Ridiculous things you've only recently realised you've been wrong about your entire life

[Seasidedolly]

I genuinely thought if you pulled the reverse cord on ceiling fans, it would circulate warm air.

My friend thought the yellow average speed cameras on motorways were there to look for missing children.

I had another recent revelation but I can't remember it now

I had a friend that didn't know that chippy fish came from the sea. She used to be repulsed by fish in the fishmongers, saying she couldn't understand how anyone could eat them. When I told her she loved fish, she often got one from the chippy, she looked at me like I was mad. "But they're not from the sea " she said.

That first world, second world etc is about politics not money or development. Which means technically Switzerland and Ireland are third world countries because they are neutral. here

Along the line of Al Pacino; when I first met dp I lived in a flat with fellow students and dp who is a big classical music fan listened to a CD of Russian music played by the Bolshoi orchestra, it said something like "Shostakovich al Bolshoi" on it. One of my flatmates came in, looked at it and said "Ah yes, Al Bolshoi, I thought it was him, he is one of my favourite composers".

I have found my people!!

I'm still not convinced by the dandelions, I found out a year ago and I still look at them in disbelief

We were giving a friend of ours directions and said to go off the motorway at junction 9 (or whatever it was) and she asked how you know which one is junction 9, we explained about the signs saying J9 etc and she was gobsmacked, she though that was just the number of the sign they had put up! Worst thing was that she travelled by motorway every day but she just knew the journey so she didn't take notice of the signs

finestgroundturky
I'd never noticed 1st = first
2nd = second

Etc

FeelingSmurfy
I would have previously said that my home town has very few direction signs and was often amazed how people going there for the first time found their way in or out. It turns out it does have a few signs. I had just never noticed them. Doh!

1st = first
2nd = second

Etc

OMG - they are, aren't they

I didn't realise lollipop men and women got paid, I thought it they were volunteers until I saw a job advert for it in the paper about 2 years.

Going back to polar bears and hemispheres, my favourite fact is that Arctic comes from the Greek word for bears. Therefore there are polar bears in the Arctic, but Antarctic = no polar bears - anti-bear, if you like. Not sure if this is common knowledge but when I found out I was like

This thread is brilliant. The little man in the ticket machine still has me chuckling today.

No way about third world countries...

I thought that Gravity was a force like magnet that exist in the core of the earth that is why astronaut at the space station don't experience it or very little. With magnets it's transferable to other objects and I thought the same thing happened with gravity.

I do know that the sun has gravitation too which is what keeps the planets In our solar system in place. Am I right?

Debbriana gravity just really relates to the mass of an object. So the heavier the object, the more gravity it has. As the sun is so much more massive than the earth, the earth orbits round it.
The moon is so near to the earth that it's more greatly affected by the earth's gravity hence orbits around us.

The force of gravity is directly proportional to mass and inversely proportional to the distance to that object.
The whole earth attracts objects and it also pulls the Sun towards it. But the Sun is so massive that it's pull on the Earth is noticeable whereas the reverse is not.
You don't feel the effects of gravity if in space around the Earth because you are much further away and you are used to so much more gravity that you don't notice a tiny pull.
On the Earth's surface gravity is higher at sea level and lower at altitude, so your weight will be lower at the top of the Everest than on the beach. Which is also why the air is denser at sea level than at high altitude.

There is a point between the Earth and the Moon where gravity from both balance each other and there you really don't feel any gravity.

Also notice that we feel the effect of the Moon's gravity on Earth. It causes the tides, because water is a liquid and adjusts itself to the gravity differences.

DH is trying to tell me that this whole thread is not real and all of you mumsnetters are having a laugh at my expense.

But what does he know? When DD got a nettle sting, he went running off to find a dot leaf

My dp (and I imagine the rest of his family) thinks 'miffed' means mystified; 'several' means seven; and they all use 'mortified' incorrectly and say it often, but I can't remember what it means in their family.

Debbriana1
You were not so wrong, though, just confusing it with gravity. The Earth is indeed a huge magnet, but you only tend to notice it when you use a compass or watch the northern lights. The magnetic field around Earth protects us from charged particles in the solar wind, which after a solar flare tends to affect our communications satellites, and produce brilliant displays of aurora borealis close to the poles.

And the last time I tried explaining to him that several does not mean seven, he said "what does it mean then?" Me - "It's like a few". Dp - " So five ?"

Ok lweji when I was doing my GCSEs physics. I remember the teacher saying that people confuse mass and weight. When we say that you have lost weight, in actual fact is that you have actually lost mass.

So if your talking about the gravity thing are you still talking about it in the physics terminology.

I just can't get my head round to understanding it even though I find physics interesting.

Several means more than two but not many. I always think of several as meaning three because for two I would think of between.

I was also about 15 when I realised "as opposed to" was not written "as a pose to".

And that Billericay was not somewhere in Ireland.

Having an amateur bash at why gravity, since there's only a "several" posts left

Courtesy of my failed physics & chemistry O-levels back in Ancient Times, then:-

Everything is just electromagnetic force. Atoms are assortments of electrical charges, being repelled & attracted to each other. Same thing when you go down to sub-atomics and up to molecules. There they are, being magnetic, attracting & repelling one another according to their particular arrangements of charges.

Dense matter is just a bunch of assorted charges that happen to be strongly attracted together. It stands to reason that dense objects will attract less-dense objects towards them, as the bits of electromagnetism forming the less dense matter are weakly bound by comparison.

It also stands to reason that a very large object (planet), made of mostly dense matter, will attract smaller objects (apples) for the same reason: the total charge in the smaller thing is less than that in the bigger thing. Hence gravity.

It should theoretically be possible for an incredibly dense or large thing (space object) to have electromagnetic properties that are the equal but opposite of Earth's, which would make them repel each other.

If you could build a huge, fuck-off magnet that could generate the opposing charge to Earth's, it would fly into orbit.

Excusing the language of a confused 16-year-old, that's about it isn't it? It doesn't answer "why gravity" in as much as it doesn't answer "why electromagnetism?" But the answer to that is like the answer to "Why God" or "Why the universe?"

Scientists - come and explain how I'm wrong Please!!

Testicles, your DP's internal numbering system's fantastic!

Garlick
I thought you didn't want more talk of gravity. :)

I think you are confusing density with mass.
Jupiter is massive, much larger than the Earth and with much higher gravity, but it's less dense because it's mostly made of gases, while Earth is mostly rock.

garlick - I'm afraid you can't identify gravity with electromagnetism in the way that you have. Neutrons have zero electric charge but have mass so do give rise to gravity. Photons carry electromagnetic waves but as they are massless do not produce gravity. Dark matter is mysterious precisely because it doesn't interact electromagnetically (no detectable radiation) but physicists know it's there because it has a gravitational effect.