Subject: Kids' Ideas of Science (fwd)

 The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays,
 exams, and classroom discussions; most were from fifth- and sixth-graders.
 They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the "most interesting
 information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop."

 - One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500
 feet in one second.

 - You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you
 came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind.

 - When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed
 with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed
 with explosions.

 - When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy.
 When planets do it we say they are orbiting.

 - While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the
 sun, it is really only centrificating.

 - Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to
 change back into a sun in the daytime.

 - A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it
 wants to go.

 - Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils, others preferred
 to be oil.

 - Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know
 they're there.

 - Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun.  But I
 have never been able to make out the numbers.

 - We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation.  Evaporation
 gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on.

 - I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it,
 and that is the important thing.

 - In making rain water, it takes everything from H to O.

 - Rain is saved up in cloud banks.

 - Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dog's tongue will kill
 the strongest man.

 - Thunder is a rich source of loudness.

 - Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.

 - It is so hot in some parts of the world that the people there have to
 live other places.