My Cousin's science teacher

[Setesh]

Slam edit: Yes we did know that it becomes a liquid metal in extreme high pressure environs. But he thought it was a solid.

[SCRawl]

Still, that pales in comparison to my brother's fifth grade teacher telling him cavemen wiped out the dinosaurs. Meh.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's almost as bad as...no, that's the worst I've ever heard of, congratulations.

Where the hell do you live? Hicksville USA?

He's from Ottumwa, Iowa. Same as Radar O'Reilly, right?

[Adrian Laguna]

Because my computer hates me, and there is no way in hell I'm condensing this, the following post shall have to be done in three parts.

In the first grade my teacher, after explaining the rotation of the Earth around its axis and its revolution around the Sun, said that the Sun and Moon did not move at all, they where just fixed in position. I didn't call her on the sun thing because telling the students that it moves around the Milky Way Galaxy was a tad too complex to discuss in the first grade, but I just couldn't let the Moon thing go.

I knew that the moon revolves around the Earth and that this is the reason why the Moon has phases and why it can sometimes be seen in the day time. So naturally I corrected the teacher. She said that I was wrong and that the moon stays in place. I asked her to explain how it is that the moon can sometimes be seen in the day time (I think she denied this is possible, but I'm not sure).

[Adrian Laguna]

In the end my anger at a teacher, who is supposed to educate us students, giving out false information made me so angry that I left my desk, went up to her, and hit her. She probably barely felt it, a First Grader can't punch very hard and I held back at the last moment. For that and various other disiplinary concerns (let me put it this way: the High Schoolers* knew me by reputation) I was expelled after the school year was over.

I think that my teacher did know that the moon revolves around the Earth, she was just trying to keep things simple for her first grade class. Her reaction of refusing to aknowledge the mistake was probably from my rather abrasive approach to correcting people. I still haven't mastered the art of being nice and diplomatic about that. My 9th Grade World History threw me out of the classroom after she got fed up with me correcting her everytime she made a mistake (we got all the way to WWII).

[Adrian Laguna]

*The school (a private one) had three ~20 student classrooms for everything from 1st Grade to 5th Year of High School.

Rethorical Question: Why is it that I can't say some little thing about my life without quoting half-a-chapter from my (nonexistant) autobiography?

[Wyrm]

Actually, sometimes they have references, so in those cases, it's pretty credible. But that page didn't, so I'm somewhat skeptical.

Some additional references:

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect ... chain.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... rocyc.html

The last one is a rather good reference.

[Wyrm]

Because my computer hates me, and there is no way in hell I'm condensing this, the following post shall have to be done in three parts.

Feh. A likely story, but we all know you just want to artificially inflate your postcount.

As for that teacher's refusal to admit her fault, that was a raw deal. If the students catch you in error, the responsible thing is to own up to it. It is irresponsible to say that "feudalism" and "few-jill-ism" are the same thing (my favorite pet example).

But you, as a first grader, had the balls to actually sock your teacher? I salute you!

[wolveraptor]

How do you get "few-jill-ism" out of feudalism? It doesn't even have a "J" in it?

[Darth Yoshi]

The same way you get "nukular" from nuclear, methinks.

[Jadeite]

My 3rd grade teacher once thought it was the 19th century, because 'our year starts with 19'.

[Anguirus]

I want to weep.

[Comando293]

Are we allowed to blame the crappy school system for these kinds of gross errors?

On topic: in fifth grade, my science teacher said that of any material that can maintian its shape, with no container, is a solid. Even after brining in a heavy refrence book that stated that steel was a slow moving liquid, his still heald on to this incorrect fact. Depressing

[Wyrm]

On topic: in fifth grade, my science teacher said that of any material that can maintian its shape, with no container, is a solid. Even after brining in a heavy refrence book that stated that steel was a slow moving liquid, his still heald on to this incorrect fact. Depressing

Um, bad example. Steel is in most cases a mixture of cementite (Fe3C) and ferrite crystals (or failing that, some other kind of iron crystal), both of which are solids by any sensible definition of the word, with first-order phase transitions and latent heats of fusion. Your big heavy reference book was wrong.

Glass is a solid, too, but it has a second order transition and doesn't have any latent heat of fusion, but it does unambigiously change state and actually solidify.

[Comando293]

Thanks for the info

[Comando293]

Ghetto edit: ignore the above smile

[Ariphaos]

My 3rd grade teacher once thought it was the 19th century, because 'our year starts with 19'.

Had a similar argument with my high school French teacher who wouldn't believe me that there was no year 0, and thus the millenium came in 2001 and not 2000.

Also had an argument about a 3.5" disk with my 9th grade English teacher. She declared it a hard disk and I declared it a floppy. I won, because the next day the computer lab teacher stood up and told everyone that it was, indeed, a floppy disk.

[drachefly]

My science teacher in 8th grade maintained that a cubic meter of water had a mass of 100 kilos. A thirty-minute argument erupted when I pointed out that a cubic meter of water has a mass of 1 metric ton. ::sigh::

[Alan Bolte]

I suddenly recall trying to explain the basics of rocketry (just the concept of thrust with no numbers) to an extremely skeptical 7th grade class. Don't remember the particulars, just that the teacher seemed to know no more than the students. Essentially, they seemed to think that the flame coming out the back caused the thrust, rather than being a byproduct of omnidirectional force in a container that's open only in one direction.

[Turin]

I had almost that exact same rocket arguement with my 7th grade physics teacher... except that he was arguing that the rocket needed to "push off" the ground to get thrust. What the hell did he think happened when the rocket was in space?