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212 Comments
- HunterTV, on 10/11/2007, -3/+324"What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?"
Do not talk about the First Law of Thermodynamics. - AmishRefugee, on 10/11/2007, -4/+117That last question is kind of a bad question because I bet alot of people (including me) understand and can explain the laws of thermodynamics but can't remember the order they go in
- Battleloser, on 10/11/2007, -8/+83Basic my ass.
- Rikushix, on 10/11/2007, -1/+62So, in summary, Robert Winston owned all of them.
- agrabob, on 10/11/2007, -1/+60your explanation is correct, but sxtxixtxcxh's comment is also accurate. These questions are overly simplistic and vague. They have no context.
"What happens when you turn on a light?" WTF? That could mean anything from: "my finger is now done flipping a switch" to "Photons go flying around the room bouncing off stuff" and everything in between. - Error601, on 10/11/2007, -4/+61All except for the salt dissolving one. I'm sure I learned that in chemistry but that was a few decades ago. Remembering what law of thermodynamics was arbitrarily labeled "two" isn't a scientific question.
- Azimuth1, on 10/11/2007, -12/+69"4.5 billion years."
The world is 6000 years old and was created by a magical man in the sky.
Buried as inaccurate. - djhworld, on 10/11/2007, -6/+60This article is ridiculous.
They're asking questions to Scientists - yes, but surely asking a question such as "why is the sky blue" to a Biologist isn't going to get a proper answer.
"Scientists" is too broad of a term as science is split into different sectors. - koick, on 10/11/2007, -3/+52Kirsty must be hot because she's dumb as a rock.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+47An "I don't know" is a better and more scientific answer than talking *****.
- gamasutra, on 10/11/2007, -11/+58Got all of them, it took me 5 seconds to google each answer
- g30ff, on 10/11/2007, -2/+48To my mind, the answers seemed to confirm that scientists don't know a great deal outside their own field, rather than some big art-science divide.
- schlurp, on 10/11/2007, -5/+41It's a bit strange that out of 6 science questions they have 2 where the answer involves entropy.
Also quite embarassing for a geologist not to know why salt dissolves in water. - supernovasky, on 10/11/2007, -0/+34There are a few different fields of geology. Mind you, all geologists should know this, but once you've been working in geology for a long time, those basic facts kind of escape you. It's kind of like being in calculus 5 and looking back on long polynomial division. I seriously don't think I could do it or explain it at moments notice.
- elcidcannon, on 10/11/2007, -8/+37What a bunch of loaded questions......"how old is the earth?". Not scientific. Hidden liberal agenda. No one answered 3000 years.
Oh yeah its because they're smart..... - nadnerb, on 10/11/2007, -1/+28The answer to "What happens when you turn on a light?" is redonculous!
"[Electric charges] then flow through wires to the light switch, then to the light bulb where they deliver their electric energy, and finally back to the power company to obtain more energy."
It's even more far fetched when you realize that power grids use AC. This analogy sounds more like a DC circuit. - spectre_25gt, on 10/11/2007, -0/+27I'd be more worried if a chemist didn't know the answer.
- greyhairedkid, on 10/11/2007, -3/+29It's easier to remember this version.
1. You can't win.
2. You can't even break even.
3. You can't get out of the game.
Yer welcome. - deeauds, on 10/11/2007, -3/+28i am in the sciences, but to be fair, i would probably have the same trouble if i were asked specific questions about random playwrites or poets
- WiseWeasel, on 10/11/2007, -4/+28It's because water is a free-flowing polar solvent (negative oxygen on one end, positive hydrogens on the other), and this facilitates the disassociation of the positive sodium (Na+) and negative chloride (Cl-) ions from the sodium chloride salt NaCl, as they are attracted to either the negative or positive ends of the water molecules. This is combined with the force of osmotic pressure, which creates a force of water flow from areas of lower ionic strength (with less dissolved ions) to areas of higher ion concentrations, endlessly diluting the areas where the dissolving salt is in contact with the water.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+23What is gravity? That seems pretty simple enough, yet Einstein, Newton, etc. couldn't even answer that. They can just speculate and describe its effects.
What is life? No one can answer that as well.
And these are fairly basic, and observable phenomenons. So I guess we're all pretty dumb from Gaurdian Unlimited's point of view. - gwydir8, on 10/11/2007, -5/+24brilliant.
- Murdats, on 10/11/2007, -2/+19there is a difference between believing a fallacy and not knowing the truth
- supernovasky, on 10/11/2007, -0/+17The mechanisms of reproduction are essential to an OB/GYN. The mechanism of dissolution of salt in water is not essential to the study of Geology. Perhaps the hard facts are, such as salt content of the oceans, but people need to stop treating scientists in the field as towers of knowledge in academia. You'd be surprised at how little you use the tiny facts you learn in chemistry 101.
If you want to make the analogy a little better, it would be like the OB/GYN not knowing that A binds with T and C binds with G... sure, its essential genetics, but will she EVER use that simple fact in her practice and have to recite it at moments notice? probably not - supernovasky, on 10/11/2007, -2/+18I dont care what your profession is, to think that the sky is blue because the ocean reflects onto the sky is about as desperate for an answer as you can get.
- fkr3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16Duh ... geez who doesn't know that?
Now. lol. - MDrake, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16Let me paraphrase the first guy's answers, "Uh, oh ***** I don't know this, um, BANANAS, wait, no, ORANGES, or is it...um, *****!"
- adinb, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14translation:
First Law is that matter/energy is not destroyed, but conserved...thus if it were a game, you could never win, the best you could do would be breaking even.
Second Law is that matter/energy trends towards higher entropy (more energy in less useful states, like motion of a car being lost to friction/waste heat)...thus you can't ever even break even in the energy game.
Third law is that as the total energy in the system approaches zero, the entropy approaches a a well defined "ground state". I'm not really sure how the analogy applies in this situation. - NSMike, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15The link to "The Age of Ignorance" at the bottom is a bit dramatic. Is everyone supposed to know this kind of stuff, and is it necessary for a writer, or a broadcaster to KNOW that kind of stuff? Most of us, if in need of that information, can find it out.
- Continuum, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15That is what I never understand about this arts-science divide. Sure, there are some craptastic fields like Cultural Studies but things like History and English and Environmental Studies are all considered an "art" not a "science" even though these fields require a large capacity to remember and understand.
Sure, no one is going to go to the moon with History but without historians no one would remember "One small step..." in 100 years.
/rant - 4eloBek, on 10/11/2007, -3/+15does not prove anything
- wildfire, on 10/11/2007, -6/+17Damn, these people need to pick up a book, especially Kirsty Wank.
"Kirsty Wark: Because it's a reflection of the oceans on the planet. No idea apart from that. I think the sky is blue because... the rain clouds obscure the blue, and the blue is a reflection... because of the sunshine. *****! I don't know! Why is the sky blue?" Classic!
Also, with the circuit/light question, they forgot a part crucial for light to be created: resistance. - jacenat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11dugg for clever hidden irony
- WiseWeasel, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12I'm a biologist/chemist, and I know that the sky is blue because the nitrogen and oxygen (mostly) molecules in the atmosphere preferentially scatter shorter wavelength blue light, and let longer wavelength red light pass straight through (relatively). When the sun is high in the sky, the blue light above you is scattered in the sky much more than the red light which passes through, creating a blue glow before it is reflected down to you. When the sun is at a steep angle, the blue light is too scattered to reach you, and only the less scattered red light is reflected from the atmosphere down to you.
You have to take physics classes to get a biology or chemistry degree. - g30ff, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9I'm not sure that I get your analogy (I'm no expert on computing) but I wasn't insulting anyone. "Science" as a whole is a much broader field than computing, even something like biology is really a collection of various smaller subfields. Where I did my undergrad there were something like 10 different biology departments. You can't expect someone to be an expert on al of it, especially the parts that are largely irrelevant to ones own research. The kind of person that I think would have aced these questions is a high school science teacher. Their job requires being something of a generalist and they have the opportunity to use and maintain that knowledge throughout their careers.
- Murdats, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9thats like calling a AI programmer stupid because he cant answer a simple question about cryptography, they are both computing right?
- lesface, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9At least its not about the ***** iphone!
- rabidg00se, on 10/11/2007, -3/+12"*****! I don't know! Why is the sky blue?"
Beautiful. - metric152, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10It doesn't really surprise me that I couldn't answer a lot of questions from the article. Sure some of us learned that stuff as a child, and that's where we used it. In my day to day life I have to learn and keep up with a lot of other things. Knowing why the sky is blue won't help me figure out why some bit of javascript won't work in IE6 and works perfect in IE7. All that knowledge we had was replaced with stuff we use everyday.
- Murdats, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8you forget things. infact the brain is designed to forget things.
look at computing, after not using a language for a while, you forget the specifics, your brain has flushed out the irrelivent data, however it is much much easier to learn things a second time through. these people probably havent had to think about these things in a looong time, and as such they have forgotten the specifics. (think of it as being like digital compression, you save space, but the more you compress, the more fine details you lose till you can only just make out the shape of a person) - wolfkeeper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Yeah, and it's on the back of a large turtle!
Everyone knows that! - bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8that was far to broad of a question as well.
- SEMW, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8No, that's the second. You know, like it says in the comment you replied to.
- tech42er, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7I have global settings set to expand all. So I'm digging you down. Get higher standards.
- koick, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Um, it's called wikipedia.
- judsond, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9cyborgs are discriminated against. ;)
- LuxFX, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Yes, but what was truly hilarious was that despite correctly naming "Rayleigh Scattering" he then proceeded to talk about "blue light molecules"!!
- kiwifish, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Thermodynamics in the third year of your bachelors? What the hell were you doing for the first 2 years!?
- xister, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7OK, so I won't bother asking you then....
- hfactor, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Who cares about why the sky is blue?
Well, every five-year-old I´ve met. Sad state of willful ignorance you´re in. -
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