when i was about 6 we did a project at school about space and our teacher told us about 'black holes' that were big enough to suck in the earth and squash it. I was terrified and for several weeks i used to pray every night that the earth wouldn't get swallowed. Then i think i forgot about it!

nicky

i used to believe if i dug a whole big enough i could find gravity, i found some polestirine so for years i was convinced gravity was white

nicola

i used to believe that if you were in a falling elevator, you could just jump at the last minute before it crashed at the bottom of the lift shaft, thus reversing your direction while the lift crashed around you. Then you'd land (still inside the mangled lift wreckage) as if you were landing after a normal jump. Genius.

tim brown

I went for a short time as a child beleiving that I should be able to support myself on something I was holding up: take a metal pole, hold it behind your back horizontally, crouch slightly as if sitting on it then try to lift your feet off the ground. Even though I tried and failed, I was convinced I just wasn't doing it right.

Melville

I didn't think you could put out a fire with hot water - only cold water would do.

Katti Pytt

During the "nukular" 80s I had a fair idea of the power of an 'atom bomb', but couldn't figure out why it was so darned big when I'd been told in school that an atom was a really really really small part of the universe.

mpg

I always got confused when I watched movies with pepole jumping of trains or cars that was moving. Thats because I thought that if I just stepped of I woudld immediatley stand still, not faling and hurt myself. Because it was the cars or train that was moving, I just sat there...

Krickan

As a seven-year old, I believed that every noise ever made or that will be made goes directly to a cave in some vast mountain, and that they will remain there until the destruction of the earth when they will all be released simultaneously.

Richard, Germany

I used to think that filling a plastic bag with air took away the gravity inside.
I spent many hours at my grandmothers testing this theory with a plastic sandwich bag and a ten cent coin.

Lumpen

I used to believe that if I dug up my garden enough I would discover a completely new colour that no-one else had ever seen before. I tried to imagine what this colour would be, and it was always orange.

Lozza

Somehow I got this strange idea that if you held a piece of paper so that it's edge was facing a piece of glass, and pushed it fast enough it would actually travel through the glass without the glass breaking. I thought it was a phonomenon associated with time travel but later as I discovered that all material thigs were made up of atoms I figured that the paper was actually squeezing through the spaces in between the molecules. Actually none of my experiments to make the paper pass through the glass ever worked but I figured that it was because I couldn't move the paper fast enough.

ronnie

When I was a kid, I used to believe that the sky was the surface of a solid sphere and that we were inside this sphere.

I think the fact that the sky is usually blue and satellite pictures showed the Earth as being blue led me to belive this.

I was never able to figure out the knotty problem of how rockets managed to pierce through this solid wall of sky to make their way into space though.

Arnab

As children, my best friend (who will remain anon because he is now a respected Engineer) tried to convince me that raising the seats on our bicycles actually made them heavier, because there is more metal showing.

Professor Zachary Stenson

At the age of ten, I had a fantastic idea for walking on water. I put inflatable arm-bands around my ankles and stepped 'onto' the swimming pool. Luckily my dad was there to rescue me as I dangled upside-down under water :)

Mark Major

I was told that diamonds were made out of coal, crushed under the earth. So I put a piece of coal under a brick in the garden, and checked it regularly. I knew I didn't have enough pressure for diamond, but I figured I'd get something good - possibly chocolate.

Chris Davis

My older brother told my cousin that while laying down, if you tried hard enough, you could lift your entire body off the floor by an inch-or-two, supporting yourself with only the back of your head touching the floor. - My cousin tried it and of course failed...

Chrispy