The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and class room discussions. Most were from 5^th and 6^th graders. They illustrate Mark Twain’s contention that the ‘most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.’

Question: What is one horsepower? Answer: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.

You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don’t hear it, you got hit, so never mind.

Talc is found on rocks and on babies.

The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down.

When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms.

But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.

When people run around and around in circles, we say they are crazy. When planets do it, we say they are orbiting.

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.

Someday we may discover how to make magnets that can point in any direction.

South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage.

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.

There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever.

There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up there these days.

Lime is a green-tasting rock.

Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.

Genetics explain why you look like your father and, if you don’t, why you should.

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.

Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers.

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 the 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.

In some rocks, you can find the fossil footprints of fishes.

Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dog’s tongue will kill the strongest man.

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.

Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.

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.

Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the organ of the species.

Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backwards.

The theory of evolution was greatly objected to because it made man think.

Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillars.

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.

If conditions are not favorable, bacteria go into a period of adolescence.

Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire.

Vegetative propagation is the process by which one individual manufactures another individual by accident.

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 brains 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.

For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.

For nosebleed: put the nose much lower than the body.

For drowning: climb on top of the person and move up and down to make artificial perspiration.

To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.

For head colds: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.

For snakebites: bleed the wound and rape the victim in a blanket for shock.

For asphyxiation: apply artificial respiration until the patient is dead.

Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative.

Bar magnets have north and south poles, horseshoe magnets have east and west poles.

When water freezes you can walk on it. That is what Christ did long ago in wintertime.

When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide.