Kid Science: Humorous Quotes from 5th and 6th Graders

[Math Is Hard]

I don't know of these are all genuinely from kids, but they were funny. A few look like some of my old test answers. hmmm..

from:
http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/Kid_Science.html

The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and class room discussions. Most were from 5th and 6th graders. They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the 'most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.'

Question: What is one horsepower? Answer: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.

You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind.

Talc is found on rocks and on babies.

The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down.

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.

Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand.

While the Earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the sun, it is really only centrificating.

Someday we may discover how to make magnets that can point in any direction.

South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage.

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.

There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever.

There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up there these days.

Lime is a green-tasting rock.

Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.

Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you should.

Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.

Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother.

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.

To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up.

In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are twice as many H's as O's.

Clouds are high flying fogs.

I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.

Clouds just keep circling the Earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do.

Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is big enough to be called a drop, it does.

Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water.

We keep track of the humidity in the air so we won't drown when we breathe.

Rain is often known as soft water, oppositely known as hail.

Rain is saved up in cloud banks.

In some rocks you can find the fossil footprints of fishes.

Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dogs tongue will kill the strongest man.

A blizzard is when it snows sideways.

A hurricane is a breeze of a bigly size.

A monsoon is a French gentleman.

Thunder is a rich source of loudness.

Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.

It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places.

The wind is like the air, only pushier.

And those fifth graders think they are so smart!

 

[berkeman]

But doesn't it matter whether the horse is awake or asleep?

I'd never heard that 180 degree one before...

 

[Evo]

I like this one

Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.

 

[Astronuc]

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

That does pretty much explain the 180 degrees, because either state was considered diametrically opposed to the other.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit made instruments in Amsterdam and liked 180 degrees. It's half the number of degrees in a circle. Moreover, it's a rational number (divisible by such handy integers as 2, 3, 4, and 5)and therefore useful in calculations.

Fahrenheit set the zero of his scale at the temperature ice melts when it's mixed 50-50 with salt: for practical reasons. This is a stable mixture whose temperature he could measure. Then he assigned the value of 30 degrees to the temperature at which pure ice melts. He measured the body temperature as 96 degrees and later the temperature of boiling water as 212 degrees. Oh, oh: he noticed that there are 182 degrees, not his desired 180, between 212 and 30. Fahrenheit arbitrarily changed the value for pure water's freezing point from 30 to 32 degrees. Now the difference between water's boiling and freezing point on Fahrenheit's scale was the value he wanted--180 degrees.

Fahrenheit invented his thermometer scale in 1709, thirty-three years before the Swedish astronomer, Anders Celsius, came up with his.

http://www.wonderquest.com/swallowing-lemmings-fahrenheit.htm

In the early 1700s in his hometown of Leipzig, Germany, G. Daniel Fahrenheit defined the zero-point as the lowest point the column would fall when the thermometer was immersed in a mixture of ice, water, and salt. He then assigned the number 32 to the level that the column reaches when ice melts, which automatically made 212 degrees the point at which water boils. Now Fahrenheit could have defined the zero-point and assigned the freezing point an infinite number of ways. The intervals are completely arbitrary. You could define the zero point to be the lowest point on the column ever reached in your hometown, and go from there.

http://www.factmonster.com/cig/weather/take-temperature.html

There is another published reference on scientific trivia, which references the Fahrenheit scale, but I can't remember it at the moment.

 

[Kurdt]

I love this one.

Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Here are some more stories about how the Fahrenheit scale came about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

It lacks the story I heard, namely, that he intended 100 to be normal human temperature, but apparently was feverish when he calculated it. It sounds fishy to me, but it makes a good story anyway.

 

[Astronuc]

I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.

Nature knows the physics better than we do.

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.

There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever.

Such imagination.

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

I love this one.

Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.

I agree

Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dogs tongue will kill the strongest man.

The perfect murder!

 

[Werg22]

Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother.

My favorite.

 

[Chi Meson]

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

Dang it! Astronuc beat me on this one. And I thought I was going to earn some respect.

 

[mgb_phys]

Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.

I once had to take a CCD camera in a vacuum dewar onto a flight.
>You can't take pressurized cylinders onto a plane.
It's empty
>Well open it
Turn on the valve to a hissing noise of air going in.
>Whats coming out of it then?
Nothing!

Needless to say we missed the flight!

 

[berkeman]

I once had to take a CCD camera in a vacuum dewar onto a flight.
>You can't take pressurized cylinders onto a plane.
It's empty
>Well open it
Turn on the valve to a hissing noise of air going in.
>Whats coming out of it then?
Nothing!

Needless to say we missed the flight!

OMG, this left me in tears.