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.
What other lie do you remember being
told in school? http://skyreloadz.tk/forum2_theme_110758716.xhtml?tema=54

This same topic was posted on nairaland last week bro.

This same topic was posted on naira land last week bro.