Science Myths

10 Pervasive Health Myths

July 28, 2011

This is a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a long time — and a guest blogger offered to write it instead so I happily agreed.  I originally was interested in writing this post from an article in the New York Times science section called Health “facts” you thought you knew published THREE [...]

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Science Myths Unmasked

July 21, 2011

Quite some time ago I was sent a charming little book by its author, David Rudel, with an offer to review it.  Eight months later I finally managed to get through the other items on my reading list and spend some time reading it through   (Let this be a word of warning to all [...]

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US Postal Charges Drive Global Warming

December 2, 2010

We knew that the rise in postal charges was horrible and inhumane, but now we can see that it’s also killing the planet!  A wonderfully funny blog post accompanies this over at JoNova. Similarly, global warming has apparently been causing the population of pirates to decrease: So, this means… the US postal service is killing [...]

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Can you be killed by a bullet falling from the sky?

December 29, 2009

A pertinent question to ask as we approach New Years’ Eve.  The answer is, as is so many things, “it’s complicated.”  According to the Straight Dope, the answer is “it depends.” When an object falls, there are two main forces on it — gravity, and air resistance.  Air resistance depends on how fast something is [...]

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Myth: The astronauts didn’t float away because they had heavy boots

November 9, 2009

Below I am reposting a rather long piece taken verbatim from the website of Steve Detweiler who just says that it’s an “amusing anecdote from a friend of mine.”  So, I’m not sure of the veracity of the story, and some claim that it’s an urban legend.  It may well be.  But it opened up [...]

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New blog! A Schooner of Science debunks the myths about lemmings

June 8, 2009

I came across a new science blog recently – A Schooner of Science — and really enjoyed Sarah’s fresh and funny writing style about all sorts of things that this blog doesn’t tend to cover — namely, biology and chemistry.  (I write about them when I can, but, well, it does all come down to [...]

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Hands on Science Sunday: Feeling pressured?

May 31, 2009

Here’s today’s science classroom activity.  We’re surrounded by the crushing weight of layers of atmosphere above us, but we don’t feel it.  Why?  Our perception is tuned to differences, not absolutes.  If we were in a completely pink world, we would notice anything that wasn’t pink, but (I’m pretty sure) after a few minutes, we [...]

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Dr. Steph has a new podcast series!

February 5, 2009

I’ve got a new podcast series out, and this one is my best yet.  I’ve been hired by the wonderful folks at the National Science Digital Library (they provide a central depot for great digital media for teaching science) to create a podcast for elementary educators on using polar science in their teaching.  We (me [...]

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How big is the full moon?

January 2, 2009

In keeping with my previous post on the International Year of Astronomy, this week’s 5-minute  Science Teaching Tips podcast is about our perception and the size of the moon.  What coin would just barely cover the full moon? You may be surprised. TI director (and recovering astrophysicist) Linda Shore explains how our brains distort the [...]

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Myths about the earth

December 4, 2008

Ooh ooh ooh, Bad Astronomy posted (a while ago) a fabulous list of Ten Things You Didn’t Know about the Earth. If you dig my science myths, check this one out. Such gems as “The earth is smoother than a billiard ball,” “Destroying the earth is hard,” and “Mt. Everest isn’t the biggest mountain.” See [...]

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Myth: Dang. Looks like Gingko doesn’t work.

November 25, 2008

Just got this from Bob Park’s What’s New column. Looks like Gingko has failed a double-blind study to see if it really improves memory. I’ve been taking it for a while, in hopes that it would defuzz my neuronal connections (I’m not that old, but my memory took a real hit ever since I was [...]

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Myth 1: Is glass liquid? (Addendum)

September 16, 2008

This is an addendum to my earlier (and popular) post about whether or not glass is a liquid.  If you haven’t read the previous post, the crux of the myth is that many of us are taught in science class that glass is a veeerry slow flowing liquid, and that’s why old windows are thicker [...]

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Arctic sea ice *is* melting fast

September 1, 2008

There have been several posts around the blogosphere of late regarding a report from journalist Steven Goddard that the arctic sea ice isn’t melting as quickly as we thought. In particular he was calling into question the validity of the data reported from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado — [...]

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10 things you can stop worrying about

August 12, 2008

In an attempt to combat the media’s relentless pursuit of anxiety-producing headlines, the NY Times Science Page (July 29) just published a list of ten things you don’t have to worry about while you’re on vacation. While most of these are not guaranteed to be completely safe and worry-free, the latest results are promising. In [...]

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Myth: Fuel efficiency at the low end of the scale — MPG vs GPM (OR news from geek dad)

August 6, 2008

REVISED 9/11/08 I just recently got an email from my father that showed to me once again that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I guess geekgirl is truly the progeny of geekdad. (He’s a retired physical chemist, BTW). He saw an interesting article in Science about how we calculate fuel efficiency in [...]

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Crackpot science

July 12, 2008

There’s a delightful post on crackpot science (in particular crackpot physics) from Twisted Physics this week. For some reason, physics has more than its fair share of crackpots fringe scientists: those misunderstood tormented souls whose genius goes unnoticed by mainstream physicists… The receipt of any missive beginning, “EINSTIEN WAS WRONG AND MY THEORY PROVES IT!!!” [...]

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Myth 9: It’s a matter of taste…

June 26, 2008

Hey all, I just posted a new episode to my Science Teaching Tips podcast… a bunch of fun activities having to do with taste, and debunking some common myths about taste. Check it out — Episode 41. It’s a matter of taste. This activity is from the Exploratorium’s Human Body Explorations: http://explo.stores.yahoo.net/humbodex.html The Nose Knows [...]

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Myth 8: The Big Bang

June 21, 2008

There are a lot of myths about the “Big Bang” — the theoretical rapid expansion of space giving rise to the universe as we know it. One of the biggest ones is that the universe expanded from a point, and thus has some edge. Many of us picture the Big Bang as an explosion, throwing [...]

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Myth 7: Blood is blue

June 7, 2008

I saw this on a teachers’ listserv, and realized that I had been told the same myth as a child, and it was one of those many things that worms its way into your knowledge base and then you never question it again. It’s funny how this happens, because with any thought, you often realize [...]

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Myth 6: Your tongue has a "taste map"

May 15, 2008

This myth appears in a bunch of textbooks, so it’s not surprising that it’s persisted. The myth is that we mostly taste sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, and sourness at different areas of the tongue. While it’s true that we do have different taste sensations on different areas of the tongue, the exact distribution of sensitivity depends [...]

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