science

I liked watching science shows when I was younger, but I guess I didn't understand them too well...I believed that without a doubt that scientists were on the verge of cloning dinosaurs (I couldn't figure out why though!). And when Jurassic Park came out, I thought it was real...

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.

i used to believe that www meant world wide willy until a few months later when i came across a frind who correced me and said it meant world wide web

When I was younger I used to believe that when you faxed someting the paper would de-materialize and the particles would travel through the phone lines and re-materialize later at the other end of the fax machine.

When I was a kid I couldn't figure out how video got to a TV through a tiny little cable, and with so many channels! I figured that a huge set of tiny images must be transferred through the cable using fibre optics or something (like a multiplexed image), and then the TV would pick a section of this big image when you choose a channel, then magnify that section onto the TV screen and voila - TV! I figured the sound was picked up using some sort of radio tuner. I was tempted to cut the cable and see if a bunch of tiny images would project from it! I understand how they work today, but you gotta admit, it's pretty amazing how color video goes through a simple 2-pin cable.

Whenever I would talk to my grandma on the telephone I would push pieces of food through the receiver thinking they would come out on her end. She would always pretend like she was eating the food I sent her so I thought it was working. My mom was furious because we constantly had food smashed into our phone.

When I was 3 we lived with my great-grandmother in Missisiippi and my mom had a record player in our room. (This was in 1967 for those who don't know what a record player is!!) I was so curious about the spinning of it so she told me there was a little man under the record running in a circle making it spin. I always wondered if he had a friend in there to help if he got tired.

Not actually my own belief, but when my young son came across an old typewriter at a car boot sale, he thought it was an antique computer.

I used to believe that heat and cold were two separate energy forces. It was only actually "cold" when the temperature was below zero, whereas seemingly cold temperatures above zero merely indicated a lack of heat.

Once my sister [three years younger] picked up the phone and left it off the hook for a couple minutes. We weren't really allowed to use the phone at the time [I was about 5 or 6]. The lady that comes on when you leave it off the hook long enough started talking, and saying "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again." I didn't know it was a recording, and I got really upset and thought she was really mad at us, and that she was going to contact our parents and get us in big trouble.

When I first heard the term "burning a CD", I had the immediate vision of someone setting a CD on fire and giving it to someone.

'Mole machines' is what me and my brother used to call them. You see them in Thunderbirds, any film about Victorians tunnelling trying to find the core of the Earth, and lots of cartoons. They're basically cylinders with giant screws on the front and they burrow through soil, rock, or the white-hot core of the planet at about fifteen miles an hour.

I knew not everything you saw on TV existed in real life, but I saw these things on too many different shows and films for it to be a coincidence. So Mole Machines must be real, I deduced, and I hoped fervently to ride in one when I was a grown up. Big disappointment.

I was delighted to see a Mole Machine pop up in The Incredibles. Maybe a whole new generation of kids will see them as a viable transport option.

I used to believe that when you were on the phone and put someone old old, you could actually put the phone back on the receiver and when you picked it up again, the caller would still be there.

I used to believe my computer monitor had a van inside. This started because I asked my dad what made the whirring noise. He said it had a fan... I said "Really? A real van?", "Yes." I was convinced for nearly ten years that computers had nothing except a little blue van in them. It never occured to me to ask what it was for.

in the early 1970's my parents had a digital clock radio. the numbers flipped over to change. i thought there was a very tiny monkey inside who painted each number. it took him exactly 60 seconds to paint each number, except when the hour changed and he had to rush to paint all the new numbers in time.

I teach 8th grade. Many of my students have been amazed to learn recently that our Galaxy is called the Milky Way, that this isn't the only galaxy, that our sun is not at the center of our galaxy, and that no people or even space probes have left our galaxy. I especially love to watch their faces when I show them a picture of the Hubble Deep Field North and say that every point of light in the picture is a galaxy, then explain just how small an amount of the sky that the picture covers.