When I was really young, I used to lock myself in the bathroom and mix together toothpaste, mouthwash, soap, ...whatever, thinking I was doing chemistry and I was going to discover some whole new compound no one has ever seen. Generally I just made a mess in a Dixie cup, but the good news is that I did end up with Ph.D. in Biology, so it wasn't a total loss.

Ann Y.

When I was abouve 6 or 7, I once overheard my dad explaining to my mom the concept of splitting atoms to get energy.

For at least the next year or so, I constantly asked my mom about my cousin Adam, worried that he might be the next one split.

Kyle

When I was in grade school we did a project where we put different kinds of rocks and dirt in a jar with water and watch them settle out over time. My teach explained that this is how sedimentary rock is made. So, I thought, if I kept the jar long enough, I would eventually make my own rock. My dad explained that it would take more than my life time for this to happen. So, I planned to pass the jar down to my ancestors (great inheritance, huh?), until it became a rock. This grand plan was thwarted, though, when my sister bumped the shelf if was on and toppled the jar onto the floor. To my mom's and my dismay, it was just mud.

Ann Y.

Radioactivity!
I was born in 1952. and had to watch all the post WW2 monster movies with my older brothers. I just knew that anything involving radium would turn me into a wart-ridden deformed monster in only a few hours.
At my 8th birthday party I was given an alarm clock as a gift, and it had those ominous little green bits around the numbers. Not wanting to be rude, I wrapped it in about three pairs of socks and a sweater or two, and stuck it WAY back in a dresser drawer, just to make sure that I wouldn't wake up with my lips sloughing off.
I think my Mom finally found it when we moved, about six years later.

DJ

I really did used to believe that if you held a tin tray above a boiling kettle then the moisture that collected on the tray was actually melted tin. I used to spend hours boiling the buggars - and could never understand why the tray got any smaller!

Whats worse is that I even tried to explain this to my mum who just looked at me in bemusement, but never tried to tell me that I was wrong. Is it possible that she believed it too?

paul

I used to believe that local anesthetics were just some homemade brew that the particular dentist/surgeon used rather than an anesthetic restricted to a specific region. I just figured it out during my first year of medical school.

Anon

When we were studying chemistry and the teacher talked about selenium, I thought that selenium was named after a Mexican pop star Selena who died during my childhood.

Anon

Now, I heard that plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. People turn oxygen into carbon dioxide. And, when plants burn, they release carbon dioxide. So it seemed to me that if the trees stored up the CO2, we would equally store the O2. Thus, I felt that every human should be burnt after death to liberate their stores of oxygen.

Nick P

When I was little, for a few years I used to marvel at the ways of the universe, such as the AMAZING coincidence that water boiled at exactly 100 degrees and froze at exactly 0 degrees. I just presumed it was natural, and it fascinated me.

Peter C. Hayward

when I was a little boy I thought that there is metal and iron. I didn't know that iron is metal too. Till I found out that iron IS metal and copper is metal and aluminium....
ah, and I also thought that steel plate is another kind of metal too.

the second thing I believed is that real iron, real pure iron is so heavy - you can't lift it

Friedl

As a kid, my brother used to believe he could split atoms. And so, he would walk around wildly swinging a stick trying to hit some atoms. :)

Anon

I used to think that bartenders were scientists and when they were mixing drinks, they were really mixing chemicals and trying to poison people.

Allison

When I was about 7 I was playing with the trash burning barrel. My friend and I were throwing in sand and sticks into the burning barrell. All of a sudden there was a tremendous BANG! from the trashcan (I think it must have been a hairspray can that exploded.)

However, my friend and I were CONVINCED that we had created some special sand/stick/and rock combo that was quite explosive. No matter how we tried, be couldn't get the trash can to BOOM again.

reenie

I used to believe that if you put water in test tubes it would turn into whichever chemical the test tube was designed to make, so i was really dissapointed when i got one of those perfume making kits (with test tubey type things) and my mixture of water and water did nothing!

Emmie x

I knew different things happened at different temperatures, but I didn't know the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit. So if water boiled at 100 degrees, and if you had a fever of 102 degrees, that meant you were sick because you were above boiling.

Norm

I used to think that pneumonia and ammonia were the same thing. When my friend's mother was using a sink full of ammonia to clean some old combs, I thought we were all going to catch "ammonia".

Steve Young

I had learnt in school that carbon dioxide turns lime solution white...so if you blow into lime water, it will turn milky. After that everytime mom made nimbu pani (lime juice), I'd spend hours blowing into it, waiting for it to change colour.

Sveta

When I was a kid, I had railroad tracks running though my backyard. When I'd walk back there, I'd find little pieces of coal. From science class, I knew that if you put enough pressure on coal, it would turn into diamonds. I put so many pieces of coal on the tracks, but I never did find any diamonds...

Me