when i was very young i asked my dad how a radio works. he explained the principle of radio waves to me, and how they were invisible. he said that you couldn't hear them or see them or even taste them, but i never fully beleived that you couldn't taste them for some reason. i remember getting his transistor radio and putting my mouth on the antenna in hopes of tasting radio waves.
weird kid.

Kate

When I as little I used to think gravity could be turned off. Never having grasped the concept of gravity completely, I used to think that there was a big switch in the middle of the Earth which could be shut down at any moment and we would all fall off. Everytime I looked at pictures of the Earth (such as in school or in the movies) I used to close my eyes and I was horrified. I remember pleading my mom to move to the North Pole since according to my theory, this was the only safe place where we would be unable to fall from.

Coral Celeste

my dad used to tell me that if you pointed at things, you were poking holes in the air and the fairies/birds would trip over them.

i'm still hesitant to poke holes..

kylie-o

When I was a boy, my dad took a test drive in a Volkswagen bus, just so that I could have the reward of a lunchpail in the shape of a VW bus. The prize included a small thermos bottle. I'd take the pail and thermos to school, the thermos filled with iced juice. I convinced myself that when the ice melted in the thermos, the resultant water would fill the thermos beyond its capacity and it would explode, sending VW bus shrapnel throughout the classroom, killing me and anyone else in its path. Each day, I was anxious for lunch to come so that I could drink the juice and defuse the ticking time bomb. After weeks of such dread, I confessed my concerns to my dad. He explained that water expands during freezing and contracts during thawing. To this day, I believe that his explanation was the inspiration for my career in science.

Stuart

I used to believe that Newton's 3rd Law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) could work both ways....the example we were given was that "if you push on a wall, the wall pushes back"....I used to walk down the hallways worriedly thinking "what if the wall pushes FIRST!!??"

1st Year Engineering Student

I used to think that every time you broke something, you risked splitting an atom and causing an explosion.

My friend and I used to play with sticks. We would break them and throw them to try to get them to explode.

Mike

My brother convinced me that the world spinned around on its axis because it was at a very perfect angle that scientists couldn't easily reproduce. He told me that if I took out the school globe and adjusted it juuuuuust right that it would start spinning! I spent hours trying to get it to spin.

Nadia

When I was younger I asked my dad:
"If I let go of a balloon, would it float up to heaven or space?"
He replied "It'd pop eventually."

I was hugely disappointed, as I'd already let go of a helium balloon that day with my name and address attached to it, hoping that an angel or astronaut would receive it and I'd get some sort of penpal (I wasn't picky).

Incidentally, it ended up a few streets away.

Katya

I used to believe that if you dropped a coin on a table and gulped in the air as it fell, that you would be swallowing 'energy' and that this would make you energetic. This is because I had seen a children's science programme on television which said something about energy being 'released' if you dropped a coin.

Naomi

My parents used to have plastic plug-socket protectors (i.e. the plug prongs attached to a shield bit) to prevent inquisitive toddlers from electrocuting themselves.

Apparently I was of the belief that they were actually there to prevent the electricity from flowing out!
Pretty sensible, I thought! :)

MarkP

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

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 you could yell into a bag or jar and trap your voice...but it would only work if closed it fast enough.

Bronx

When I was quite young, I desperately wanted my very own swingset. Then it dawned on me: unlearned in simply physics, I believed I could simply get a piece of rope, hold each end in opposite hand, and then while supporting the rope, I could just sit down and swing myself. Unfortunately, as you probably guess, it did not work quite as I had expected.

Jessie Lou

I used to believe that if you could figure out how to suspend yourself in the air (my best plan was a balloon) you would remain stationary and the Earth would rotate below you. Using this method, I planned to travel around the world in just one day.

My brother crushed my dreams by telling me I would never get high enough to clear mountains and I would die when I crashed into them.

Bill

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

I used to believe that radio waves were actually thousands of microscopic, kayak-shaped, silver flying machines with tiny men inside them who drove from the radio station all the way into the antennae of the car radio. They couldn't fly well inside tunnels, though.

Lisa H.

When I was little I had a fluorescent bulb in my bedroom. It would often take 1-2 seconds to fully turn on. This was grand because I thought that when people were referring to the speed of light, they mean how long it took a light bulb to turn on starting when the flip was switched. This made me very happy, because I could run to the center of my room before the light came on, and was therefore faster than the speed of light!

Joseph

One day I was taught about how Marie Curie discovered the x-ray machine. For a long time I thought she had discovered it by digging it out of the ground and hence 'discovering' it.

Anon

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