See: http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/bloopers.html Previously titled A HISTORY OF THE WORLD, by Richard Lederer and "Supplied by John Beyea." This article, orginally entitled "Student Bloopers," first appeared in Verbatim, The Language Quarterly. (1987) Date: 02/13/97 07:59:52 AM CST Subject: JOKE: Kids and Science Kids and Science: The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and class room discussion. Most were from 5th and 6th graders. They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the "most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop." Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there. Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother. We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on. To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up. In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are twice as many H's as O's. Clouds are high flying fogs. I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing. Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do. Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is big enough to be called a drop, it does. Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water. We keep track of humidity in the air so we won't drown when we breathe. Rain is often known as soft water, oppositely known as hail. Rain is saved up in cloud banks. You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind. The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down. Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand. While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the Sun, it is really only centrificating. South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage. Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers. A blizzard is when it snows sideways. A hurricane is a breeze of a bigly size. A monsoon is a French gentleman. Thunder is a rich source of loudness. It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places. The wind is like the air, only pushier. THESE ARE ACTUAL EXCERPTS FROM STUDENT SCIENCE EXAM PAPERS Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillers. The dodo is a bird that is almost decent by now. To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, tip the water out, and put the cork in quick before the air can get back in. The process of turning steam back into water again is called conversation. A magnet is something you find crawling all over a dead cat. The Earth makes one resolution every 24 hours. The cuckoo bird does not lay his own eggs. To prevent conception when having intercourse, the male wears a condominium. To collect fumes of sulfur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube. Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them. Algebraical symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about. Geometry teaches us to bisex angles. A circle is a line which meets its other end without ending. The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects. The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader. Artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull. An example of animal breeding is the farmer who mated a bull that gave a great deal of milk with a bull with good meat. We believe that the reptiles came from the amphibians by spontaneous generation and study of rocks. English sparrows and starlings eat the farmers grain and soil his corpse. By self-pollination, the farmer may get a flock of long-haired sheep. Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire. A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold. A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle. Blood flows down one leg and up the other. A person should take a bath once in the summer, and not quite so often in the winter. The hookworm larvae enters the human body through the soul. When you haven't got enough iodine in your blood you get a glacier. It is a well-known fact that a deceased body harms the mind. Humans are more intelligent than beasts because the human branes have more convulsions. For fainting: rub the person's chest, or if a lady, rub her arm above the hand instead. For fractures: to see if the limb is broken, wiggle it gently back and forth. To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose. When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide. When you breathe, you inspire. When you do not breathe, you expire. Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative. Equator: a menagerie lion running around Earth through Africa. Rhubarb: a kind of celery gone bloodshot. The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is so that there is something to hitch the meat to. The body consists of three parts--the brainium, the borax, and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the bran. The borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowls, of which there are five -- A, E, I, O and U. [From a course review:] Good Afternoon, I an a student athelete at E____ High School. when I first journeyed into the exiting world of computer science, I diddn't know what I was getting myself into. Problem solving has been a true weekness throughout my years in grammer school. I could never find the pattern to any problem and I often tried to avoid it or find ways to solve problems. I'm talkinkg about problems where you have to use what I call acedemic logic to solve the problem. This is from a local symphony newsletter. It's a list of quotes from grade school essays on classical music. "J.S. Bach died from 1750 to the present" "Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music." "Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you better not try to sing." "Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was rather large." "Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling him. I guess he could not hear so good. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died from this." "Henry Purcell is a well-known composer few people have ever heard of." "An opera is a song of bigly size." "A harp is a nude piano." "Aaron Copland is one of our most famous contemporary composers. It is unusual to be contemporary. Most composers do not live until they are dead." "A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals." "Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel." "I know what a sextet is but I'd rather not say." "Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago." "My favorite composer is opus." "Probably the most marvelous fugue was between the Hatfields and the McCoys." "My very best liked piece is the bronze lullaby."