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February 8th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
College test answers. These are sad, yet funny…
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I gave an Astronomy test. Here are some more actual student answers and my replies to myself. Mind you, this many bloopers were found in a sample of only 12 students on one test. (sigh)
The first two humans to set foot on the Moon were Louis Armstrong and Buzz Lightyear in the year 1947 . (Yeah, we celebrated the defeat of Adolf Hitler by sending a trumpet player and Disney toy to the Moon…) [The year was of course 1969. Other answers for the year included 1963, 1967, 1971, 1979, and 1986.)
The first two humans to set foot on the Moon were Americans and Russians in the year 60's . (Well, he got the right decade...)
Celestial longitude and latitude are East and West . (This was the same question as on the quiz and they still didn't know it.)
In Ptolemy's model of the universe, the outermost planet was the Sun . (The Sun is a planet?????)
The Moon speeds at the same rate as it revolves around the Earth. (Better call the cops to give it a ticket!)
Q: Why must astronomers look to extraterrestrial bodies to study the first billion years of solar system history?
A: To see how we formed and how we will die.
Q: What is the primary problem associated with refracting telescopes?
A1: There is not a great picture.
A2: They're too big and heavy.
Q: How were the Moon's maria likely formed? [The right answer is meteorite impacts released lava which filled in large basins to form flat plains.]
A1: By craters hitting the moon and making a hole.
A2: Meteor did it. (…with the candlestick in the drawing room.)
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I gave another Astronomy test and got another set of “Huh?” answers… [My comments to myself in brackets]
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Jupiter’s interior is composed mainly of compressed liquid compressure .
The core of Mercury is composed mainly of the element craters . [You learn something every day; crater is an element. (Answer is "iron")]
The surface of Jupiter’s moon Io is composed of the element ice and related compounds. [Another new element.]
The surface of Jupiter’s moon Io is composed of the element rocks and related compounds. [Another new element.]
The surface of Jupiter’s moon Io is composed of the element scientific and related compounds. [Another new element. (Answer is "sulfur")]
Earth was the first planet to be discovered that was not known to ancient astronomers. [Yeah, in 1781, somebody looked down at their feet and realized for the first time they were standing on the ground and declared Earth a planet! Another student said "Asteroid". Actually, every planet was given as an answer *except* the correct answer, Uranus.]
The satellites of Mars are named Apollo and Sputnik . [I guess I should have said "moons". The answer is "Phobos and Deimos".]
Moon is the only planet less dense than water. [A new planet! (Answer is "Saturn".)]
Small moons that keep particles that form planetary rings within certain boundaries are called ushers . [...for when the particles go to church. The moons hand out the church bulletins and give Communion. (I gave one mercy point. Answer is "shepherd moons".)]
Voyager 1 found a scholastical body around Jupiter inside the orbit of the innermost moon. [I think he meant "celestial". Maybe if the student were more "scholastical", he would know the right answer. (Answer is "ring".)]
Ishtar Terra and Aphrodite Terra are still on the surface of Venus. [Well, technically that is true. You get 1 point for stating the obvious. (Answer is "plains".)]
Why do we have better images of Neptune’s moon Triton than Jupiter’s moons?
It has a retro orbit and is bigger than Jupiter. [The moon is larger than the largest planet??? It's gone retro, man... (Retrograde means orbiting in the opposite direction, but that's the wrong answer. Answer is: Voyager 2 passed closer to Triton than Jupiter's moons on its flyby.)]
Explain why there is no water on Mars despite the presence of features that seem to be formed by water.
[Answer: Mars has no magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind, so the atmosphere evaporated into space.]
(1) It all turned to nitrogen. [Try again. There is no nitrogen on Mars.]
(2) The inner core took over the surface. [Wasn't that the plot of the movie "Superman vs. the Mole Men"?]
(3) The Sun dried it all up. [How does it go? "Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again."]
(4) Something bumped it closer to the Sun, so it got too hot and decapitated the atmosphere. [I think he means "dissipated".]
How are atmospheric storms on Jupiter different from those on Earth?
(1) They never stop! [Quick, put up a stoplight before there's an accident! Actually, this answer is correct, +1 point.]
(2) They are full of gassy eruptions. [Jupiter better cut back on the beans, then.]
(3) It’s like being in a hurricane every day. [I bet on Jupiter the Weather Channel gets gonzo ratings...]
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Answer on separate paper.
Q: Explain briefly why a steel ship floats, but a steel bar sinks.
Student’s handwritten answer: “A steal sheep is hollow, but a still bear isn’t.”
baaaa… baaaa… And if that weren’t enough, another student had exactly the same answer, so one of them copied that sentence without noticing anything wrong with it!
Another student answer: “The ship is more dense because it is less dense but it appears less dense.”
HUH?????
(Correct answer: Because the ship’s hull encloses a volume of air which is much less dense than water, so the ship floats partly down into the water where the gravitational force on the ship equals the buoyant force from the air, or where the average density of the hull and air equals that of water; the steel bar is solid metal with density > water, so it sinks.)
February 8th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
But wait, there’s more!
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An episode of Nova “Einstein’s Big Idea” aired on PBS two weeks ago. In case you missed the program it presented the people, discoveries, and theories that led up to his famous equation E=mc^2. I assigned my college general chemistry class to write an extra credit one-page paper summarizing it. I pulled out a few sentences from these papers.
“Most people think Einstein was an old man but in reality he was a young full of energy kind of guy.”
“When Albert was a child he played with magets in his fathers shop.”
“Michael Fairaday impressed his master and was rewarded with a ticket that would change his life.” [He won the lottery?]
“Fairaday became his hero Humpey’s assistant and in time became wiser than his davey.” [Referring to Sir Humphrey Davy]
“Together both Humphry and Davy observed a compass effecting electricity. Davy studied nitric oxide and took a liking to it, but died after inhaling all of his laughing gas.” [Laughing gas is *nitrous* oxide. *Nitric* oxide is toxic.]
“Wonton Evwasweah [Antoine Lavoisier] was trying to figure out what things were called or made of.”
“He worked hard but the tiny atoms that make up an object never decreased always stayed the same because the French and Revolutionary war was coming. The king sent soldiers into his house and took him and beheaded him, but he found out no matter what you do nothing will dissapear.”
“Anton La Wezia was an aristocrat who was not a scientist by profession but discovered objects and their mass.”
“La Wasie was denounced by Jon Paul Maha as being a radical writer, and beheaded for these accusations.”
“Albert Einstein didn’t like laws. He wasn’t a modal student.”
“Einstein asked everybody he knows what is in a beem of light. With light he would reinvent the universe.”
“The speed of light in 1846 was 670 million miles an hour.” [What is it now?]
“Maxwell’s equation says that you could never catch up to the speed of light even if you was traveling at the speed of light.”
“Emily Bushotulay [Emile du Chatelet] was unheard of. She married a general at the age of 19, and had a lot of afares.”
“Emily learned from the brilliant men around her. She expected a flaw in the great Isac Nuton. She felt she was a great man but her only falt was being a women.”
“28 year old Lisa Mightner [Lise Meitner] was very shy. Otto Hans [Hahn] hired her to do mathematics in his lab. She was on a dangerous discovery but Germany was a dangerous place with the nazis. She was arrested, but a dutch person came and took her on a dangerous trip.”
“She’s the one that made the connection with squared. Squaring occurs a lot in nature.”
“Around Christmas Lisa’s nephew came to stay with her, and she realized that the uranium nucleous could just split in two and publish nuclear fission.”
“Lisa had an affair with a young soldier in her 40’s which got her pregnant. Soon after the baby had arrived, she died from implications with the birth.”
“Einstein’s fame led to numerous affairs, he married his cousin, and became the father of modern physics.”
February 9th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
If she had left out the ‘becasue’ it would have been, but that first circled sentence is not actually a run-on.
“I don’t think that college is necessary becasue [sic] you go to school twelve years out of your life and after that you should be done.”