There’s no hope for us.
According to a National Science Foundation survey (pdf), 25% of Americans think the Sun tools around the Earth. Bigfoot, Elvis, ghosts, creationism, the grassy knoll gunmen, I can let all that go. But now it’s official. It’s been fun while it lasted, but it’s time to give up and close up shop. Everybody back to wherever they or their ancestors emmigrated from to get a decent education.
Yeah, but 35% of Americans think radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling it.
I guess after the apocalypse, a good third of the survivors will do themselves in anyway, and my roving band of marauders will have less competition.
Do you have data showing that people in the countries that non-native Americans came from score higher on similiar tests?
Well that’s just silly. Everyone knows the universe revolves around me.
You make a good point. Since there’s nowhere to go, I guess we should just lace up our Nikes and wait for the next comet.
With respect to an observer where?
An observer on Earth is entitled to the conclusion that the Sun revolves around the Earth. An observer on the Sun is entitled to the conclusion that the Earth revolves around the Sun. An observer on Mars is entitled to the conclusion that both the Sun and the Earth revolve around Mars, and an observer at the center of our galaxy is entitled to the conclusion that the Sun revolves around the galaxy while the Earth revolve around it.
And so forth. I have to believe at least SOME people understood the relativity of motion with respect to the observer and answered accordingly.
Are you kidding? Education is supposed to teach people things. That the earth revolves around the sun is pretty fucking basic education. Your world implies people don’t go to school and believe are entitled to believe whatever they believed when they were 8.
You really think 25% of Americans meant it in that way?
92% of college grads and 76% of high school grads answered correctly, while only 52% of those who didn’t graduate high school got it right. I don’t think you can attribute this to overanalyzing the question.
“The universe began with a huge explosion”? Not to be pedantic, but that seems a little, uh, simplistic for a question about modern cosmology, no?
Bricker is speaking of relativity, in which any point can be the center of the universe. Technically, the Earth being the center of the universe is as true as any other point. But I doubt that those 25% were answering in the spirit of relativity. I’d bet that most of them know of Einstein only as “Some really smart guy with bad hair.”
you must be nuts - of course it revolves around the earth and I’ll keep saying it until the church lets me out of the dungeon under the pew
Interestingly, correct answers peaked at baccalaureate and declined for graduate/professional for questions B, D, K, N, P, and Q.
If you would have left Mars out of it, you would have had a viable argument. It is the movement of Mars that specifically points out the problem of an Earth-centric galaxy. As the Earth approaches and passes Mars in their respective orbits around the Sun, Mars seems to move backwards across the sky. Not something that would happen if everything was orbiting the Earth.
I think it’s a truism, talked about many times on this board, that there is excellent education to be found in the US - the best in the world, still the number of “JayWalking” (as on Leno) individuals are staggering.
I’m too lazy to do a search now, having the flu and local time is closing in on midnight, but I’m sure you can find it.
Bigfoot Elvis!?
:eek:
Cool…
It’s interesting how big the spread is male vs. female on that Sun question. 14% men vs. 34% women.
Also, Question K on links between smoking and lung cancer is pretty good proof that saturation advertising does work. 94% correct over all people!
Nope. Under Einstein’s theory of relativity, acceleration (in this case changing direction) is not relative.
Wrong kind of relativity. Einstein’s theory of relativity deals with the fact that light has the same measured speed regarless of one’s reference frame. The idea that simple motion has no absolute reference frame is actually Galilean relativity.
It is good to see support for the Aristotelian view making a comeback.