12 misconceptions about the world around, in which for some reason everyone believes

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The whole truth about oil and dinosaurs, quicksand and sharks, and the use of water glasses in aviation.

1. Water conducts electricity well

Everyone knows that if you throw electrical wires into a pool of water, people there will get an electric shock. Does this mean that water conducts electricity?

In general, this is not entirely true. Pure or distilled water, in itself, is a very mediocre conductor. The current is conducted not by the liquid itself, but by the minerals and suspended particles contained in it.

Another thing is that a truly purified distillate can hardly be found outside laboratories. So you don't have to stick your hands in puddles next to sparking wires.

2. Oil is made from dinosaurs

People who are not particularly versed in how the world around us works, sincerely believe that oil came from the remains of extinct animals. And since dinosaurs are the largest creatures that have ever trampled on our unfortunate planet, they produced the most oil.

In fact, there may be particles of them in oil, but their number is so small there that they can be neglected. According to modern estimates, 80% of the Earth's biomass is plants, 13% is bacteria, 2% is fungi, and only the remaining percent is the animal world, including humans.

In addition, given that most of the oil-forming strata formed between the end of the Jurassic period and the beginning of the Cretaceous, and the mass extinction of dinosaurs occurred in the late Cretaceous - early Paleogene, their remains could not get into oil.

Dinosaurs that accidentally ended up in the wrong layer due to tectonic shifts, we do not take into account.

In fact, the oil came from dead marine microorganisms and algae, covered in tons of silt and sand. Under enormous pressure, the temperature rose, they began to decompose into hydrocarbons and other organic compounds.

And this myth, perhaps, appeared because of the symbol of the oil company Sinclair Oil - a dinosaur named Dino. The company has demonstrated in every way that the best oil comes from rocks that date back to the time of the dinosaurs, 80 million years old, and the public has a strong association.

3. The real model of the solar system looks like a vortex

Various GIFs and videos have been circulating on the Internet for a long time, in which our solar system is depicted as a vortex or spiral. The fact is that its traditional representation with planets in circular orbits does not take into account the rotation of the Sun around the center of the Galaxy.

But such a vortex of planets supposedly better reflects the real shape of the orbits, when the Sun moves forward, like a comet, and "drags" the planets behind it. This animation was created by a YouTube user DJSadhu.

But the animation is actually wrong. The fact is that the plane of rotation of the planets around the Sun (it is called the ecliptic) is not perpendicular to the direction of its rotation around the center of the Galaxy, but is tilted by about 60 °.

That is, the star does not "pull" the planet strictly behind itself - during the movement they sometimes "overtake" it.

In addition, the Sun does not move in a straight line (as in the first model) or spiral (as in the second model). Its trajectory is curved: it moves away from the plane of the Galaxy, then returns to it under the action of the forces of attraction. This is what the actual orbit of the Sun looks like.

Astrophysicist Reese Taylor contacted the author of the video and pointed out the errors, and he released a new version of the model. The trajectories of the planets and the Sun in it are already more reminiscent of real ones.

But even with the new video, not everything is smooth. For example, at the end the Sun meets some belt of asteroids of such monstrous density that Star Wars never dreamed of. Apparently, this is an attempt to show the Oort cloud.

In fact, the average distance between the comets of the Oort cloud is several tens of millions of kilometers.

4. The order of letters in a word is not important

On the Internet, you can find one old story: supposedly English scientists found out that the order of letters in words does not matter if the first and last letters are in place. A person still reads the text fluently, because he perceives the words as a whole. For example, like this:

According to rzelulattas, Ilsseovadny odongo anligysokgo unviertiseta, do not have a problem, there are bkuvs in solva in kokam pryokda. Galvone, chotby preavya and ploendyaya bkwy blyi on msete. Osatlyne bkuvy mgout seldovt in ploonm bsepordyak, everything is torn tkest chtaitseya without trudging. Pichriony egoto is that we do not chiate every day, but everything is solvo tslikeom.

The reader sees this gibberish, understands it and admires it: now, it turns out, how it happens! But in fact, this trick rolls, with the English language, and even then not always. In Russian, everything is more complicated. One programmer somehow wrote an algorithm that randomly shuffles all letters except the first and the last. It turns out something like this:

Vlrtachesi pisunrak in Kalokagnsidrnm by the sea market rubbed 65 years later. In honor of the pkardniz, the port of derepnos padorok kaldingnatsram and rirshazel snobvoy phorod for torriteria. All residents were able to visit Kzerushnretn. This kind of wadepayit is not chatso. As a day on board the Kzreunshrten pinusraka mugot, the guests of the morno-spirited mirksokh prandziks in the innatural waste of Kalaninrgid.

Not so easy to read, right? This is because the words in Russian are longer than in English. To maintain readability, you need not only to leave the first and last letters in place, but also to limit the distance between the rearranged characters in three letters. Otherwise, the word will be incomprehensible without context - for example, as "mornyazhadny".

5. You can turn gray with fear overnight

This incident is often described in the literature. The hero spent the night in a gloomy haunted mansion, and the next morning …

… his hair is white as snow. He does not tell anyone anything about what he happened to see. This is too scary.

Jerome K. Jerome "Haunted Revel"

It is also said that when in 1793 Marie-Antoinette ascended the scaffold, her hair was snow-white: a 37-year-old woman turned completely gray overnight while waiting for the guillotine. Hence the name - Marie-Antoinette syndrome.

But in reality, hair cannot change color so quickly. Yes, people do turn gray from extreme stress, but it takes weeks. The tips of the hair, already painted with pigment, will remain so. And for the gray hair to appear, the hair needs to grow back.

There is, however, another possible explanation for Marie-Antoinette's syndrome - a phenomenon called canities subita. For some people, hair consists of strands of different colors - light and dark. Under severe stress, accompanied by immune-mediated disease, dark hair can begin to fall out quickly, while light hair will remain in place. This creates an illusion that a person turns gray in a couple of days. But this happens quite rarely.

6. Glass is liquid

It would seem that glass is a solid body. If you don’t believe it, touch the nearest window with your finger. But some people persist in repeating that glass is actually liquid! And they cite as an example the windows of medieval European cathedrals, in which the glass thickens towards the bottom. This is because they flow down, just very slowly - over the centuries.

Hence the name "glass" - in the spirit of Zadornov. Glass is an extremely viscous liquid! Quite reasonable, right?

No, nothing like that. From the point of view of physics, glass is an amorphous solid.

Glass can become liquid if melted by heating to 1,500 ° C. With steel at this temperature, the same thing happens - but this is not a reason to say that steel is also a liquid. Bodies change their state of aggregation when heated and cooled, but glass in a window, if not melted, will not be considered liquid.

Contrary to myths, glass does not flow. Their viscosity is so high that fluidity will not appear at room temperature. The relaxation time of glass is comparable to the age of the Universe.

But why, then, are the glasses in medieval cathedrals thicker from below than from above? The fact is that then glass blowers could not cast perfectly flat products, and the craftsmen, when installing, placed them with their more massive part downward - for stability.

7. The plane can be landed with a glass of water

In 2010, a Tu-154M aircraft made an emergency landing at an abandoned airport in Izhma. After that, tales began to spread on the Internet that the pilots, when their artificial horizon stopped working normally, poured water into a glass, put it on the dashboard and landed the plane, determining the roll by the slope of the liquid.

Now people who are trying to show that they understand aviation are smartly talking about the “old-fashioned method” that was used 30 years ago. In practice, if you try to land an airplane with a glass of water, you will crash. This experiment was carried out by numerous pilots, repeatedly.

Due to the centrifugal force, the water in the glass will always remain stationary, even if the plane is turning.

Without the ability to determine the roll, you will not be able to keep the wings horizontally, the plane will enter the so-called death spiral and fall to the ground. And up to this point, the water in the glass will show that the horizon is even.

So if you are learning to fly an airplane, your main and reserve artificial horizons have failed, and visibility is zero, do not try to use this method.

8. Sharks attack people by mistake

It is believed that sharks actually attack people, mistaking them for seals, which are usually hunted. And when the fish realizes that it was wrong, it just throws the person.

But this is not the case. The behavior of sharks when attacking pinnipeds differs markedly from their actions when attacking humans. R. Aidan Martin, director of the ReefQuest Shark Research Center, says:

This is completely wrong. I spent five years in South Africa watching over a thousand great white sharks attack sea lions. If they attacked people in the same way as pinnipeds, they would fly to the surface and simply tear the victim apart. But they approach people slowly and naturally.

R. Aidan Martin

Sharks do not confuse people with seals and sea lions at all, they attack on purpose. They are generally curious and tend to taste everything they see unfamiliar, even if the object is inedible.

But they don't like people. So forget about shots from horror movies: a real shark will not torment you, tearing you to pieces, but will throw you, barely biting. Therefore, most people survive after a shark attack. For the entire XX century, for example, sharks made 108 attacks, but only 8 people were killed. 100 survived.

9. Swimming after meals is dangerous

By the way, something else about sea bathing. It is believed that swimming on a full stomach is dangerous. Perhaps people think that food in the stomach will pull them to the bottom, or the process of digestion will cause blood to flow from the brain to the stomach.

But in fact, it doesn't matter whether you ate before the swim or not. Swimming on a full stomach has no consequences. Naturally, if you overeat, you will be uncomfortable, but this applies in general to any physical activity, not only water.

But if you swim drunk, you run the risk of drowning: according to statistics from the US Coast Guard, up to 70% of accidents on the water are associated with this.

The myth may have originated from an old 1908 book, Scouting for Boys. At that time, it was believed that exercise in water after eating caused such spasms that a person loses the ability to swim and drowns. That's just not so, and there are no paralyzing spasms from food,.

ten. Sitting close to the TV is unhealthy

Surely your parents told you: "Do not sit close to the TV - you will plant your eyesight!" or "Radiation is coming from the screen!"

Perhaps this is partly true for old televisions with picture tubes, because they did create X-rays. But more or less noticeable fluorescent devices were last produced before 1970. And your flat TV, even if it is already 10 years old, cannot in any way fonder.

If you sit close to the equipment, you may get a headache, because you have to strain to look at the whole picture, but your vision will not deteriorate and you will not be exposed to radiation. Unless, of course, you are still watching TV, inherited from your grandfather.

11. Capital of Australia - Sydney

When asked what the capital of Australia is called, many people will confidently say: "Sydney!" The same Sydney with its famous opera house and the Harbor Bridge. But in fact, the capital of Australia is Canberra.

Australians have long debated which city would be the main one in their country - Sydney or Melbourne. Finally, in 1913, they decided to find a compromise and built a third city, Canberra.

12. You can drown in quicksand

In the movies, a person trapped in quicksand will inevitably be completely consumed unless they find a way to escape. Just imagine how awful it is!

However, in reality, quicksand is too dense and cannot completely suck in a person. Maximum - up to the waist.

By itself, it is generally safe, and if you do not panic and move slowly and smoothly, it is quite possible to get out without assistance. If you find yourself in quicksand, do not ask your friends to pull you out: they will rather tear off your hands, because the sand holds tight. Clinging to branches above your head is also useless.

Instead, quickly drop your backpack and other heavy items so you don't get pulled down. Then lie on your back to release the pressure from your legs, after which they can be gradually released. If you cannot lie on your back, lie on your stomach and row on yourself. When you free your legs, do not try to get up or crawl - roll sideways to solid ground.