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When talking about movements of the Earth in geography, we covered the earths rotation, the orbit around the sun, the usual stuff. I mentioned precession as an additional movement - I had read about it in a book just recently. The teacher completely ruled that out and called me stupid for that. Jokes on him.
My middle school computer teacher once said that unwanted email was called “flame”. I had never heard that term before or since used in the context of email.
My guess is they got confused with the concept of “flame wars” and “flaming” from forums. It doesn’t quite match their definition of “unwanted” messages exactly, but it’s not entirely far off either.
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Who was your teacher? Aristotle?
The Greeks thought the sun was the same size as the Peloponnese peninsula.
Which is admittedly fairly big.
…wait, really? I know back then it was probably anyone’s guess, but that sounds like one of those oddly specific things that makes the moon being made of cheese sound like a down-to-earth conclusion.
I checked, and it looks like I’m a bit off: Anaxagoras estimated that the moon was the size of the Peloponnesus and the sun was somewhat larger—but how much larger depended on how much further away it was, which he had no means of guessing.
His estimate of the moon’s size was derived from observations of a solar eclipse, in which the path of totality was about the size of the Peloponnesus—but he probably missed a lot of places that experienced a partial eclipse and didn’t make note of it.
I mean his train of thought deserves credit, just not for factoring in everything. A good Greek philosopher was like the Sherlock Holmes of their day; I recall reading Aristotle saw the Earth’s shadow on the moon and how it curved and he was like “ah, so the Earth isn’t flat, it’s a ball” (though then he’d go on to say stuff like “other cultures are less prone to revolution, so they must be natural slave cultures”, which would be more like Half-Life 3’s hypothetical version of Sherlock Holmes).
The sun? The sun!? I guess your teacher didn’t know about Aldebaran, the size of galaxies… Supermassive black holes… Galactic filaments… And yes, the universe itself.
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That I would never amount to anything and always be 10 steps behind my peers.
Believed that for a long time. Eat shit Mary.
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I would’ve responded “well so is school”.
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I got a question right on an electronics quiz about finding the resistance in a curcuit (I have verified I was right).
My science teacher who didn’t know how to do it in the first place and was just looking at the (incorrect) answer schedule said I was wrong. I just said “I don’t think so but ok” even though I knew I was right as I did not want to argue. As she was walking away I explained to my friend why I was right, my teacher overheard me and came storming to the table saying:
“WHEN I SAY IM RIGHT I AM RIGHT! AND WHEN I SAY YOUR WRONG YOU ARE WRONG!”
At the top of her lungs.
I was just a kid so it put me off science for a bit tbh.
She sounds like she had a short circuit.
Oh boy, this reminds me of one test in college where there was a question that had a logical circuit diagram, I don’t remember what it asked exactly but my answer was marked wrong, I went to the teacher the next day and told him I thought that was the right answer and he said “well, it’s not, I’ll demonstrate” and he wrote the question on the board called attention for everyone saying he would show the right answer to the test question, and started answering it. I saw him start to answer and immediately he made a mistake, I raised my hand to point that out and he told me to let him finish. He got to the end of the thing, showed a different result, and said “see, this was the correct result” to which I said “You missed the NOT at the beginning of the circuit”, he looks at it, rewrites some stuff, and gets to my answer to which I said “and that’s what you marked as the wrong result on my test”. He still tried to claim that was wrong because he got the question from book X, and a colleague (who I suspect had also given the right answer) produced the book, looked up the answer and said loudly “the second answer is the one on the book”. Defeated he had to give me (and whoever else had the right answer) at the point for that question. Completely unrelated story, that guy was also the coordinator of the course I was coursing and after months of waiting for recognition of some classes that I had taken at a different college coincidentally the very next week they got denied which meant I would have to take 14 extra classes (so at least a year and a half extra) to graduate, and that some of the classes I was taking that semester would have to be dropped and retaken after coursing the prerequisites (which I was trying to get recognized), one such class was the one where I got the question right… What a coincidence, right?
I should thank that guy, because of him I dropped out of college, moved to another city, and started at another college where I met my wife.
I was just a kid so it put me off science for a bit tbh.
And isn’t that a fucking shame? I mean, science can be such an interesting thing that can improve and enrich your life and can even become a career, but or just takes one bad teacher to let all that go to waste.
I had a guy teach biology and chemistry, and he was… well just not a good teacher (but a very decent human outside of class, to be fair). Made me really hate his classes and subjects. It took quite a long time for me to get more interested again.
On the other hand, I had a teacher in computer science teach is the basics of relational databases and object oriented programming in Borland Delphi (yes!), and now that I’m almost 40, I STILL feed on that knowledge, have become a sysadmin, have helped a dozen of co-eds in uni pass their programming test by tutoring them… He’s just a huge part of what I’ve become as a person. One teacher really can make a difference, one direction or the other. Thank you Mr. Barchmann, wherever you are.
I also have to thank some of my later science teachers for re-sparking my fascination in the scientific world, three of them were excellent teachers and made the class so entertaining you couldn’t not be fascinated.
That x^0.5 is not the same as the square root of x
Please explain :)
X^3 = x•x•x
X^2 = x•x
X^1 = x
X^0 = 1
X^-1 = 1/x
X^-2 = 1/(x•x)
X^-3 = 1/(x•x•x)
When the exponent is between -1 and 1, it becomes a root function:
X^(1/2) = sqrt(x)
X^(1/3) = cubic root(x)
X^-(1/2) = 1/(sqrt(x))
X^-(1/3) = 1/(cubic root(x))
Oh I misunderstood the original comment, the teacher said it wasn’t the same, but it is the same. My understanding is that sqrt(x) = x^1/2
I had a teacher tell me women couldn’t get hemophilia because it’s a sex-linked gene. True enough, but it’s on the X chromosome, and what do you suppose happens if a woman has that gene on both of them… I lost points on a test because of that.
This was before the internet, so I couldn’t easily find answers to prove he was wrong.
Fun fact, the second X chromosome is just a sitting duck. Once a body develops the first one, unless a Y chromosome is also in order, the body has already completed the parts of the blueprint it needs to live a long and stable life. This is where Turner Syndrome, a form of Down Syndrome or intersexuality where someone has only one X chromosome and no Y chromosome or second X chromosome, comes from, and people with Turner Syndrome can live their whole lives not knowing they have it (the opposite is actually true with the Y chromosome, where if you only have Y chromosomes and no X chromosomes, you die in stillbirth).
Brazilian here - once had an english teacher call xadrez, the chess game, “checkers” (to be fair to her, “xadrez” could mean either the game or a checkered texture, but the game of checkers is what we call “damas”). She also called bolinhos (muffins) doughnuts (or “dou-go-nu-ty”, as she spoke), and rosquinhas (doughnuts) muffins. I called out that she got the two mixed up, she ignored me.
She was a terrible teacher. She even forgot to put the correct text for an exam once, I asked her about the text during the exam and she just said “if you read it, you’ll find (the answers)” - it took another kid bringing the same point for her to bother reading the exam she prepared and realizing she fucked up.
I failed a test because I said there were only 8 planets and the “correct” answer was 9. The teacher didn’t know Pluto had been demoted. Lol
Oh I had a similar experience in elementary school. Our teacher knew and told us that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore but because the textbook was out of date, she told us that if it came up on our tests, consider Pluto a planet anyway.
Oh public school. Always a hoot. Haha
Sounds like they weren’t updating their knowledge. We discover a new major solar system body on an average of every ten years now (the last time it was either Ceres or Sedna).
I wonder how the teacher will react to seeing the upcoming Planet 9 (or to them, Planet X) discovery (rumored to be a minor black hole, which honestly sounds terrifying).
Sedna I’d assume, Ceres has been known about for about 400 years, and is the real planet demotion superstar.
Our solar system had 13 planets back in the 1700s.
And yes, I am sore about this with all the Pluto-stans ignoring Ceres (and Makemake, and Eris, and Hamuhea, and Palas, and many more!).
P.S. Also, what is your first language, as I’m intrigued by no fixed spelling rules.
There are two answers because my first language is different from the native language, so I often have to elaborate. I was born in a Pacific Islander community that had a pidgin that was a hybrid between Tahitian and English. When spoken, Tahitian is straightforward, but written Tahitian, even (or especially) in English, is (or was) a literary frontier, in the sense where if you asked how to spell something, nothing was firm.
Thanks for sharing.
I’m now a little less ignorant on Pacific islander culture/language!
That I “wouldn’t ever amount to anything and I would be a loser for the rest of my life”.
in her defense, she didn’t tell me. I overheard her talking about me to her daughter who went to the same school.
funny enough, it instilled in me a passion to deny the perceptions of those around me. it made me realize at an early age that adults are pieces of shit that don’t deserve the respect kids give them and to make the bad ones lives a living hell. unfortunately I learned only to push myself forward on anger and hate. I eventually got my shit together in college and now make more than she ever did doing what I love.
she was my 5th grade teacher. I was 11. her daughter was 15 and a freshman in highschool. her daughter was a bitch to me too…wonder why…
now that I’m an adult I seek out bitches like them and put them in their place. no child should ever have to go through the years of hate eating them up like I did.
Don’t think you don’t amount to anything. You come off as a nice person, the best kind of person. I think of it like this; if you were a loser (and you’re not), those two are cheaters. One’s biggest fear should be becoming “professionals” like them.
I used the word poesy in a written assignment, as in the art of poetry. The teacher didn’t recognize it as a real word and deducted points from my grade. She had a policy that we could correct and resubmit for half points, so I did that but didn’t change the word, I just helpfully gave her the definition in a footnote.
Shocked, naive, innocent little me did not know what to think when she took that as an insult. I was only trying to help her, didn’t she get that?!?
This was one of a handful of events when my sister started implying I might have a neurospicy brain. IDK, maybe, but I was just being accurate so I didn’t really see that as anything I needes to address. I thought the overly-sensitive and factually incorrect teacher was the one who needed to self-reflect.
neurospicy brain
Hey I have one of these. Maybe not in the typical way, but still. So don’t worry.
For reasons like you describe where neurotypicals aren’t always exactly known for being critical, sometimes I think of how accurate it might be under some definitions to say neurotypicals are the faultily-minded ones.
My English teacher (in Germany) did not know the word “evil”. She concluded I meant to say “devil”, but then the whole sentence didn’t make sense anymore, so she deducted even more points for that.
Had the same with an english teacher (in germany), that probably had a smaller vocabulary than me. Whenever I used words she didn’t know I had to argue with her and pull out a dictionary
That Columbus was a good person.
I was told General Lee was an honorable person.
My school taught me that most people in Columbus’ time thought that the Earth was flat and that Columbus would fall off the face of the earth during his voyage.
Augh I hate that myth so much
I’m too lazy to double check now, but afaik the problem with his voyage was the exact opposite. People knew that the earth was round and its approximate radius, so they knew that going all the way around the other side to India would be much too long of a voyage. What they didn’t know was that there was a whole other continent in the way.
I was in college when I learned Columbus thought it was pear shaped, as opposed to the globe idea that was most popular (and true). He though the northern hemisphere was smaller than the southern which is why he expected to sail to India in a relatively short distance.
Not so fun fact, he is said to be the first European to have syphilis as it was originally a Caribbean condition, and he was said to have caused it to spread in Europe, which also means he is the reason everyone started wearing powdered wigs as it went from a way to hide syphilis baldness to a fashion statement. So now you know what to expect (a version of George Washington who looks like Brad Pitt perhaps) if you ever go back in time and burn the Santa Maria.
One more reason to hate columbus!
Columbus was exiled from the Spanish Court upon pain of death for repeatedly enslaving Christians which is forbidden under canonical laws. We knew from sources in his own time period that he was a bad guy.
Had a science teacher back in middle school that claimed to have a buddy that “designed” a way to make gas engines more efficient by running the gas line over the engine to warm it up before entering the engine. Said that GM bought the “design” with no patent, and hid it away so that it wouldn’t get out. Problem is, that’s not how BTUs work and GM would obviously know that. Also that’s a good way to destroy your engine by misfiring.
I was told a similar thing but the claim was that the person had invented an engine that ran on water haha.
I knew a kid at boarding school who claimed his dad worked at BMW and was looking into this. Years later Im working at BMW in the cafeteria and I meet the kid’s dad. He did in fact look into hydrolysis for making hydrogen for cars on paper but couldn’t figure out how to not make the car explode in an accident.
Wouldn’t the hydrolysis of the water take energy that required fuel though? The claim seemed to be more that the water was the fuel so to speak, as in the same way that petrol is in current combustion engines.
My mom believes this one (she believes in a lot of crap…). Allegedly there was a dude who made a car run om water, but the evil oil company Shell bought the idea so that it would never come out!
That is of course ignoring the fact that the supposed guy wouid still have knowledge on how to build one.
Or… The simple fact that water can’t be used as a fuel like that.
I know of an engine that runs on water. It’s a shame you have to heat it up a whole lot first for it to become steam.
My 6th grade science teacher interrupted me while reading aloud after I correctly pronounced “tsunami”. He goes “What’s that?..tuh-soo-mee?”. I said Yeah, he spends 10 seconds digesting it, and I continue reading aloud.
The next kid to read after me pronounced it tuh-soo-mee.
I only pronounced つなみ like that with a t when I was young and first came across the word but then I learned the correct pronunciation
