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when i was young my sister made me believe that vinegar would burn me badly if i got it on my skin because it was acid
diddymonster
My 8 and 5 year old were having a bath one evening and it smelt strongly of vinegar. Confused I asked them what they had put in it. Turns out they had found a recipe for invisible ink in a science experiment book and believed that if they mixed the ingredients into their bath they too would turn invisible!
Fi
Used to think that a pile of oily rags could catch on fire by themselves. (Sponteanous combustion)
Frank
My son's little friend would not believe that ice cubes were simply frozen water. He was sure there was some secret formula.
kool-aid making Mom
Once I watched Saved By The Bell on tv and Screech and Kelly were lab partners. (keep in mind, I was about five when this was on.) Well, Screech poured some liquid into a test tube and the mixture began to fizz over and eventually explode all over them. Due to this, I believed that mixing any two liquids would cause an explosion. Therefore, I was terrified to pee in the toilet so I peed in a bin liner for about a week until my sister discovered it in my closet. I was also convinced I would die when my mum mixed the Kool- Aid with water to thin it.
Nikki
When I learned that oil came from dinosaurs I thought that the dinosaurs were still alive underground and oil drills were drilling down to them, into their bodies and sucking the oil out of the poor beasties.
Colin T
I used to believe that American water was chemically different to our water; because while water in Britain boils at 100 degrees and freezes at 0 degrees, in America it boils at 212 degrees and freezes at 32 degrees.
Early in my becoming acquainted with science, I thought the density of all elements would be proportional to their atomic weights, regardless of whether they were solids, liquids, or gases. I "figured out" some amazing things based on that. For one thing I wanted to do a demonstration that I never got to do because of the difficulty of obtaining the heavy gas xenon. I thought that if only I could get some xenon and fill a beaker with it, I could do an amazing demonstration. For one thing I thought the xenon would be so heavy that it would stay in the beaker without dispersing into the atmosphere for quite some time. Then I thought I'd place a piece of iron on top of the xenon in the beaker and see the iron float on the xenon. Since xenon has a considerably higher atomic weight than iron, I assumed that even gasseous xenon would be denser than solid iron, resulting in that floating of the iron that I expected. When I later learned about the behaviour of gasses, I realized that gasseous xenon, for all its large atomic weight is much less dense than most any solid, including iron, so likely no solid would float on it. And even a heavy gas would disperse into the atmosphere quickly, so the xenon wouldn't likely stay in the beaker long enough for me to even try the demonstration.
Another amazing "fact" I deduced on the same basis came after I first heard of osteoporosis, and how it is a disease causing loss of bone density. I knew that bones have a lot of calcium, an element of considerably larger atomic weight than nitrogen and oxygen that make up most of the atmosphere. But human flesh, I learned, is composed primarily of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Since hydrogen and carbon have lower atomic weights than the latter two that also make up air (99% or air, anyway), I deduced that human flesh must be lighter than air, so that our heavier bones were what holds us down. So I thought that the main risk of osteoporosis sufferers was that their bones could become so depleted of calcium that their bodies' overall density would be less than that of air, and they could go floating away to the top of the atmosphere!
Shelley
A friend of my brother (alas, younger than myself) had us believe that his cool steel marbles had been produced in the most bizarre way: supposedly, the maid working at his home created them by ironing once and again over a special piece of cloth, which produced tiny marbles that grew in size as she kept ironing.
Juan
After I found out that sugar was made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, I thought that I could make sugar by blowing into water. Why? Because the carbon from the CO2 you exhale would combine with the H and O in H2O and result in sugar. Not just any carbohydrate- but sucrose table sugar, the brown one.
Scandia
When I was a child, I used to think that matter could be created and destroyed.
I used to believe that the water used by firefights to put out fires was special water...not regular everyday water, but special, powerful water to put out fires.
fiona donnican
My freind and me had an obsession with fire. and yes were girls. well one day i found the lighter my mom ussually hid from me. i thought that water was flammable, and if you mixed it goldfish a magical fish woould appear, and it would be green and made of playdoh. OK i was creative ( : anyway we got the lighter and found some water and a pack of goldfish. we put it in the toilet. the we threw the lighter in and screamed "FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" because when people saw fire thats what they yelled so we thought that what made it catch on fire. My mom jus locked me in a cage till i was 10.
QuaKo
When I was quite young I believed that if you left glass in the sun long enough, that it would turn into diamonds and crystals (depending on the colour of the glass obviously). I had quite a collection of glass sitting on my bedroom windowsill until one day, my mum threw them all out and told me the horrible truth. I believed for years after that, that they had finally 'turned' and she had taken them for herself and every time she 'bought' new diamond earrings or a sapphire necklace I'd look at them suspiciously.
Still suspicious
As soon as I was tall enough to reach the taps on the bathroom sink, I decided to conduct an experiment seeing what happened if you mixed hot water with cold water, thinking maybe that nobody had tried it before. The results were profoundly disappointing, although I have no idea what I was expecting to happen.
Jim, UK
When my sister and I were younger we fought a lot (I love her to death now).
I remember how she always liked to play with my mother's make-up and perfume in the bathroom, and she'd spray ALL the different perfumes a lot and make it smell horrible. With only one bathroom to share, that kinda sucked.
One day after she sprayed a whole bunch, I had to pee and found what she was doing. I was annoyed, so I told her that mixing different chemicals can create an explosion. Then I locked her in the bathroom, holding the door from the outside. After I took off, she told on me.
The BEST part about that was that when she told my Dad, he responded something like, "Well, technically you never know what shouldn't be mixed..."
In my second year at school, we were told that water froze to become ice and that ice could melt to become liquid. I thought that liquid must somehow be different to the water it once was and would be very reluctant to ever drink it.
cc
I used to believe that you could die from looking at a can of chemicals because I thought the chemicals would lunge at you and rot your eyes out.
Young and Stupid
I saw a headline in the news paper that read, "Mixing alcohol and gasoline is explosive." So my friend and I got some gas and rubbing alcohol and tried to get it to explode by mixing it together. Luckly we didn't try lighting a match.
Steve
I used to believe that the liquid that causes glowsticks to glow was radioactive and would kill me if I got it on my skin. My mother took my friend and I to a carnival when we were about 7 and kept breaking them to make ourselves glow. Not wanting it to stain our clothes, she told us that any more would kill us if we touched it. I didn't want to go near a glowstick until 4 years later when my 6th grade science teacher said otherwise.
Amanda
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