So what didn’t she know that amazed you (or the taacher)? Sounds like a pretty imaginative idea for a sixth grader.
Admitted, she couldn’t just “drop” the brick; she’d have to shoot it hard enough for its momentum to overcome friction and the opposing gravity once it passes through the center of the planet. And the radar on the vessels would have to be very sensitive to detect the brick if it emerged.
So in all, the things she doesn’t know are friction coefficients, the efficiency of radar, and the resistance of brick to heat. Not bad at all for a sixth grader.
Given that this is a thread about what people don’t know, do all of you TMBG fans realize that “Istanbul” is not a TMBG ? I remember my parents playing the Four Lads version which was recorded in 1953. I believe the Four Lads version is the original.
We were studying the names of very large numbers in my sixth grade math class (note for foreign readers: We were about 11 years old), and the teacher told us how after millions come billions and then trillions. Some kid asked what comes after trillions, and our teacher said, in total sincerity:
I remember a discussion I once had with a coworker. She was a life-long New Yorker in her mid twenties. She was a very intelligent person but she came from a poor area of the Bronx and did not have the best education. She compensated by staying well informed of current events.
Once, while talking about the UNSCOM people and whether they should really be in Iraq or not, I found myself explaining to her what the UNITED NATIONS is. She had just never heard of it.
I taught 8th grade biology for a while, and once we were discussing cancer. A kid raises his hand and asks: “How do you know if you have cancer?”
This played right into my hands as I had planned to discuss ways of detecting cancer, including breast self-exams and testicular self-exams. While I was discussing testicular self-exams (yeah, yeah, I know, but somebody’s got to teach the kids about it), the same kid raises his hand again: “Um, is that for everyone or just guys?”
I’ve encountered people like those mentioned above who had never heard of the notion of time zones, and while I’ve never actually met anyone who didn’t know who Hitler was, it seems a lot of people living today go blank if you mention Mussolini, or worse, if you refer to him as “Il Duce.” A friend of mine who works at a bookstore has dozens of stories about the absurd questions and comments he gets, not just from customers, but from fellow employees, like “Can you talk to this customer for me? He’s asking for this book I’ve never heard of – I’m sure we don’t have it – by some guy named Darwin, called ‘Origins of …’ oh, something-or-other.” Better yet, in my view, is someone asking for Dante’s “Inferno,” who, when asked if there was any particular translation she had in mind, required an explanation of the concept of works written in other languages needing to be translated for those who read only English. The idea was so difficult for her that she eventually asked, “so the actual words on the page might be different?”
My all-time favorite: during a production by the local Shakespeare Company of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” there was a couple in the ticket queue who apparently thought they were lining up to see a revival screening of the movie, which had been released some years earlier. Upon learning the ticket price, and perhaps picking up some sort of clue from the surroundings, the guy (early thirties in age) said, “wait a minute…is this one of those things with live actors on a stage in costumes and makeup and all that?” Upon being told that yes, that was just what it was, his date said “I didn’t think they did that any more” and they left.
I was in my 11th grade government class and we were discussing term limits. We came to supreme court justices and their life terms. A girl in the second row asked "but that can’t be true, cause we still have judges and the supreme court has been around longer than anyones life span.
My wife and I were at the office of a financial planner, setting up an IRA, I think. The whole office was decorated with pictures of lighthouses, all shot from the air. There was one that really caught my eye - it was a winter scene of a lighthouse built on a shoal, surrounded by pieces of broken ice. The wind had blown the ice past the lighthouse, and there was a clear area in the lee of the structure where the ice had flowed around it.
OK, I love playing the fool, enough that it gets annoying to my wife, but this one I couldn’t resist. I made a point of studying the picture for a minute, then turning to Mark, the financial guy, and asking him how they got that lighthouse to move like that. My wife and Mark rolled their eyes in unison. Yeah, they’re both on to me.
The best part was that later on one of the other guys in the office overheard this. He commented to Mark about it, and added, “You better make his plan really simple”.
A friend of mine was dating a girl back in the '80s. For some reason, the subject of Vietnam came up in a conversation. She said, “Vietnam war? Was that the one with Hitler in it?”
I was tutoring SAT I Verbal to a totally Honors/AP type girl, who was already getting about 700+ on the verbal section, and I had to explain both “locomotive” and the relationship between a tractor and a plow. I think it was the plow that she didn’t know.
Again, SAT I verbal class. I had two of the most verbally ignorant kids I’ve ever had (other than recent immigrants), and they were white, born here, knew no other languages, spoke no other languages to their parents, etc. (They frustrated the snot out of me…) Unlike what many people on this board have related about their childhoods, they had heard words that they had never read. So this boy looks at “beret” and guesses that it’s a long knife.
He meant “bayonet” because he was pronouncing it “barette.”
A very bright kid started asking me about Christianity (he had briefly dated a Catholic girl and been intrigued), and I was trying to explain things.
It was a complete gasping shock to him that Jesus was Jewish. He was raised nothing-Buddhist (a statue in the corner that’s never really mentioned), and his only info on the subject was from the Jewish kid in the class, who said, “We don’t believe Jesus was God.” So that was his definition of “Jew.” He actually said at one point, “So Jesus can’t believe in himself?”
He laughs with me about it now.
My pretty much best friend, who also was a four-year college graduate, and teaching third grade, who I consider pretty thoughtful, and was a history major I think, asked me why they call it the Stealth fighter. He didn’t know that was a real word.
I’ve taught a decent bit of high school in what some people would consider the “inner city,” and I learned not to assume basically anything. And not to use a vocabulary much over what would probably be considered a 6th grade level if I really wanted to be understood. And if I was a afraid they were really ignorant on something, I would just state it flatly and not give them the chance to embarrass themselves by guessing.
In defense (just a tiny bit) of the guy who didn’t know the less-than symbol, I never was taught that trick at first either. I made it through fourth grade by finally figuring out that you point it at the small number.
Oh, and you people from places where it routinely rains would be shocked at the number of kids who can’t really explain the idea of a conduit, and have absolutely no idea of what a culvert is. From their expressions, it could be an airplane engine part. This is from living in the greater L.A. basin, where there aren’t any country roads or ditches or culverts under the roads to prevent flooding.
I don’t know how truly dumb this is, but I have a friend who nearly ruined a car because he kept checking the oil right after driving, and he never wiped off the stick and re-inserted it. It always looked full. He also didn’t have any idea about a complete electrical circuit being needed for something to work, but maybe that’s even more obscure.
OK, I have a good story. Another college buddy with lots of family farm experience with machinery and electrictiy was trying to explain to his roommate that he couldn’t shock their suite-mates by dead-shorting a stack of D-cell batteries to their door knob. All the kid apparently got out of it was that he needed more power, so inserted the wires (with the completed circuit) into the wall socket. A big spark flew out and scared him silly. He’s really lucky he wasn’t the easiest path to ground, or he would have been in the corner twitching.
I was talking the other day with a girl from LA who’s studying at McGill. She seemed very intelligent (studying Arabic, wanted to join the Peace Corps). By and by it she asked me if I knew if I knew where the good place to see aurora borealis was. I said that they are sometimes visible from Montreal, but that it is too far south and too bright to see weaker aurora, and for really good aurora she’d be better off going further north. She balked at taking a plane to get there (despite that to get to anywhere north of Edmonton around here you more or less have to take a plane), and said innocently, “But aren’t we right next to the Arctic Circle here?”
I gaped, then began to laugh. Montreal is at 45[sup]O[/sup]30’N, a good 2400 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. Yellowknife is south of the Arctic Circle, for heavens’ sakes. Montreal is twice as far from the Arctic Circle as it is from the latitude of Los Angeles.
I can’t remember what grade I was in when I asked this question: Why is there snow on the tops of mountains, when the mountaintops are closer to the sun? (This embarrasses me now; I shoulda been able to figure this out on my own.) The teacher said she wasn’t sure and changed the subject.
