One in five Americans thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth

by Illyrian 49 Replies latest jw friends

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  5go

  "I hate math. I'll never use this stuff in the real world."

  That was the problem I really would of learned to even in the fifth grade to balance a check book. My parnets were doing stuff like that and I wanted to be like them.
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  stillajwexelder

  General American knowledge of geography here on the earth not too good either
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  bigdreaux

  wanna hear a sad story? when i was a dub, i was at someones house playing pictionary. this one sister had her turn. she drew a circle. half of it looked like the sun, the other half looked like a half circle, we all sat there trying to say stuff. nobody got it right. when the time was up, she said moon. first off, a moon is very easy to draw. not hard, but, when we couldn't get it, she got mad, and, i don't remember her excact words, but, it dawned on us, that, she thought the moon was just the other side of the sun. i'm serious, she actually thought this. like, at night the sun turned around and was darkned. she was a pioneer. lol
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  5go

  General American knowledge of geography here on the earth not too good either

  Sad to say that is a problem. History is too. You would think when we invade a muslim country claiming that we are on a crusade against anything. It would raise some attention to how we should not be doing it.
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  Nathan Natas

  she thought the moon was just the other side of the sun.

  There's no IQ test that prospecive pioneers are required to take.

  Clearly, she needs to read the AWAKE! more often!

  I have to wonder how she would explain a lunar solar eclipse, when both bodies are visible at the same time and in different places.

  edited to correct silly mistake.
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  5go

  I have to wonder how she would explain a lunar solar eclipse, when both bodies are visible at the same time and in different places.
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  Illyrian

  One could point out the current scientific community it doing just that. Eistein put out a theory not a law. If some puts out a competing theory it is almost instantly rejected because it would conflict with Eistein's theory or scientific communities opinion of it.

  General and special theories of relativity are indeed theories but it is wrong to assume that if scientific community calls something theory that is instantly dubious. Evolution is also called theory but does that mean it is not happening?

  This is from Wiki

  In physics, the term theory is generally used for a mathematical framework — derived from a small set of basic principles (usually symmetries - like equality of locations in space or in time, or identity of electrons, etc) — which is capable of producing experimental predictions for a given category of physical systems. A good example is electromagnetic theory, which encompasses the results that can be derived from gauge symmetry (sometimes called gauge invariance) in a form of a few equations called Maxwell's equations. Another name for this theory is classical electromagnetism. Note that the specific theoretical aspects of classical electromagnetic theory, which have been consistently and successfully replicated for well over a century, are termed "laws of electromagnetism", reflecting the fact that they are today taken as granted. Within electromagnetic theory generally, there are numerous hypotheses about how electromagnetism applies to specific situations. Many of these hypotheses are already considered to be adequately tested, with new ones always in the making and perhaps untested as yet..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory#In_physics

  In terms of Special relativity it envisages time and space as single construct where each point in space can be uniquely identified in those four parameters [x, y, z, t] i.e. three dimensions of space and one of time. Looking at the universe through that theoretical model enables us to uniquely and accurately predict what is happening in universe to put it simply. It is a mathematical model, i.e. a theory, but theory that is testable. One of the prime examples of general relativity is prediction of black holes and it is only in recent years that we had tantalizing glimpses that they indeed do exist, before that we had only theoretical model that predicted them.

  I'm sure if someone comes up with a model that is testable and even more accurate science will embrace it wholeheartedly like they embraced ideas of a simple Swiss clerk almost a hundred years ago that toppled "almighty Newton" that stood for several hundred years before that.

  But I understand your concern, it is just that so many who claim that have come upon something better hardly ever submit their theories to their peers to have them tested, which is the only way to have them verified.

  Most prominent example is John Hutchinson and his so called Hutchinson effect. It is just that he can hardly reproduce any of what he claims and we in the end don't know if Hutchinson effect is him walking across the room or if there is really some substance to what he claims.
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  bigdreaux

  nathan, i asked her if that's true, how can we see the moon and the sun during the day sometimes. she looked at me like,
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  Illyrian

  Our school system needs to be concerned with teaching kids how to research and critically think. Making them memorize facts that they will forget is useless. And they need to be taught the benefits to knowledge. How many of us have heard kids say "I hate math. I'll never use this stuff in the real world." There needs to be a lot of "First I'm going to tell you why you need to know this and then we'll learn about it." Maybe then the kids would pay attention?

  Which is why now China produces about 600.000 University educated engineers a year, India about 350.000 and whole of USA only 70.000. http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3237_0_3_0

  And then US citizens complain about immigration, perhaps something should be then seriously done to radically change education system and quickly.
• 

  Jim_TX

  "One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century."
  
  Well... this is very similar to what my ex-wife believed.
  
  We were having a discussion, and I mentioned something about the moon - or she did - I do not recall who actually mentioned it first. Anyway, she mentioned something about the 'two moons' that earth has. A 'day moon', and a 'night moon'. At first I thought that she was joking, and I chuckled. I then realized, upon further conversation with her, that she actually believed that there were two moons orbiting earth.
  
  When I asked her where she got such a notion, she replied that her mother told her that when she was a child. Now... she had graduated from high school (my wife), and so how she missed the science classes that taught one about the planets and moons in our universe, I'll never know.
  
  I corrected her, but she was miffed - at me - for educating her that we only have one moon.
  
  (Questions kept popping up in my head like... 'Which moon did the astronauts land on?')
  
  Anyway, some people are just not very educated on our planetary system... (I know that I am not that educated either, but I know that we only have one moon orbiting earth.)
  
  Regards,
  
  Jim TX