science

I used to believe that whenever you switched on a light a little man ran (extremely fast) through the wire and turned the lightbulb on. I stopped believing this when I saw how small the wire that the "little man" ran through really was!

when i learned about atoms at a young age, I never really comprehended how small they were. Whenever the sun would gleam off dust particles in the air, I thought what I was seeing were actually atoms, and I thought I must have some special sight super powers since a book I read said atoms were invisible to the naked eye. (I also thought "invisible to the naked eye" meant it was literally invisible unless your eye was 'wearing' special lenses)

I used to believe that batteries were filled with gasoline, since the labels always said they were flammable and that gasoline was as well. Now I know they use electricity.

I used to believe that ice cubes were only cold because they were left in the freezer all the time. If you left them out they would simply become "warm ice." I was so insistent about this that one day my grandmother got fed up and told me we were going to do an experiment. (This is when I learned what "experiment" means.) She left some ice cubes on a plate by my bed and told me to check them in the morning. Of course when I woke up the plate was full of water, but I wasn't fooled: I was sure my grandmother had come in when I was asleep, taken the "warm ice" away, and filled the plate with water. It never occurred to me to wonder why my grandmother would be so concerned with hiding the truth about ice from me.

I used to believe that when you saw electric wires along a road in a group, held together in places by a holder of some kind, that the holder was mud that someone had thrown up on the wires. I wondered why the mud was always so uniform and why someone would do that.

When I was 5-6 years old, upon reading about the invention of the steam engine and (in history textbooks) the invention of fire by cavemen, I thought the steam engine was invented in the same age as fire.

The industrial part of my childhood town had a particular large stormwater runoff drain, at least large enough for one car to drive through, and for many years (I think i was 10 when i started questioning the reality of this gem) i honestly believed that if you stood in the drain you would be cloned. Yes cloned. This was 20 years ago so i guess i must have got the idea from Buck Rogers or some early sci fi crap

When I was young, I figured out why yawns were "contagious." When someone yawned, they sucked in a lot of oxygen, leaving less for everyone else in the vicinity, so people nearby had to yawn too, to get more into their lungs. I still sorta believed it into my 20s.

This one isn't mine, but it's one my daughter picked up from me one day when we were driving. She was about 4 years old at the time and we were driving to the zoo for the day. We were passing a power plant with the two large steam silos that were giving off quite a bit of steam. My daughter asked me "Is that where clouds come from?", I was only half paying attention to here remark because I was driving but I responded, yes. We were driving the other day and she called me out on it. She's now 15 and knows better, but we both laughed as she confessed that she believed that's where the clouds came from until she was about 8.

I thought that deep space was 100% empty of matter, except for the random star, nebula, black hole, or planetary system. Since I always heard that space was a vacuum, I also believed that except for the dust and dirt inside a vacuum bag, I believed that the rest of the "space" in a vacuum bag was totally empty, just like space. I learned otherwise about the vacuum bag pretty early on, but I finally learned that outer space is not completely empty some time in 8th grade Earth Science.

When I was young, I used to think that if I picked up the phone while it was ringing then I would get electrocuted. I thought this because everyone that would answer the phone would wait until after the ring.

I used to believe that the toy chicks with the touch sensors were actual chicks trapped inside the plush and plastic shell.

When I was young, my mother jokingly told me that cameras shoot out laser beams.
I believed that they would instantly desinigrate anything they hit so I was afraid of cameras until I was about 10.

When I was little, my aunt gave me a "chirp ball."
This is a device that when you plug it in, it makes a sound like a bird chirping.
I used to be afraid of it because I thought the bird was angry at me and would peck me if I got too close.

I had an idea at school to dig a tunnel through the centre of the earth and out to the other side. I would then drop things down it and since the object would be moving faster as it passed through the core, gravity should have less effect and it should shoot out of the tube and into space then other side. It could have been used to dispose of nuclear waste or defend Earth from asteroids but it never materialised.

when i was little (elementary school) my friend would always call the operator for fun. she would say random things or hang up or try to start a conversation with them. i asked how she knew how to call the operator and she told me it was a long series of secret numbers only she knew. i was really upset and got mad at her for not telling me. i just found out this isnt true and im 15