I knew about how pineapples grew since me grandparents took me to the Dole plantation on Oahu when I was 4. I can’t say I figured it out myself but I did take permanent note of how they grow and it is hardly confidential information.
The no gravity in space misconception requires complicated physics to understand completely but almost none to recognize that it simply can’t be correct. Even elementary school students know about tides and the fact that the moon is bound to the Earth by gravity just like the Earth is to the sun.
It gets worse than that however. There are an amazing number of people including educated adults that believe that there are working anti-gravity chambers on Earth that are used to train astronauts and who knows what else. I went to Space Camp when I was in high school and one of the most common questions I got when I returned was whether or not we got to go into an anti-gravity chamber. No we didn’t because they don’t exist. There are airplanes like the ‘Vomit Comet’ that fly a parabola pattern to demonstrate relative zero-g for short periods of time but they are just using the same falling technique that orbital spacecraft do to introduce relative, but not true, zero-g . I guess a lot of people saw videos of one of those planes and assumed it was just a chamber that you climbed into and then NASA just flipped a switch to turn the gravity off.
PReally? I never met anybody like that. I do know some folks who conflate weightlessness with zero gravity. This is due, as much as anything, to how television broadcasts " explained" what the astronauts were experiencing back in the space race days. The difference, IMO, is neither well known nor obvious.
since when? are you saying my mom, who is very much female and was neutered (ovaries removed) is not a female anymore? I think she would disagree with you.
Well, I don’t know about a lot of people, but I am unable to convince my wife that no, the city does not go around trimming drooping branches to a uniform height over the road - it’s the semis that do that job for free.
Turning the thermostat higher (or lower) than the desired temperature does not cause the house to heat up (or cool down) any more quickly. After 23 years, my wife still doesn’t understand that it’s not like turning up the stove burner.
The sinking of the Lusitania was not the cause of America getting into WWI. It took two more years for that to happen.
A lot of people - including many who are well educated - do not know that if you drop two balls of the same size but different mass from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (or elsewhere on earth), they do not fall at the same rate (the heavier one reliably hits the ground sooner).
They also don’t know that it’s most unlikely Galileo ever actually did this. (It was a thought experiment.)
Oh, please.
If you drop a steel ball and a lead ball of the same diameter, I guarantee that you will not be able to measure the difference in impact times with a stopwatch.
No need to. Drop them onto a board and you’ll hear the sound of two impacts.
This is based on considerable Googling which says that the lead / steel density ratio is 1.4, and the height from which you could drop something off the Leaning Tower of Pisa is around 50 m. The time-of-fall difference depends on what you assume is the drag coefficient of the objects, but is around 0.1 - 0.15 seconds.
Of course, you’d see the effect (which is always present) more clearly if the two balls are of substantially different mass - for example, a normal ping-pong ball, and another filled with water.
According to science history as I’ve learned it, Galileo actually did some version of this experiment, but not from the top of any straight, leaning, or other tower.
He worked in his laboratory (home?) and rolled balls down an inclined wooden surface with a trough cut in it for the ball to roll in. He noticed that the time it took to roll the ball down the trough wasn’t affected by the weight of the ball. So it wasn’t exactly just a thought experiment either.
If you haven’t yet determined if John is there, then I think “Can I (please) speak with John?” is the right question to ask. If that is answered in the affirmative, then ask the “May I?” question.
Well, in the linked pictures, there’s clearly a bunch of pineapples stuck on poles, then placed at regular intervals in a field of reeds. You’ll never fool me!
