Parents Baffled By Science Questions 656
Pickens writes "The BBC reports that four out of five parents living in the UK have been stumped by a science question posed by their children with the top three most-asked questions: 'Where do babies come from?', 'What makes a rainbow?' and 'Why is the sky blue?'. The survey was carried out to mark the launch of a new website by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills called Science: So what? So everything."
hurr (Score:2, Informative)
The connection between Rayleigh scattering and refraction is very fundamental. Both are due (from the point of view of electromagnetic theory) to the electrical polarization of the scatterers by the incident electromagnetic wave. The waves re-radiated by the dipoles induced in the scatterers by the incident field are incoherent, as seen by an observer located to the side of the incident beam of light. But, in the forward direction, the re-radiated waves are completely coherent with the incident waves, but retarded in phase. These retarded waves make the incident wave train propagate more slowly in the scattering medium than in a vacuum; the ratio of the speed of propagation in vacuo to the speed in the medium is just the refractive index of the medium. Thus refraction and Rayleigh scattering are two aspects of a single phenomenon.
http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/extinction/extintro.html [sdsu.edu]
Re:More science questions (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Damn Lies and Statistics (Score:3, Informative)
It's worse than that. They say 4 out of 5 parents have at *some* time been stomped by some science-question of their child. And also that the top questions are those mentioned.
That doesn't imply that 4 out of 5 parents are stomped by any of *those* questions. I've got a 5 year old, and sure I've had -many- questions I don't know the answer to. I generally respond by some variant of "I don't know, but let's find out together".
Why -does- starch work as a lubricant ? What -is- that insect named ? How much can an elephant weigh ? Sure I can eyeball some of it, but I don't -know- the answer precisely.
Then again, that's not really science. That's just facts. Science is a method, not a set of facts.
Re:hurr (Score:3, Informative)
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:2, Informative)
Apollo, you are so evil.
I wonder how many people won't know the reference. Hint: look for Cassandra in Greek mythology.
Re:More science questions (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pardon? (Score:4, Informative)
My mum just left a copy of the book Where Did I Come From? [amazon.com] on the bottom shelf in the living room. I used to love that book (and the sequel "What's Happening to Me", about puberty) when I was a little kid - the pictures are adorable and it's pitched at a good level.
Re:"Why is the sky blue?" - Not so easy... (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding is that it's density differences. Light bends when it goes from air to water, for example, because of the difference in density. Now air has small density variations. For the short-wavelength blue light, it is going through air whose density is continually changing. So it's path goes all over the place. But for the red light, with almost twice the wavelength, the density changes are lot more averaged (since it's bigger), so it doesn't see the density changes so much, so pretty much goes in a straight line.
Your understanding is - sorry - entirely wrong. The wikipedia article actually does a more or less decent job at explaining it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering [wikipedia.org]
The basic thing: Light scatters off the molecules of the air (no density variations needed). The higher the lights frequency (i.e. the bluer it is), the more it scatters.
So we see lots of scattered blue from all directions, but a lot less of scattered red, yellow, green, etc.
And because the atmosphere isn't thick enough to scatter a large amount of the colours on the red end of the spectrum, those come through more or less unscattered.
At dusk or at dawn, the light you see travels much longer distance in the atmosphere, and other colours scatter too. That's the main reason why sunrises and
sunsets are red - that's the only colour making it through.
What a show! (Score:4, Informative)
Crikey, what a good show that was. Every single thing was personified in the cartoon - from corpuscles to neuro-electric transmissions to individual nucleotides producing proteins - and I learned more about human biology from that show than I did from 5 years of GCSE Biology (and the show was only on at about 6.30am every Sunday in the UK, about 20 years ago).
Unfortunately I don't think it's been on TV for some time now, and I can't find it on DVD anywhere. If any of you out there are parents who want your kids to understand a little bit of biology, you can't do better than to show them this.
Correction (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More science questions (Score:5, Informative)
Rayleigh scattering preferentially scatters shorter (bluer) wavelengths more strongly. When the sun is directly overhead, as in midday, light nearer to the reddish end of the spectrum will reach you directly while only the bluer wavelengths will have been scattered. The blue that you see is light from the sun that has been scattered towards you by the air molecules in the atmosphere. The opposite happens at sunrise and sunset to make it appear red; the light reaching you has a much longer optical path to go through so nearly all of the the blue wavelengths have been scattered away leaving only the reddish light to reach you.
There's also a minor effect due to Mie's scattering off the dust and other particulates in the atmosphere. Mie's scattering deals with scattering by slightly larger particles than Rayleigh scattering.
Re:Pardon? (Score:3, Informative)
One would hope so, but the reality is that one does not need to know anything about the biology of reproduction in order to have a baby.
Re:Results by Ethnic Group (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that the IQ test was never meant to reliably grade normal to exceptional people. It was devised as a way to diagnose the mentally handicapped that got blown completely out of proportion because it provide this nice, comparable number.
Re:Keep in mind (Score:3, Informative)
GP, and I, would agree with you that Newton was brilliant. There's no argument that he wasn't responsible for the things you mention. The point is simply that he was nevertheless ignorant of more modern developments in physics (many of which we now consider "basic"); hence he is a counterexample to the assertion that people who "don't know" certain "basic" things are dumb.
What "basic" concepts? Well for instance, rigid body mechanics including familiar ideas like "torque" and "kinetic energy of rotation" were developed after Newton (Euler is credited with those). Newton studied particles, and spheres -- which he proved behaved like particles for his purposes (celestial mechanics). Rigid bodies, which many freshmen are comfortable with (at least in 2d) were outside his purview.
As Newton himself said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Luckily for us, Newton is one of them. But standing on a totem pole of Newton, Euler, Hamilton, and Lagrange, we naturally see farther than he could on his own.
Re:Pardon? (Score:5, Informative)
How come I don't learn English in school even though it's my country's official language ?
If you are talking about the US, it has no official language.
Re:Pardon? (Score:3, Informative)
They need to do way instain mother> who kill thier babbys. becuse these babby cant frigth back it was on the news this mroing a mother in ar who had kill her three kids . they are taking the three babby back to new york too lady to rest my pary are with the father who lost his chrilden ; i am truley sorry for your lots
Like seriously? Stumped by the question where babies come from? Maybe these parents should read slashdot because I'm sure 90% of us can answer all of these questions, although maybe that's too optimistic nowadays.
Re:More science questions (Score:3, Informative)
Well, alright then. The Rayleigh effect is caused by the movement of Lord Rayleigh's argon filled glass bicycle as he rushes through the atmosphere, held aloft by a flight of noisy seagulls. As the Baron passes across the sky, the prism-like spokes of the bicycle absorb the lower wavelengths of light in preference to higher wavelengths, like blue. The shape of the spokes also causes the blue light to scatter and sparkle brilliantly in all directions. This all happens so fast that the sky appears smeared with blue.
When his Lordship retires to his manor for the evening, stowing the bicycle carefully in his garden shed, and letting the seagulls roost in the hayloft, the sky returns to its usual red colour. The sky is also red in the morning because although the Baron rises early, he prefers to take a brisk morning stroll and a swim, and reset his moustache.
In fact, rainbows are also the result of this process. They are caused when the Baron's brightly coloured spoke reflectors become accidentally detached in rain, and continue to rotate an enormous velocities. The rainbow we see is in fact the blur as the reflector circles wildly.
For his services in keeping the sky a pretty shade of blue, His Lordship was knighted by Queen Victoria and given the services of the Royal Navy in order to spread the gift of blue skies throughout the wide breadth of the British Empire, and indeed the world. And that's why the sky is blue now.
Re:Results by Ethnic Group (Score:5, Informative)
I am a test designer.
What you are describing is what happens to every test anyone ever writes with the best of intentions. We make a test to, say, place students into the right level of language classes, and the department starts using their gain scores for their grades in those classes, muddling placement and outcome--two different testing situations that would need different methods.
Administration wants an instrument that matches the curriculum closer; you make it; they demand to know why it doesn't have X, Y, or Z. You point out that it isn't in the curriculum. They say "It should be!"
It happens every time. Even BMI, which was basically designed to find starving people, has been repurposed to define physical fitness--something it is not designed to do and cannot accurately assess.
People always misuse measures and then blame the person(s) who made them.
Welcome to my world.
Re:People definitely neglect science... (Score:3, Informative)
Good luck. You've got about 9 years before the older one becomes evil.
[from someone who has lived through it]