The last man to walk on the moon is?
With some knowledge = Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17
Child and expert answer = We don’t know yet
Good one!
I’d argue these don’t really count, because they’re definitional. The definitions of these words aren’t universally agreed on in a precise enough sense to separate every edge case. See also: Is abortion “murder?” Is gay marriage “marriage?” Is white chocolate “chocolate?” (Or practically every so-called “debate” in GD.) Natural language just isn’t precise about most of this stuff; you can rationally argue either side. That, coupled with the human notion that naming things gives you power and understanding over them…well again, it explains a lot of GD.
This is not the reason.
Another good example for this thread, though, is mirrors. Stand a couple of feet in front of an ordinary flat mirror. Where’s your image? A child will tell you that it’s a couple of feet behind the mirror, because just look at it. An expert will tell you the same thing. But ask a college freshman, and about 90% of them will tell you that the image is on the surface of the mirror, like a TV screen.
Another one: Centrifugal force. An uneducated person will tell you that of course centrifugal force is a real thing; you can feel it. Someone with a little learning will tell you no, that’s wrong, the real force is the centripetal force. An expert will tell you that centrifugal force is just as real as gravity.
And not quite directly on topic, but related: I heard once of a geography test that was given to both American and German students. The test had two parts: First they had to put a list of American cities in order by population, and then they had to do the same for a list of German cities. The Americans outperformed the Germans on the German cities, and the Germans outperformed the Americans on the American cities. Apparently the key was that most of the test-takers didn’t recognize many of the foreign cities at all, and (correctly) reasoned that a city they’d never heard of was probably smaller than one that they had.
I like Chronos’s additions.
I opened this thread to talk about the news story that’s sweeping the nation about switching to Garamond. He claims that switching fonts will save the government millions in printing costs.
Someone with no knowledge would think that all fonts more or less would be the same.
This kid did a bit of research and found out the switch will save millions. Then experts weighed in and squashed his claims.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028436/why-garamond-wont-save-the-government-467-million-a-year
Pish tosh. Neither answer is wrong, it’s just that your question is ambiguous, and indeed the first answer is better since “is” implies present.
Shagnasty may not have been exacting in how he said it (and a bit prejudiced against mister Bernoulli), but the above is just wrong.
In fact, this is almost exactly the incorrect understanding Shagnasty was railing against. The “traveling further” explanation for why the air goes faster is just blatantly not true. Longer distance only means the air has to go faster if you assume it has to reach the tail end at the same time as the air going past the bottom (in fact the air going over the top tends to get there sooner for a normal flight condition).
Pressure difference is correct. Bernoulli is correct. Air does go faster on the lifting side. Longer distance has nothing to do with it.
This seems to me to be a matter of semantics. While it’s true that when you model reflection mathematically the “image” is behind the mirror, it’s just as true that it’s still projected off the surface of the mirror. It’s not like the reflective surface magically alters the properties of things behind it to generate an image and then acts as a window to the thing behind it*. The light is still reflecting off the surface itself. There’s a reason you draw dotted lines behind the surface of the mirror when doing basic optics diagrams. If someone asked me where the image of a mirror was, unless it was specifically in an optics context I’d pretty confidently say “on the reflective surface.”
- Though incidentally this is a fun way to model a mirror in computer graphics.