The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were collected from essays, exams, and class room 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
- Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime
- 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
- 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
- Our new teacher told us all about fossils. Before she came to our class, I didn't know what a fossil looked like
- Pavlov studied the salvation of dogs
- A molecule is so small that it can't be seen by the naked observer.
- In biology today, we digested a frog
- To prevent head colds, use an agonizer to spray into you nose until it drops down into your throat