These are from "Bizarre News." And are actual answers given by children on science exams. While they may not be the answer, the teacher was looking for, they do have an external logic all of their own.
Q: Name the four seasons?
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink?
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep, and canoeists.
Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.
To be continued . . .
Don't look at me!
As a former college chemistry professor, I'd like to state for the record that I've seen Freshman (18 year olds) give answers that were very similar to these. In that case, though, it's not cute; it's sad.
Sounds like "urban legend" stuff to me --
It reads like a made-up joke.
Not that I doubt the modern generation is stupid -- I'm sure it is --
It's just that any time a "true" study comes along, it's usually unverifiable & ultimately turns out to be made up.
How does Bizarre News document their "acutuality" quotent here?
peter johnson/denny crane
What are they teaching people who make tests? Only one of those "questions" should have ended with a question mark.
Well, I don't know about this (or other) 'study,' but I can tell with 100% accuracy that I have SEEN answers similar to these on real freshman college chemistry tests. I asked a lot of short answer/essay type questions so I could gauge if my students understand stuff, rather than merely recognized a correct answer (like in multiple choice), and I got some truly strange responses.
In my case, it is not urban legend; I experienced it.
Okay! So we have a Primary Source here --
Ulthar: Give us some real examples of real stupid answers that you can verify really happened here please . . .
peter johnson/denny crane
I like the idea that you can make water through flirtation, though.
I own an "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" book and in it, this same topic appears.
Ultra dumb answers really given by real college students on essays or exams they took.
I totally believe ulthar.
I've not yet completed college but I have taken many courses...(I'll finish it all up soon)
I've sat in the same classroom with people who've given ridiculously wrong answers out loud after they raised their hand and the instructor called on them.
I remember snickering to myself after hearing some of the dumbass questions and answers people ask and give.
I'm so glad that I really paid attention in most of my high school classes.
They helped turn me into the Grammar Nazi that I am today!
They're not doing anything but taking the parents' money and wasting their children's prime years inside a blank classroom before they have to go off to their dead-end jobs. Unless you like wasting your life, college sucks.
Become self-taught, kids- or you'll die wishing you had... and travel, fer chrissakes.
As a college student I have seen answers like this. I agree with Just Plain Horse college does suck. Some teachers do push your thinking to the limit most teach you nothing.
Instilling the joy of learning is the parents job. If the parents enjoy learning and can nuture that feeling in their kids they'll be alright.
As one electronics instructor told us once, " I can't teach you anything if you are not willing to learn it."
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of bad teachers out there, but most of the problems with public schools is the lack of involvement by parents. You need to know what's going on where your kids go to school.
Being good at college allows me to feel self important while I whup up on little kids in Literati during my free time.
I was pondering the quandry that is college earlier today. To some people, college is a blessing. Imagine coming from a poor family where both your parents worked their butts off so they could send you to a place where you have the opportunity to better your status in life. A BA in college can mean job opportunities and a means to an end for some. To others, it represents a network of contacts that can be used to further their station in life; not to just get a job, but to get a better job. To others, it's a place to screw around and waste your mommy and daddy's money.
To me, college represents an opportunity. I am being given four years to hone and exercise my talents by training myself to be a cinematographer. I am participating in several on campus projects that are film and video related that are teaching me to perform the necessary skills for film and video. With the guidance and support of enthusiastic teachers, I am accomplishing amazing things. I am helping run a film festival, The Open Apperture Short FIlm Festival www.appfilmfest.org on campus that is extremely popular in North Carolina. This is more of an exercise in time management and fund raising than filmmaking. Before this year, I was scared out of my mind to go to different businesses and ask them for money. But now that I've done it under the umbrella of a sanctioned event, I feel more comfortable doing it on my own for my own purposes. I am the director of photography for a feature length student film being shot this year. This is helping me decide how to compose shots, set up lighting, and once again, time manage. I shoot my own projects both on film and video, and I have a job that affords me the time to edit and screw around on digital computer technology. These are opportunities to do my own work and perfect my own ideas.
When I leave this school, I'll likely use the people I've met to recommend me to another school where I'll undertake a master's program in film and video. There, I'll do the same thing I'm doing here: get better at what I do. All of this is in preparation to jettison out into the real world where I'll be able to do the things people who hire me want me to do better than anyone else. And I'll do it. It's idealistic, yes, but it's what I've been doing so far, and I've been pretty successful.
So, to wrap things up, college is about what you make it. As Trek Geezer’s electronics’ instructor loosely put it, “you get what you put into it.â€
Well, here are several just to get started, and I'll get to some more later.
The first is simple. I had more than one student, college chemistry now, that could not spell their own names correctly on any written assignment. The names were not all that difficult, and did not represent English as a Second Language situations. It was just pure laziness.
The second comes from when I was in 4th grade, and is offered here for the humor value. For some reason, I've just never forgotten this one. You know how if you hold a penny on the table with your index finger while it is in contact with another penny, then you slide a third forcibly into the one under your finger, the other one will slide away? This is like a poor man's set of Newton Spheres.
Anyway, a classmate and I were playing around with this one day, and I asked him "how do you think it works?" He replied, "It irritates through the penny you are holding. That means there is a small hole in that penny, and that's what makes the other one move."
Now, this was not a dumb kid, top 3rd of the class (maybe top 1/5th or better) and he's gone on to complete college and be successful. It's just one of those things kids say when they are talking out of their hind-end. I still laugh about that, though, because it is just silly sounding.
As for 'dumb answers' on real tests, I have plenty. Mostly, they fall into one of two categories: one, they have no clue how to respond and were trying to BS me or two, they anthopomorphized inanimate things which is also known as committing a pathetic fallacy.
The first is easy to spot, especially with the short-answer or essay type questions that I favored. For instance, I've seen explanations of Rutherford's gold foil experiment that had to do with aliens. An example of the second is "sodium likes to lose an electron and will be happy with a chlorine that wants to get one."
I also once had a student, who failed to attend class except for test day, turn in a paper covered with violent drawings, poetry and REDRUM and stuff like that. Maybe it would have been cool for an art assignment, but as a chemistry test, it was not a good performance. I turned that one over to the department chair. That girl's father called the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences complaining about his daughter failing her chemistry test (that blankety blank blank teacher is just out to get women, or some such is what he said); the Dean called up the dept. head to see what's what. They then had a conversation about how she needed psychological assistance more than she needed Freshman Chemsitry at that point in time.
Finally, this 'dumb stuff' does not get limited to just students. I've seen it in teachers, too.
Conversation overheard between chemistry professor (a lady highly touted as the next best thing since sliced bread, a real mover and shaker in the field of chemical education) and student:
Student: why did you mark off -20 on the problem.
Prof: Because you got it wrong. But here, let me give you half credit anyway.
I later asked her why in the world she did that. Her response was so the student would not feel upset about getting a low grade.
Here are two conversations between me and another chemistry professor who I was told by the Dept. Chair I should emulate:
First One - we were both teaching the same class....he had one section and I had another. Though we gave tests at about the same time covering the same material, I gave my own test and he gave his own test.
[Looking at the paper of one of his students that clearly misdefined density. Density is defined as mass divided by volume; the student wrote a bunch of nonsense, but received 3/4 credit].
Me: Is that correct, at all?
Him: No. But I gave him partial credit.
Me: Why?
Him: So he [the student] would not get discouraged.
Me: What favor are you doing him by telling him he knows something that he does not know? How is that teaching?
Him: It is our job to not make the students feel bad, even if it means coddling their feelings.
Second One - we were discussing a Senior chemistry student who was about to graduate with a degree in chemistry. He had scored 20/100 on the final exam, yet this prof passed him for the class (this was in a situation where that student needed to do well on the final to pass, by the way).
Me: Why on earth would you pass someone who makes a 20% on the Final?
Him: Well, if I failed him, he'd just take my class again next year. This way, he's gone.
All these stories are true. And I could go on all day. I'll try to remember some of the more fun student answers on specific tests, but I gave you the gist above.
Sleep well tonight, knowing that this illuminates the next generation of those who in our society are responsible for handling some of the most dangerous material known to man. And those who teach them how to do so.
(It is because of too many situations like I described in the last half of this post that I am not teaching anymore - people like those that I described have the power in higher education).
Hey Scottie, do you have one of those cool eyeglass things that all cinematographers always seem to have?
What about a cool looking lightmeter so you can jump around set with a funky gadget?
Anyways, edumacation, like said earlier, is either useful or not, depending on the person. I really enjoyed my uni life, but have so far been unable to translate my course into a solid job [though I haven't really tried yet].
Maybe it's something to do with it being the 'Bachelor of Attendance' where it is a common joke that you just have to show up to pass. That is, of course, not true [I did a Bachelor of Arts] and it challenged me, and I learnt a heap from it. Of course now I just need to make what I learnt into actual skills that can help me in the professional world. But to me it was worth it.
But you see all sorts of people doing their courses for the wrong reasons: people who got good marks in High School doing law because they could, not because they liked it, and then getting fails because they have no passion for what they do. Some people like that are just idiots and you see them all the time.
As for your experiences, Ulthar, letting someone pass when they clearly didn't deserve it, just to protect their feelings, is not doing them any favours at all. If I was terrible at my subjects and didn't do any work at all, whilst I might say 'cool I passed' in the long run it's just going to teach me that I can get away with doing bugger all. Ah well...
That is some horror stories Ulthar but very true I have seen much of what you said.
While it does depend on the person to make education useful or not I feel it also depends on money. My mother and grandfather pay for my college I don't work. So I try me hardest. I go to class everyday I maybe missed 3 absent in a semester and have a solid GPA of 3.1 The reason I say it sucks because I can't do much. Can't take trips because don't have that extra cash. Forget about joining clubs and such while the Criminal Justice(Which is my major) does offer alot I not interest in most of it because my mother works for the PD and I have seen most of what they have to offer.
I think education is important but teacher are either way to hard and what I mean hard I am not saying test or homework wise I mean their over the hill and don't know how to teach. or just to easy like you don't have to come to class and give no test what so ever or it a open book test. I t hard to find the middle ground teacher that know how to balance. I have 2 teachers in my 3 years so far that I could remember their names and said I learned alot from them. Maybe its my college or Major but so far I haven't found it that great.
Dean wrote:
"Hey Scottie, do you have one of those cool eyeglass things that all cinematographers always seem to have?
What about a cool looking lightmeter so you can jump around set with a funky gadget?"
>
>
>
No, those eye glass thingies are super expensive. Imagine paying $1000 for a lens that only works with your eye, and now imagine paying $0 for using your eye. I'm sad to say it, but I've been known to actually use that directorial hand motion where you frame up a scene with your hands in a rectangular 2.33:1 box. At certain lengths from your body, that hand shape will actually emulate different focal lengths the same way those expensive necklace lenses will. Only my hands don't cost me a dime.
And yes I do swing a light meter from my neck. I'm so f'n cool. I also carry a pair of work gloves, a roll of gaf tape, and a pocket lined with clothes pins, er, I mean C-47 media attachment clips. Man, I sound more like an out of work PA on a big set than a DP on a small set. Oh well, the world wasn't lit with one bulb.
And, to further the discussion of the fallacies of education, let me point out that some people benefit from a little coddling. Darwin poked bugs with sticks in class before he accomplished anything.
Scottie Wrote:
.....
>
> And, to further the discussion of the fallacies of
> education, let me point out that some people
> benefit from a little coddling. Darwin poked bugs
> with sticks in class before he accomplished
> anything.
Imagine, though, if Darwin had been told "well, you've done nothing but poke some bugs with sticks for the last 3 or 4 years, but here's your degree anyway", would he have developed the lust for knowledge that led to the Theory of Evolution?
ulthar Wrote:
........> I also once had a student, who failed to attend
> class except for test day, turn in a paper covered
> with violent drawings, poetry and REDRUM and stuff
> like that. Maybe it would have been cool for an
> art assignment, but as a chemistry test, it was
> not a good performance. I turned that one over to
> the department chair. .......
I did something similar in some of my final high school exams.....
wrote some really cool poetry (damn I wish I could get a copy of it!) in my Maths exam, and in my History exam, I wrote an explanation of the fact that I would much rather be out making a really great crappy movie, instead of sitting in this hell-hole doing this stupid exam, and did the examiner marking this by any chance have a video camera I could borrow with which to make this cinematic masterpiece.
I got a letter from the Education Department a few weeks later, warning me for using "inappropriate language directed at an examiner".
Needless to say I didn't go to Uni (Or college, or whatever you guys call in in the USA).
This was 14 years ago, and since then my printing apprenticeship has served me well, allowing me to earn more than either of my siblings, both of whom went to University.
I never went to college (just trade school), and I now work for a division of the state university and I swear I am more literate than 2/3 of the PHD's that work where I do. In fact working there has sort of dimmed my view of higher education.
I instilled in both my kids to never equate intelligence with the level of someone's education.
I'm a photography major, and the only reason that I'm in college is because of a turning in the photography field where you can barely get a job (with magazines, newspapers, etc.) as a photographer if you don't have at the very least a bachelor's. My GPA is 3.72 (hard earned too), but I worry about not being a good enough photographer; that all of my truly invaluable education will have been pursued in vain.
trek_geezer Wrote:
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I instilled in both my kids to never equate
> intelligence with the level of someone's
> education.
>
> --------------------------------
Fantastic point trek!
I'll have to write that one down.
Whew!
Looks like this topic really touches a nerve --
However, my original point that this supposedly "true" stuff is a made-up joke still stands, for while interesting, ulthar's story of a verbal faux pas in 4th grade does not equal citing real funny stuff/wrong answers on tests by older students.
ulthar has very good things to say about the current bad state of modern "education", and disturbing things about stupidity being rewarded, but he provides no funny answers.
This stuff, like the stuff in the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, like the stuff circulating that's supposed to be "real" from "real'" insurance claims (eg. "The sad eyed old man looked at me as he disappeared under my bumper -- I had to swerve several times to hit him!"), etc. etc. etc. ad infinum/ad nauseum, are just old jokes being recycled.
It ain't true, folks, and it's been around forever -- see www.snopes.com for further insight.
peter johnson/denny crane
peter johnson Wrote:
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>
> but he provides no funny answers.
>
Ah, but to provide the specific funny answers, I'd need copies of those tests; sorry, I am just trying to go from memory here, and it has been several years. That's why I was giving the gist. To me at least, aliens causing beta particles to bounce off gold foil is pretty funny and certainly not anything we covered in class. As is "sodium wants to be happy." I can remember sharing some gut-busting stuff with my wife while grading exams, so it was there.
I'll see if I happen to have any papers laying around, but a couple of moves later, and anything like that I might have saved would have long since been thrown away.
I think the saddest thing is how it seems even education has become a business... trading the promise of a better career in for cash. Uh, if you're already struggling to make ends meet, how the hell are you going to afford to take the time, money and effort to work your ass off to get through refrigeration school?
Well, that's what you get when you post something on this board. You never know what you'll get.
And I certainly didn't expect to get responses like these from my first post. But, as I have some more "Bizarre Science Test Answers," from the same source, I'll post a few of them each week, as long as they last. If anything, I hope they provide a needed laugh for someone who needs one.
Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.
Q: What causes the tides in the ocean?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.
Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.
To be continued . . .
Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.
Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forwaord to his adultery.
Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
A: Premature death.
To be continued . . .
Q: What is artificial insemination?
A: When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow.
Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e.g., abdomen)
A: The body consists of three parts--the brainium, the borax, and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels: A, E, I, O, and U.
Q: What is the fibula?
A: A small lie.
To be continued . . .
You Know,These Things Pop Up From Time to Time And It Makes Me Wonder:Do Kids really Answer Questions Like That Or Does Someone Actually Make That Stuff ass A Joke.
> As a former college chemistry professor, I'd like
> to state for the record that I've seen Freshman
> (18 year olds) give answers that were very similar
> to these. In that case, though, it's not cute;
> it's sad.
Yeah, that IS sad...
BTW, whoa, you taught chemistry? Cool, didn't know that! :)
Hey, can you answer something for me (I'm a writer so I come up with all sorts of bizarre questions), but here's a basic one, you know how in some movie the bad guy is about to be caught when he throws a flask down on the floor, it shatters, filling the room with obscuring mist (smoke?) allowing him to get away? What can of substance could do that in real life? (One guy I know told me a flask full of dry and a bit water would work, but seems to me you'd need a hell of a lot of dry ice to quickly fill up a room...)
Just curious... :)
>Second One - we were discussing a Senior chemistry student who was about to graduate with a >degree in chemistry. He had scored 20/100 on the final exam, yet this prof passed him for the >class (this was in a situation where that student needed to do well on the final to pass, by the >way).
>Me: Why on earth would you pass someone who makes a 20% on the Final?
>Him: Well, if I failed him, he'd just take my class again next year. This way, he's gone.
Hell, that's probably how he ended up in college to begin with...
Sadly, I'm told that happens a lot in lower grades as well..
I don't know, to me it's a threefold problem, biggest being lack of discipline at home, then there's the fact that many good teachers aren't given what they need to TEACH the class, and have their decisions overridden by the principle or whatnot. True story: woman, who's Caucasian, is sueing the former school she worked at. Among other things when she told the female principle (who happened to be black) that one of the students threatened to rape her, the principle just rolled her eyes, saying something about how "Another white woman is trying to hold a brother down..."
Now, in that case, it crossed racial as well as social lines, but you get the point.
Then there's the third problem, incompotent teachers who should have been fired YEARS ago, but don't because there's a bigass teacher's union who'll go to bat for them, regardless of how incompotent they are...
And people wonder why well off folks send their kids to private school...
Anyway, sorry to get all political here... :)
Answer: People make it up as a joke --
. . . in response to what they see as the unrelenting dumbing-down of culture.
Genuinely funny examples are rare, so the joke circulates --
The TRUTH is the same, but the actual things never really happpened . . .
* * *
Here's a real one I remember from The Dating Game, a show that was popular in the '70's:
"You are to name the animal oppsite of these words: Doe . . . "
The guy gave his answer as "knob . . ."
peter johnson/denny crane
peter johnson Wrote:
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> Answer: People make it up as a joke --
> . . . in response to what they see as the
> unrelenting dumbing-down of culture.
Uh uh! No way!
I've seen it firsthand in real college classes.
It isn't a joke with some of these students.
They really have no idea and give the answer as best they can.
And here we all are really joking about the results of their efforts.
Granted, most students are pretty bright when they're challenged.
There are some that are not.
I just thought of something, Uthar, I bet you'd get along great with Liz from the "And You Call Yourself a Scientist" website... she does bad movies and science! :)
Q: What does "varicose" mean?
A: Nearby.
Q: Give the mean of the term "Caesarean Section."
A: The Caesarean Section is a district in Rome.
Q: What does the word "benign" mean?
A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.
And Finis!