It’s something I vividly remember being taught in primary school – the tongue has areas which can only taste sweet, savoury, etc. and they showed us a diagram of where each area was on the tongue. It was the most easily disprovable idea and we all knew it made no sense…and lo and behold it turned out to be total nonsense. How did this idea ever make its way into curriculums and textbooks and did it ever have the backing of the science community? (Also, feel free to share the dumbest thing you were ever taught in school for comparison!)
In: Biology
One time my 4th grade science teacher was telling us that blood is blue when there is no oxygen. Using the blue veins on her model skeleton as evidence. I said it wasn’t true and just looked that way through your skin and she vehemently disagreed. Then everyone made fun of me for pronouncing gauge wrong later on.
Another time a teacher said that laser beams have the same beam width no matter how far the beam goes, and I said that in the real world laser beams do actually get wider or smaller along the length of the beam depending on how the focusing is set up. I even mentioned how it was measured in milliradians. Do not remember the reaction other than being told that was wrong.
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