41–50 of 165 posts
Finally! I always knew my 7th grade science teacher was full of shit on that one, she was so adamant about some things that turned out to be wrong. This one was maybe more excusable because it was common to teach at the time. Maybe it ended up making us better students in the end because we learned to fact-check our teachers, and not to be adamant about things we only think are true (though I'm still guilty of that m…
Your teachers weren’t the disease - they were just a symptom.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or how reentry heating is apparently caused mostly by friction. (Compression of air is the main cause in actuality)
No, actually friction is closer to the truth. It's air running into air at a shock, a process that generates entropy, just as friction does. Compression is a process that is adiabatic, generating no entropy. And in an ideal gas the density increase across a shock reaches a finite limit even as the mach number goes to infinity.
And why passing through a shock (compression) is akin to friction, but not to compression?
Finally! I always knew my 7th grade science teacher was full of shit on that one, she was so adamant about some things that turned out to be wrong. This one was maybe more excusable because it was common to teach at the time. Maybe it ended up making us better students in the end because we learned to fact-check our teachers, and not to be adamant about things we only think are true (though I'm still guilty of that m…
What other unsubstantiated claims did she make?
Truth is (heh) we are all mainly full of shit. We think we know more than we do. We confuse truth for BS constantly. We spend countless breaths debating unfalsifiable opinions as if they’re true - like we really know something. We are all mainly dumb at most things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What other unsubstantiated claims did she make?
Not the OP, but a fourth grade substitute teacher made the claim that we always saw the same side of the moon because it didn't rotate. I don't know what got to me the most: that she didn't understand, that my attempt to explain it didn't go over, or that the other kids in the class didn't get it either. In any case, I've been working on improving my explanations ever since.
For example, if you imagine a newly reunited couple and they hug each other while simultaneously spinning, this is exactly what the moon and Earth are doing. I think most people would also say that the outside person isn't rotating. However, they would also say that the inner person is obviously spinning.
Describing in words is often not the best way to impart explanations of physics, but the easiest way to show this concept for me is to imagine both people separately and consider a half turn. The inner person, rotates 180 degrees, simple rotation. What does the outside person have to do to get to the right position? They have to walk around the inner person to the other side and then rotate 180 degrees to see their partner again.
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Lots of grade school teachers are full of shit. I had one that claimed that a pentagon had 1 line of symmetry because "the top is bigger than the bottom".
Allow me to be dumb for a second--isn't that the case? I mean, if you label the vertices/edges then yes a regular pentagon has five distinct lines of symmetry, but typically people talk about lines of symmetry in a context where vertices are unlabeled, no?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of grade school teachers are full of shit. I had one that claimed that a pentagon had 1 line of symmetry because "the top is bigger than the bottom".
Allow me to be dumb for a second--isn't that the case? I mean, if you label the vertices/edges then yes a regular pentagon has five distinct lines of symmetry, but typically people talk about lines of symmetry in a context where vertices are unlabeled, no?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of grade school teachers are full of shit. I had one that claimed that a pentagon had 1 line of symmetry because "the top is bigger than the bottom".
Allow me to be dumb for a second--isn't that the case? I mean, if you label the vertices/edges then yes a regular pentagon has five distinct lines of symmetry, but typically people talk about lines of symmetry in a context where vertices are unlabeled, no?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of grade school teachers are full of shit. I had one that claimed that a pentagon had 1 line of symmetry because "the top is bigger than the bottom".
Allow me to be dumb for a second--isn't that the case? I mean, if you label the vertices/edges then yes a regular pentagon has five distinct lines of symmetry, but typically people talk about lines of symmetry in a context where vertices are unlabeled, no?