physics

I used to believe that whenever you switched on a light a little man ran (extremely fast) through the wire and turned the lightbulb on. I stopped believing this when I saw how small the wire that the "little man" ran through really was!

Anon

As a kid, I once tried to named as many colors as I could, and I got 21. For some reason, I was convinced there are exactly 4 more colors. I even "discovered" them later, except I still didn't know what they looked like.

AnonymynonA

that red and orange were different shades of the same color

Larry

I had an idea at school to dig a tunnel through the centre of the earth and out to the other side. I would then drop things down it and since the object would be moving faster as it passed through the core, gravity should have less effect and it should shoot out of the tube and into space then other side. It could have been used to dispose of nuclear waste or defend Earth from asteroids but it never materialised.

Jonny

I used to believe that electrons orbiting around a nucleus were a small solar system, with people actually living on the electrons.
The earth was also an electron on an atom in a much larger world.
Time is also relative in all these worlds; say if I were to throw a piece of paper into a fire, the seconds that it will take the paper to fall into the fire are like eons to the inhabitants of the small universe on the paper. Likewise, if someone in the large world tosses the paper we are an atom on into their fire, what seems like a couple seconds in their world will be centuries in ours. So.... suppose the giants have already tossed our piece of paper towards the fire....?

BoB

When I was like 3-4, I wanted a horse shoe shaped magnet. I had seen Tom and Jerry use one to attract everything made of metal. I was wery dissapoitet when i found out that it wasnt true. I also always was dreaming about owning a metal-saw. With one of those i would be able to saw everything!!!

Anon

When I was young. One of my friends came up with a way to send signals faster than the speed of light.

It went like this. If you have a pole long enough (i.e. from the earth to the moon) and you jolted the pole on earth. The pole would instantaneously be jolted on the moon, thus sending a signal faster than the speed of light.

Oh How we argued for years over that one :D

Joe

I use to think that if I laid real still in my bed at night I could feel the earth turn. I would do this all the time. I convinced myself I could feel the earth turn.

just a kid

I used to believe that if I threw a paper airplane hard enough, and held on tight enough, that I could fly with it. It only took one failed attempt to realize I couldnt

Ben

When I was about 3 ys old I would roll a can (probably a soup can) across the kitchen floor. It would slow down about 8' away and then begin to return roll back to me only to stop again about 3' away and then go forward. Back and forth a few times till it stopped in the middle of the floor. I believed there was some cosmic attachment the can had with the universe, and that the process of rolling would cause it to twist up like a spring in a clock is wound up. It then would return the energy and cause the can to reverse the roll. I accounted for it not making it all the way back each time as energy dissipated by friction. My error was assuming that the floor was level and not concaved downward in the middle of the floor.

Rob McKenzie

I was always scared to walk over bridges, especially wooden ones. I thought that they would collapse on me (probably got this idea from watching too much disaster tv or something). One day, when I refused to walk over a bridge, my mom told me to walk across where the nails were, cause underneath the nails were the beams that held the bridge up, so if the bridge collapsed I would still be standing on the beams and be safe. This made perfect sense to me and I never had a problem again. I guess it never occured to me that the beams would probably fall too. The funny part is, I'm now 20 years old and I still find myself walking on the nails whenever I cross a wooden bridge. :)

Sarah W.

My mom told me that the earth was always spinning. This fasinated me, but the next morning when I woke up excited to see my back yard and front yard switched I was very disappointed. My mom had to explain to me that it was the whole earth that moved, not just the yard around the house.

Anon

I use to think gravity only existed because we thought it does, so I tried to hold something in the air and not drop it, I thought I dropped it because of what I was doing with my hands.

Anon

i used to think that the earth spun so fast you couldnt feel it (and it also kept us down with gravity) and if you got headaches it was because you were starting to feel it a little. and i also thought that we were inside a globe, like a snowglobe.

sarah

I used to believe that if the lift cable snapped and I jumped in the air just before hitting the ground I would escape serious harm. My children asked why I had curly hair. I told them I was an African. They asked why I wasn't black. I told them my mother used to keep me indoors to protect me from the sun. They believed me.

Brian Lockett

I used to believe that there is no need to close the taps when you you are filling up buckets.They would fill up the bucket to the brim and then the water would continue to rise to the ceiling

Atrai

My friend and I were once told my her mother that it was scientifically impossible to jump on a trampoline without smiling. We were determined to prove her wrong. So after a few tries, we finally managed to jump and keep a straight face. After this we turned to her and said, "Ha!" She then told us she made it up, and we were dissapointed.

Colette

When I was 12, I thought that passing an electric current will boost up my IQ. So, I put DC electrodes on my forehead and let the current run (it was a 12 V electric current). I thought I can see the current flowing throught my brain and I thought I became smarter. I tried this everyday and I thought myself became smarter and smarter. One day, I used wrong plug and current so that it almost electrocuted me and the main fuse of the house went burnt out. As a result, my mother beat me several times.

Robin Cox

I sed to think that thw only reason we stuck to the earth was because is spins around!

imgareth

I believed that if you held up a large enough piece of paper, that if a very fast jet plane flew through it, it wouldn't make a hole in the paper.

Dave E.