You won’t believe schools taught us these things all wrong!🤦🏻♂️Watch this video for better understanding!
We learn science through various stages and it’s good to learn in bits & pieces but sometimes things are so generalized that we consider them as facts and get attached to that partial truth for the rest of life. We realize that schools taught us wrong only when there is a sudden Eureka moment. For example, “the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west” is a universal truth and no one can deny that this is an empirical truth, not the absolute truth. Convictions like this are very common during our duration in school.
While they are not the complete truth, we also cannot claim them as false. They help us to grasp the absolute reality. Before understanding the phenomenon of rotation of the earth that leads to the occurrence of day and night, firstly we have to make sense of the rising and setting of the sun. Thus we can call this not a false theory but a partial truth. We have learned many partial truths like this and some remain still with us even when we are studying higher courses. Let’s look up such partial truths that are very common.
We have seen images of an atom with a positive nucleus in the center and negative electrons moving around in a well-defined orbit, like the planets move around the sun. This is Rutherford’s planetary model which was later corrected by Bohr’s model while putting the similar structure but electrons were allowed to move only in a particular orbit with a definite energy level.
We have to note here that when this model was proposed, neither the neutron was discovered nor the uncertainty principle was proposed by Heisenberg. In reality, electrons do not move in a well-defined orbit because they cannot be defined in a particular place at a particular time with certainty. The accepted model is called the Electron cloud model in which electrons exist around the nucleus in a probability cloud where an electron is most likely to be found.
Eelectrons exist around the nucleus in a probability cloud where an electron is most likely to be found.
Electrons can be understood to exist at multiple places at a time since they are represented by a mathematical wave function and only upon measurement that electron can occupy a certain position. Thus before measurement, electrons could be found over a definite region and that region is called electron cloud or atomic orbitals that exist in various shapes. Orbitals are named as s, p, d, and f. “s” orbital looks like a circle while “p” orbital looks like a dumbbell-shaped region. Each orbital can be occupied by 1 or 2 electrons. The model was proposed by Schrödinger and Heisenberg and is most widely accepted.
We have been taught only 3 states or phases of matter i.e. solids, liquids, and gases. Later on, we are also taught of a fourth state known as plasma, which is a gas of ions and free electrons, but there are more states of matter. Plasma is the most abundant state of matter in the universe. All the stars and the intergalactic matter are formed of plasma. The states of matter are generally classified based on energy states.
Plasma is defined as a state of matter predominantly comprised of ions and electrons.
In low energy states, we also have many intermediate states and extreme condition states such as Bose-Einstein Condensate. Bose-Einstein Condensate are those bosons that occupy the lowest energy state and merge into a single wave or particle when the temperature is reduced near to absolute zero. Pauli exclusion law does not hold for bosons, thus many bosons can exist at the same energy level at the same time and form a single entity as if they are one single particle.
Apart from them, there are degenerate matter types such as Electron degenerate matter found in white dwarfs and neutron degenerate matter found in a neutron star. They are the matters found in the extreme state when a star is supported by its degeneracy pressure against the gravitational collapse. Rydberg Polaron, Quark gluon plasma, Fermionic condensate are other examples of different states of matter.
Well, astronauts keep floating inside the International Space station but that is not the case. While gravity does tend to go weaker as we move away from the planet but the height at which ISS is placed, Earth’s gravity is still about 90% of the gravity on land. So why do they feel weightless there? The answer is, they are in constant free fall.
The Cupola, an observatory module is important to astronauts aboard the ISS, who enjoy using the module to view and photograph the Earth.
Gravity acts with the same acceleration on different bodies regardless of their mass but on Earth, due to air resistance, we do not feel that way. But space is a vacuum and thus you, the spacecraft, and all instruments will fall at the same acceleration and everyone will appear to be floating around. On the other hand, the station is moving at a huge speed of 7.6 km/second which keeps the ISS in orbit. It keeps falling toward the earth but this speed maintains the ISS to match the curve around the earth.
Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces and this is again a universal truth. Even in higher education, we study the same thing because no one can deny that, but General Relativity challenges this notion. It does not deny gravity but argues that this force is a perception we get of the bodies following a path in the curved space-time around a body. Now again, understanding the Newtonian concept of universal gravitation is a pathway to understanding the bigger picture.
It is technique of securing information through use of codes. The prefix “crypt” means “hidden” and suffix “graphy” means “writing”. Source: Getty Images Signature
An object falls because it is following the geodesic, formed by the warping of space-time due to the presence of a mass-energy tensor, in this case, our Earth. The temporal dimension is warped near the surface of the Earth, thus time moves slower near a gravitational potential. Farther from the pull of Earth’s gravity, clocks tick faster. Thus the fall of an object is the movement of an object from a faster time to a slower time. The body moves simultaneously in space and time.
As the body moves faster in time, slower will be the speed in spatial dimension and vice versa. Thus when a body is falling from the top of the building i.e faster time to ground i.e slower time, it changes its speed from low speed to high speed as the speed in temporal dimension reduces, speed in spatial dimension will increase and this change in speed is same as the calculated value of gravitational acceleration i.e. 9.8 m/s².
We have 5 sensory organs i.e. eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin from which we can sense light, sound, smell, taste, and touch respectively but scientists and philosophers have argued for a long time that there may be a 6th sense in the body. During genetic and neurological studies on mice, some researchers proposed that there may be a sixth sense in the body and our genetics may have played an important role in their development.
It is technique of securing information through use of codes. The prefix “crypt” means “hidden” and suffix “graphy” means “writing”. Source: Getty Images Signature
This sixth sense is called “Proprioception” which deals with how our brain understands and makes sense of the body in surrounding space. This system includes the sense of movement and positioning of the limbs and muscles of our body. Proprioception is acted upon by Mechano-sensory neurons present in the muscles, tendons, and joints of the body.
Mechano-sensation is a property of the body to sense the force acting on it. Scientists found that there is a particular gene inside the body called Piezo-type Mechanosensitive Ion Channel Component 2 or simply PIEZO2 that causes the cells to produce these mechano-sensitive proteins, responsible for providing a 6th sense which enables us to do work without even being conscious of it, like walking without being conscious where your foot is taking place in the night, or climbing stairs without looking, etc.
The list is long like blue blood in veins is not due to de-oxygenation but a reflection of low penetrating blue light by the surface of skin and Chameleons do not change color to scare us but to maintain their body temperature. Different colors absorb different amounts of heat. Black absorbs more heat while pale reflects more heat. Colors can also be used to signal their mating partners.
When we understand the real reason behind the phenomenon we get to know that maybe we could not understand these explanations while we were still young. Maybe teaching partial truths was to prepare us so that we can understand the real, tougher explanation. The important thing is that we should keep asking questions and try to find the complete answers, and in this quest we will help you by making such high quality content to make science easier and more fun than it has ever been!
Do you know of anything else that schools have taught us wrong? Let us know in the comments.
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