# Cecil wrong! SDMB full of it. My kid's science textbook says so! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [December 13, 2002, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568 "2002-12-13T18:48:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mandielise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@mandielise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mandielise)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2002, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/21 "2002-12-15T22:17:01Z")
Yeah, and I also get upset when new information comes out, and the books still don’t get updated. My Bio text book (republished this year) still calls Neandertals “homo neandertalensis” … when it is in fact “homo sapiens neandertalensis.” ---
**Author:** ![JorBagh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@JorBagh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JorBagh)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2002, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/22 "2002-12-21T12:59:10Z")
And just how many states of matter are there? Texts still say “solid, liquid, gas.” But what about plasma and Bose-Einstein? Are these somehow different sorts of states? ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2002, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/23 "2002-12-25T00:54:59Z")
Traditionally, matter is considered to contain three states: solid, liquid, and gas. However, the solid state really means _crystalline_ solid. These are the “normal” states of matter that apply to “most” materials. Plasma, Bose-Einstein, and amorphous solid are special cases. This is a case of old ideas not being corrected in the basic science classes, leading to errors in understanding when the students go on to higher levels of learning. ---
**Author:** ![Poto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Poto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poto)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/24 "2002-12-27T14:02:45Z")
Textbooks are written by committees. I’d rather read Asimov or Cecil. Or even a lightly edited text by one author. The one they state on the cover. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/25 "2002-12-31T08:56:31Z")
Ah, now we know why the push for computers in schools… so they can just patch textbooks with a patch on Windows Update when they realize how grossly wrong they are. Not that I envy anyone writing a textbook. Someone with the obviously superior intellectual drive to post something to the SDMB may have the capacity to understand more complex concepts in physics and other groups, but for the average 12th grader, I’m sure they’ll learn about plasma, Bose-Einstein, and amorphous solids if they really need to. Understanding that water can be ice, steam, or the majority of any American beer suffices nicely, since most American students can’t (or rather, won’t, I’m sure they could if they cared) even get their minds around that. It is like saying that a 4th semester Spanish textbook uses a non-standard tense or spelling. Most language texts are not “correct” to a modern technical standpoint, as they are teaching the principals behind the language, not the modern dialects. Or a history book that doesn’t quite manage to mention something like the entire Eastern Front of WWII (I’ve seen it). ---
**Author:** ![kenskorupski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9fc348/32.png) [@kenskorupski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenskorupski)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/26 "2002-12-31T13:57:45Z")
I must agree with Astro! I missed the column but can surmise what was said. The fact of the matter is, glass is NOT a solid. It is a VERY slow moving liquid. The window pane example is a perfect way to show this. On very old houses, you can actually see the thickness difference from top to bottom. Also, the view through the glass becomes distorted as a result. I learned this 20+ years ago in elementary school! ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2002, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/27 "2002-12-31T16:03:05Z")
No. Glass is not a liquid; it is an amorphous solid. Although it flows very slowly, it takes millions of years for it to be noticable, not hundreds. Glass is thicker at the bottom of old windows because the old method for making window glass was to blow a bubble and then spin it like a pizza until it flattened out, which produced a sheet of uneven thickness; glaziers naturally put the thick ends at the bottom. Your elementary-school textbook was wrong, as elementary-school textbooks often are. And all this has been discussed to death already. ---
**Author:** ![kunoichi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4da419/32.png) [@kunoichi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kunoichi)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2003, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/28 "2003-01-01T01:44:32Z")
As a chemist, I just want to comment that in my experience, most of what I was taught about science in grade school was either untrue or not quite true. Sometimes it’s a case of lousy writing/editing (I remember a librarian telling me she found an ancient “textbook” that said the moon was made of cheese), sometimes it’s out of date information (especially in biology!), and sometimes it’s deliberately oversimplified to keep the little kiddies’ heads from exploding (did YOU understand quantum mechanics as a teenager? Hence the persistence of ‘historical’ models of the atom). So basically don’t believe everything you read in a science textbook, odds are it’s not the whole truth. ---
**Author:** ![hobbes730](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/97f17d/32.png) [@hobbes730](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hobbes730)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2003, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568/29 "2003-01-01T15:03:43Z")
As a senior, I’ve had my “understanding” of science turned up on end so many times now that I don’t even notice any more when it happens. I mean think of all the fundamental rules you learned in school that now turn out to be completely wrong: matter cannot occupy the same space (quantum mechanics shot down that one), there are only three states of matter (nope, there’s actually twice that many), **anything** having to do with atoms (atoms are the smallest pieces of matter; okay, protons and electrons are the smallest pieces of matter; well actually there are these things called quarks and bosons and…), matter has both volume and mass (except for photons, which have no mass but considerable momentum in numbers), anything in the universe is either energy or matter (except for light, or even very small bits of matter, which are really both and neither). That’s just what came off the top of my head; I think you get the idea. I’m sure (I hope) that whoever published the book knew that glass was not liquid, but didn’t want to confuse the kids by trying to explain that yes, in fact it does flow, but only over millions of years, and is not a liquid anyway. Like kunoichi said, it’s really a matter of oversimplification and lousy writing on the part of Prentice Hall. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecil-wrong-sdmb-full-of-it-my-kids-science-textbook-says-so/142568.md?page=1)