# What inaccurate or flawed history, science, etc. lessons was I taught in school as a kid? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 18, 2010, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924 "2010-05-18T19:38:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2010, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/361 "2010-05-31T12:53:21Z")
> [@Carptracker](#): > > _OBVIOUSLY_ giraffes have long necks because they have such long legs! I see it now - so they don’t have to kneel to drink! > no I am not serious You should be serious. It could well be that the genes responsible for the long legs of a giraffe are integral to its long neck. Giraffes drink infrequently, but a dearth fresh foliage to eat probably increases that need. Their stance to drink is already awkward, getting down on their knees (elbows) would leave them even more vulnerable to predators. Their height may be limited by their ability to drink. ---
**Author:** ![Porlock\_Junior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Porlock\_Junior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Porlock_Junior)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/362 "2010-05-31T22:17:23Z")
> [@notsoheavyd3](#): > > The tides still have huge problems. So basically what Galileo said was that the earth orbits the sun in a circle and rotates on it’s axis while doing so. This means parts of the earth are travelling in the direction of the orbit and are moving faster and others are moving against the motion of orbit and are moving slower. This causes sloshing which causes the tides. So we get a bunch of testable predictions. They are that there is one high tide a day, it’s at noon, and it’s always about the same height. He then needed to add a hack to explain why his theory doesn’t work. (I mean getting the number, timing and heights of the tides wrong would be pretty glarring to anybody who was actually familiar with them.) > > The other weird business is that Kepler actually had an explaination that was on the right track, the tides are caused by the moon. However Galileo dismissed that as silly because he thought the idea of it exerting a force without touching the water as weird. (Guess Galileo never saw a magnet or experienced static electricity.) I’m actually familiar with tides, as was the Italian Galileo. I know, as he and others did, that they vary a great deal in real life in real oceans. And that these complexities are not easy to explain in detail. For another view of tides, let us consider Kepler, since he was one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, and a classic edifying example of abandoning a pet idea when faced with evidence; and his explanation was not greatly different from older ones, and it agrees in some ways with the facts as now known. By Kepler’s theory that the Moon exercises an influence over the waters, “there is one high tide a day, it’s _when the Moon is directly overhead_, and it’s always about the same height _and behaves the same everywhere_.” I’ve highlighted the major predictive differences between the two theories; please correct any errors. The balance does not seem to be strongly in Kepler’s favor. It appears (according to such scholars as I’ve seen commenting) that no one ever made a good account of two tides a day until Newton brought the full force of modern dynamics to the problem. Galileo at least made a try at an explanation, and it’s on the right track for many real tidal phenomena: to wit, the size and shape of basins. But that’s supposed to make _two_ tides a day? Crazy! Except, umm, maybe you should ask an oceanographer who works with tides what it is that causes the _one tide a day_ at a point on the coast of Vietnam. The answer will be the various resonances of the ocean in that area, combined, of course, with this being half the frequency of the tides in general. Galileo would probably not be shocked at this. While we’re up, let’s ask the oceanographer why there are negligible tides on many islands in the middle of oceans. Or why the tides are so small halfway up the Adriatic when they’re large at Venice. Heck, for that one you don’t need an oceanographer; just ask Galileo, who explained it explicitly and correctly. (“Correctly” includes “by good reasoning”: no credit for accidents.) Would he then have had trouble explaining the tides at the islands? I doubt it. The bit about when the one high tide occurs isn’t obvious, so let me expand a bit. We might go to Great Britain, a place where they really know the tides, and ask people in various places when the high tide is on a given date, and how well it agrees with the position of the Moon. You will find that their answers vary by a matter of hours. This is not explained by difference in longitude, in that England is rather less than 15 degrees (one hour) wide. You know what the explanation is. In fact, and perhaps you know this, Galileo knew magnets well, heaping praise on Gilbert for his ground-breaking empirical investigation of them. Let us by all means call him a fool or a liar, then, along with nearly every philosopher of Newton’s time two generations later, who hated gravitational “action at a distance” as a seeming absurdity. It had to be conceded, though, that the thing worked, and nothing else did. But serious thinkers still disliked the idea, as did their successors until 1915. Galileo got the motive force of the tides wrong. let us never forget that!! Not that we could. Arguably he ought not to have done it. But his ideas gave potential explanations for some anomalies, arguably worth further investigation, that other theories don’t have at all. To call it his ideas a bunch of hacks is to ignore what he said (along with masses of empirical data) in order to score points. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/363 "2010-05-31T23:50:25Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > Let see… > > [ul] > [li]There’s a place in France where the women wear no pants. (Technically, I didn’t learn this from a teacher, but it was at school.)[/li][/ul] I think that one may be a misunderstanding / misinterpretation of an [old but never-repealed Parisian law](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/fashionnews/6583074/Women-banned-from-wearing-trousers-in-Paris.html) against women wearing trousers (as opposed to dresses / skirts). ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/364 "2010-06-01T00:06:53Z")
I thought it was a reference to [this](http://everything2.com/user/Tem42/writeups/There+is+a+place+in+France). ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/365 "2010-06-01T09:37:16Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I thought it was a reference to [this](http://everything2.com/user/Tem42/writeups/There+is+a+place+in+France). Also referenced in Jonathan Coulton’s [Over There](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8ekCWVYeWw). ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/366 "2010-06-01T18:59:23Z")
**ed malin** said: > [@](#): > > And also, is there a way to specify the location of a point in the universe, other than relative to some specific thing like the earth? You can pick your reference point as any arbitrary place in spacetime. The problem is how to identify this arbitrary point from any other arbitrary point. Until we map out all of spacetime with a coordinate grid system and a convention for aligning the grid, we are stuck referring to objects within spacetime as our points of reference. As **Chronos** said, you could pick a point like the center of mass of the Earth and Saturn (okay, he said around another star), but you still have to know about Earth and Saturn to find that point. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/367 "2010-06-01T20:09:55Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > **ed malin** said: > > You can pick your reference point as any arbitrary place in spacetime. The problem is how to identify this arbitrary point from any other arbitrary point. Until we map out all of spacetime with a coordinate grid system and a convention for aligning the grid, we are stuck referring to objects within spacetime as our points of reference. As **Chronos** said, you could pick a point like the center of mass of the Earth and Saturn (okay, he said around another star), but you still have to know about Earth and Saturn to find that point. OK guys, how about these two possibly dumb questions: 1. Can gravity diminish to the point where it has no effect on some known particle? i.e. won’t accelerate it. 2. If a force is delivered to matter in quanta, is there a period of time between quanta where the force is not measurable. i.e. is acceleration measured as a series of chunks? btw: i started out wondering if a baseball could actually travel in a ‘straight line’. look where that has taken me. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/368 "2010-06-01T20:20:16Z")
Our best current understanding of gravity is that it continually and smoothly trails off, but never quite reaches zero. However, we know that our current understanding of gravity is incomplete, and it’s quite plausible that it does in fact occur in discreet quanta. But if so, the quanta are small enough that we’ve never been able to detect evidence of them. And it may well be (for all we know) that even with a quantum theory of gravity, it’d still be smooth somehow. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/369 "2010-06-01T20:28:29Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Our best current understanding of gravity is that it continually and smoothly trails off, but never quite reaches zero. However, we know that our current understanding of gravity is incomplete, and it’s quite plausible that it does in fact occur in discreet quanta. But if so, the quanta are small enough that we’ve never been able to detect evidence of them. And it may well be (for all we know) that even with a quantum theory of gravity, it’d still be smooth somehow. Do we know enough about this regarding any force (we excluding me, because I defenitely don’t know)? Is there a real granularity to the universe that is known? You seem to be saying ‘not with gravity in a way we can prove’. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/370 "2010-06-01T21:31:36Z")
We do understand electromagnetism about as well as it’s possible to understand anything. At least, the theory agrees with the observations to an insane degree of precision, and there aren’t any inconsistencies in the theory, or other specific reasons to believe it’s incomplete. And the answer to your question is, in layman’s terms, that there is “granularity” of a sort, but that it shows up in much more complicated ways than you make out. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/371 "2010-06-01T21:45:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > We do understand electromagnetism about as well as it’s possible to understand anything. At least, the theory agrees with the observations to an insane degree of precision, and there aren’t any inconsistencies in the theory, or other specific reasons to believe it’s incomplete. And the answer to your question is, in layman’s terms, that there is “granularity” of a sort, but that it shows up in much more complicated ways than you make out. Thanks, sounds like the time to go back and try to learn something useful about quantum physics. The whole ‘understanding’ thing is going on in another thread. I wonder if you have an opinion on how close we are to understanding a finite set of rules that defines the universe, if there is such a set of rules. Based on the reports of others, it sounds like we could be getting close, unless we’ve missed something big entirely, which would certainly seem possible. Are we nearing the ‘end of physics’, or are we as close as we were to the ‘end of history’ about 20 years ago? (and did anyone believe that end of history thing?) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/372 "2010-06-01T22:09:18Z")
There are some big things entirely that we know for sure we’ve missed, quantum gravity being chief among them. But even if we do get that one licked (which I don’t expect will happen in my lifetime), I’m confident that we’ll just go on discovering other mysteries. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2010, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924/373 "2010-06-01T22:25:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There are some big things entirely that we know for sure we’ve missed, quantum gravity being chief among them. But even if we do get that one licked (which I don’t expect will happen in my lifetime), I’m confident that we’ll just go on discovering other mysteries. A reasonable point of view, and one which would make the future more interesting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-inaccurate-or-flawed-history-science-etc-lessons-was-i-taught-in-school-as-a-kid/539924.md?page=18)