843: Misconceptions
| Misconceptions |
 Title text: "Grandpa, what was it like in the Before time?" "It was hell. People went around saying glass was a slow-flowing liquid. You folks these days don't know how good you have it." |
[edit] Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect. If you see a way to improve it, edit it! Thanks. |
The Wikipedia article List of common misconceptions gives a list of commonly-repeated anecdotes that are widely believed to be true, but actually are not. The teacher, or the school board has made the reading of this article a curriculum requirement to stem the repetition of these incorrect anecdotes.
The title text refers to a specific one of these false stories: That glass, while seeming solid, is actually an extremely viscous liquid and will flow over time, as is seen on older buildings where the window panes are thicker at the bottom. In reality, older manufacturing processes did not produce glass panes with as uniform thickness as modern processes, and people tended to install the uneven panes with the thicker side at the bottom for stability.
[edit] Transcript
- [Miss Lenhart is standing in front of a board, holding a laptop computer and elocuting.]
- Miss Lenhart: Okay, middle school students, it's the first Tuesday in February.
- Miss Lenhart: This means that by law and custom, we must spend the morning reading through the Wikipedia article List of Common Misconceptions, so you can spend the rest of your lives being a little less wrong.
- Miss Lenhart: The guests at every party you'll ever attend thank us in advance.
add a comment!Discussion
- Note: The xkcd forums contain a great discussion of this comic.
When I took Calculus-based Physics in college (2003), my professor taught us that glass was an "extremely viscous fluid." When was glass reclassified as an amorphous solid?
Smperron (talk)
