I am 16 and a sophomore in high school. I believed from the time I knew what an atomic bomb was to today (August 19th 2008) that when things in close proximity to the blast are vaporized, that they just disappear. I was informed by my chemistry class and teacher that they do not, in fact, "turn into air" rather they are converted into extremely small particles that are lighter than air. Silly me.

Kara Collett

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

I thought the chemicals in chemistry sets couldn't really blow up in real life I thought it was only on the cartoons, so I was wondering why when I asked my mom for a chemistry set when I was eight my mom had said "ARE YOU KIDDING YOU'D BLOW US ALL UP IN HERE"

very confused at age eight

Used to think that a pile of oily rags could catch on fire by themselves. (Sponteanous combustion)

Frank

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

the other month I mentioned to a friend that I spray on 3 different deoderent and 2 different perfumes every morning. He looked at me in shock and said 'you can't do that! the chemicals in them will mix together and cause an explosion or form a poison. you could die!' I spent the rest of the day waiting for something to happen to me, I was scared that at any moment I could explode. For weeks after I wore only one deoderent, until finally someone told me that it wasn't true.

squizy rach

When I was a child, I used to think that matter could be created and destroyed.

Anon

We were taught about AIDS before we were taught about viruses. We learned about viruses in middle school. But, of course, even in middle school, they had to teach us about AIDS first. Pretty much, all we knew about AIDS was that it had something to do with RNA and Helper T-cells, since those were the words they kept using. So up until high school, I always associated RNA as a diseased DNA.
So they described the process of how the AIDS virus spreads: the virus attaches onto a white blood cell and injects some of itself into the cell. The little viruses multiply and become more viruses until the cell is so stuffed with viruses that it explodes with lots of little AIDS viruses.
Very smart of them to teach us about AIDS before teaching us about viruses IN GENERAL.
See, the way AIDS infects the body is THE SAME WAY ALL VIRUSES INFECT THE BODY. But I didn't know that. So for years, I thought that all viruses that spread like that (which would be all viruses) were AIDS!

Anon