This week a post called ‘Five Science ‘Facts’ We Learnt At School That Are Plain Wrong‘ popped into my Facebook feed from a few different sources.

It led to more than one argument, and the unearthing of some interesting titbits. Most of these facts aren’t directly about chemistry, but hey, still interesting. Let’s have a look:

We’re taught we only have five senses: smell, sight, hearing, touch and taste
True enough that there are more than five, but I clearly remember being told in school that balance and pain were also senses, so I’m fairly sure biology teachers have been quietly trying to dispel this one for decades.

Non-magnetic paper-clips. Ha!

Which of the following are magnetic: a tomato, you, paper-clips? (Answer: all of the above)
I think this is a misleading question. What do you mean when you say ‘magnetic’? I think most people understand that to mean something that’s capable of being magnetised or at least is attracted to your everyday fridge magnet. In other words, the ferromagnetic materials: iron, nickel, cobalt and most of their alloys. True enough tomatoes and people interact with magnetic fields (this is the basis behind MRI scanners – check out these beautiful images) but does that make them magnetic? We-ell….technically…. (there are lots of types of magnetism) but it seems a bit mean to criticise an assumption by asking a less-than-clear question about it. Besides, if you’re going to be pedantic about it, what’s that paper-clip made of hmm? Plastic and aluminium (both generally considered to be completely non-magnetic) paper-clips exist. Bad question. Next!

The true primary colours for paints and pigments are cyan, magenta and yellow
Broadly fair enough, look at your printer cartridge. Although we really ought to include black as well (which the original article didn’t mention; it’s the K in the CMYK model). You can make something pretty close to black by mixing the others, but it’s not the nice, crisp, blackest black that people want for text and outlines. All that said, to actually get red from a mixture of magenta and yellow you have to have pretty pure pigments. Grab a paint box and try mixing something that looks like magenta with something that looks like yellow, and you’ll actually get something that looks like orangey-pink (serious artists agree that if you want really bright red, you’re better off just buying some red pigment). Whereas if you mix blue paint with yellow paint you will, fairly reliably, get green of one shade or another. I just worry that attempting to clear this one up is going to cause a lot of children to mess up their paintings. That’s all I’m saying.

A little addition here: this question then led to a debate about the colour spectrum of visible light. How many colours are there, exactly? It’s commonly held that Newton invented the colour indigo because he felt, possibly for superstitious reasons, that there ought to be seven colours. As a result, some people will tell you the spectrum actually consists of six colours rather than seven: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. But hang on. Look at a spectrum (here’s one):

What’s that colour in between blue and green there? You might say turquoise, but in a return to the original question it’s more accurately named cyan. That band is pretty obvious. I’d argue that if you’re going to include orange in the spectrum, then you ought to include cyan. And, in fact, some people think that’s exactly what Newton was doing. Except he didn’t call it cyan, he simply called it blue. The bit we think of as blue is what he named indigo. In other words, the spectrum is, in fact: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet. Still seven colours, they just don’t quite fit with the whole Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain thing.

Of course, those of us in the know are aware that there are actually eight colours. But you need to have octagonal cells in your eyes to see the other one. Or be a cat.

Debunked in 1974. Still hanging around like a bad smell or, er, taste.

Tongue taste maps are nonsense
Yep. This one is unambiguous: there aren’t regions for sweet, salt, bitter etc. on your tongue. This was debunked back in 1974, but it’s still hanging around for some reason.

There are more states of matter than just solid, liquid and gas
Ah-ha, a chemistry one! Again, this is true. The strict states of solid, liquid and gas are fine when you’re talking about elements and pure, fairly simple, compounds (water, for example), but matter can indeed take other forms. There are ‘liquid crystals‘ – you’re probably reading this right now using some – and yes, there’s plasma. Once you get into mixtures all bets are off (no, you can’t melt wood, sorry). And colloids are a whole other kettle of fish.

But I think this is one of those times where you have to ask yourself why are we bothering to talk about solids, liquids and gases in the first place? Is it purely so that students can memorise three words? No. It’s so that they can go on to understand the concepts of melting and boiling, and their partners freezing and condensing. These ideas are critical to understanding ideas of measuring temperature as well as what happens to particles when they warm up (or cool down). Adding other technical terms in at this early stage is just likely to cause confusion. I don’t think that learning about the transition from solid to liquid to gas precludes later learning about liquid crystals, colloids and the like (hey, it’s how I did it). You’re just adding more information to a simple model, and someone studying A-level sciences and beyond ought to be capable of dealing with that. No harm, no foul, I say.

So there we have it: less “Five Science ‘Facts’ We Learnt At School That Are Plain Wrong”, and more one thing your teacher probably tried to correct you on, one misleading question, one thing you might have learned incorrectly at school, and a couple that might be technically untrue but it doesn’t really matter that much in the long run. But I suppose that IS less of a snappy title for an article.

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg.