ecosystems (including the Amazon rainforest) have a net output of oxygen of approximately zero. The oxygen currently present in the atmosphere was accumulated over billions of years.
13 98.6 °F (37.0 °C) is not the normal or average temperature of the human body. That figure comes from an 1860 study, but modern research shows that the average internal temperature is 36.4 °C (97.5 °F), with small fluctuations.
Point 11 is kind of goofy, considering the primary greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor.
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You're right again, maybe they should write "not as harmful as others"?
Cooling towers emit water vapor rather than smoke or harmful fumes, and thus do not directly contribute to climate change, their operation is associated with indirect environmental impacts and local atmospheric effects that warrant consideration.
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On the third point, human eyes are also more sensitive to the middle part of the visual spectrum, which also distorts the Sun's true color.
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Thanks! I found it to be true.
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And yet, many of these will be repeated by middle and high school teachers for many years to come... which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as in some cases, it might inadvertently steer some kids to the study of science without really being harmful.
As I clicked on your link, I noticed this one:
Despite popularizing the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid", Kool-Aid was not used for the potassium cyanide-fruit punch mix ingested as part of the Jonestown massacre. A similar product, Flavor-Aid, was used.
I knew about the Jonestown massacre, yet didn't realize it wasn't actual Kool-Aid.
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Very interesting facts love fun facts like these
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Thank you.
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Point 13. My temperature is actually 63.7° F as I am 1/4th zombie on my mother's side.
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I’m surprised that point 10 is a misconception because 9-year-olds in my country learn that mushrooms are not plants when they begin studying Science.
Incidentally, I only learnt that truffles are a kind of mushrooms after I became a Science teacher haha
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