Kids' Ideas About Science
Most of these quotations were gleaned from classroom discussions in 5th and
6th grade science classes.
- "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."
- "Isn't inertia when something is moving, then it stops moving and keeps
- "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
- "South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they
- "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
- "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."
- "The wind is like the air, only pushier."
- "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."
- "Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change
back into a sun in the daytime."
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