Day #19 Don’t believe everything you were told at school!

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

[From “Cargo cult science” by Richard Feynman]

So, How many time you being fool by school?

Noble gases don’t react.

Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom.

The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.

This is small example of what we learn from school, but how can you sure that what you learn is up to date?

Science is dynamic. New theory appear, then a group of experiment-addict dig for every evidence and proof it. But sorry, they never teach you up to date.

Let’s see how much lesson that your teacher teach you a wrong things for nowaday. (16 September 2014)

These wrong things in this article is only a example from many wrong things which still teach in high school in Thailand but already update base on many research in many country, I don’t know what I can do with it.

Because their dumbass education system, I accept that I learn nothing useful from school but still go to school for 11 years now. This is a country that learn to earn not learn to live, also never listen to student too!

1. Noble gases don’t react.

What’s wrong : Noble gases do not react chemically with other substances.

For nowaday : Noble gases do not react chemically with other substances except under certain special conditions.

Noble gases, also known as the inert gases, are located in Group VIII of the periodic table. Group VIII is sometimes called Group O. The noble gases are helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon, and ununoctium. The noble gases have high ionization energies and negligible electronegativities. The noble gases have low boiling points and are all gases at room temperature.

Because the outermost electron shell of atoms of these gases is full, they do not react chemically with other substances. Noble gases are not reactive. This is because they have little tendency to gain or lose electrons.

So, noble gases do not react chemically with other substances. Your teacher say.

But for today, noble gases do not react chemically with other substances except under certain special conditions.

British chemist Neil Bartlett, working at the University of British Columbia, Canada, was not trying to defy conventional wisdom, he just following common logic.

In 1961, he discovered that the compound platinum hexafluoride (PtF₆), first made three years earlier by US chemists, was an eye-wateringly powerful oxidant. Oxidation, the process of removing electrons from a chemical element or compound, bears oxygen’s name because oxygen has an almost unparalleled ability to perform the deed. But Bartlett found that PtF₆ could even oxidise oxygen, ripping away its electrons to create a positively charged ion.

Early the next year, Bartlett was preparing a lecture and happened to glance at a textbook graph of “ionisation potentials”. These numbers quantify the amount of energy required to remove an electron from various substances. He noticed that xenon’s ionisation potential was almost exactly the same as oxygen’s. If PtF₆ could oxidise oxygen, might it oxidise xenon, too?

Mixing red gaseous PtF₆ and colourless xenon supplied the answer. The glass vessel was immediately covered with a yellow material. Bartlett found it to have the formula XePtF₆ – xenon hexafluoroplatinate, the first noble-gas compound.

Many other compounds of xenon and then krypton followed. Some are explosively unstable: Bartlett nearly lost an eye studying xenon dioxide. Radon, a heavier, radioactive noble gas, forms compounds too, but it wasn’t until 2000 that the first argon compound, argon fluorohydride, was reported to exist at low temperatures by a group at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Even now, the noble gases continue to produce surprises. Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, admits to being shocked when, also in 2000, chemists in Berlin reported a compound of xenon and gold – the metal gold is supposed to be noble and unreactive too.

Noble gases are still the least reactive elements, but you can enforce elements to do almost anythings.

2. The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.

What’s wrong : The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.

For nowaday :  The only possible combination of Na and Cl in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl, but in spacial condition – we have Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7.

Chemistry textbooks say that sodium and chlorine have very different electronegativities, and thus must form an ionic compound with a well-defined composition. Sodium’s charge is +1, chlorine’s charge is -1; sodium will give away an electron, chlorine wants to take an electron.

The only possible combination of these atoms in a compound is 1:1 – NaCl.

Not for today, now we have Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7.

A team of researchers led by Prof Artem Oganov of Stony Brook University has shown that, under certain conditions, ordinary rock salt can take on some surprising forms that violate textbook rules of chemistry.

The scientists first used new computational methods and structure-prediction algorithms to identify an array of possible stable structural outcomes from compressing NaCl.

They then attempted to verify these predictions, using a diamond anvil to put salt mixed with molecular chlorine or metallic sodium under high pressure.

“We discovered that the standard chemistry textbook rules broke down,” said Dr Alexander Goncharov from Carnegie Institution of Washington, who is a co-author of the study published in the journal Science.

“We found crazy compounds that violate textbook rules – NaCl3, NaCl7, Na3Cl2, Na2Cl, and Na3Cl,” said lead author Dr Weiwei Zhang of Stony Brook University.

“These compounds are thermodynamically stable and, once made, remain indefinitely; nothing will make them fall apart. Classical chemistry forbids their very existence. Classical chemistry also says atoms try to fulfill the octet rule – elements gain or lose electrons to attain an electron configuration of the nearest noble gas, with complete outer electron shells that make them very stable. Well, here that rule is not satisfied.”

NaCl turned into stable compounds of Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7, all of which have highly unusual chemical bonding and electronic properties.

Their structures were calculated using the crystal structure prediction technique invented by Prof Oganov and called USPEX (Universal Structure Predictor: Evolutionary Xraystallography) making this Russian word, standing for ‘success’, popular around the crystallographers and material scientists.

These compounds not only expand our understanding of chemistry but may find new practical applications in future.

For example, NaCl7, NaCl3, Na3Cl2, and Na2Cl are metals (that explains the apparent violation of electroneutrality since charge balance rules are inapplicable to metals), and only one semiconducting phase of NaCl3 is stable in the pressure range between 250 and 480 thousand atmospheres.

We have NaCl, but in spacial condition – we have Na3Cl, Na2Cl, Na3Cl2 and NaCl7.

3. Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom.

What’s wrong : Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom.

For nowaday : Quark and electron are fundamental particle of an atom.

Proton, neutron, electron are fundamental particle of an atom. Most of people – from elementary, high school to university students still believe this.

It’s fundamental for someone who stuck in school system, now quark and electron are fundamental particle of an atom.

By the 1930s, it was clear that atoms were made up of even smaller particles – protons, neutrons, and electrons, then considered to be the fundamental particles of matter. A proton is a positively charged particle that weighs about one atomic mass unit [1.0073 AMU]; a neutron has about the same mass [1.0087 AMU] but no charge; and an electron has a much smaller mass [0.0005 AMU] and a negative charge. Protons and neutrons make up the tiny nucleus of an atom, while electrons exist outside the atomic nucleus in discrete energy levels within an electron “cloud.”

By 1970 it began to appear that matter might contain even smaller particles, an idea suggested in 1963 by American physicist Murray Gell-Mann (who called the particles quarks ) and independently by American physicist George Zweig (who called them aces ). There are in actuality hundreds of subatomic particles that have been observed, but many of them are unstable.

Quark and electron are fundamental particle of an atom. Remember it!

This is only small example of very big wrong, but what’s that actually wrong is education system.

The biggest problem of education system in my country is they never teach us. Yes, THEY NEVER TEACH US.

You go to school to learn, right? That is the school system’s explicit purpose. So that children can learn.

But what do you learn in school? I mean really? What really stays with you?

Well, you learn to read and write and to do basic math. That’s good. If you’re lucky you might end up with survival level in a second language too. That’s sound reasonable!

This is Richard Feynman comment on education in Brazil long time ago. And now it is serious condition for Thailand too.

“I have discovered something else,” I continued. “By flipping the pages at random, and putting my finger in and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what’s the matter – how it’s not science, but memorizing, in every circumstance. Therefore I am brave enough to flip through the pages now, in front of this audience, to put my finger in, to read, and to show you.”

So I did it. Brrrrrrrup – I stuck my finger in, and I started to read: “Triboluminescence. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed…”

I said, “And there, have you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You haven’t told anything about nature – what crystals produce light when you crush them, why they produce light. Did you see any student go home and try it? He can’t.

“But if, instead, you were to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.” ’ Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.” I used that example to show them, but it didn’t make any difference where I would have put my finger in the book; it was like that everywhere.

You can learn everything that you actually remembered from school in about three years, just remember it!

How long did it take to learn to read and write and do basic math?

Not long. Four years at most. And if you hadn’t been distracted by the useless stuff combined with that… yeah, two years sounds reasonable.

So school is not about learning. If it was, people would have realised how much more efficiently it could be done. About 10 years of school time, then, are wasted from the perspective of learning.

Free yourself, learn everything your way and explore the world.

May the gravitational force be with you!

Day #12 Pyramid cult leader appointed to reform our school curriculum! I need someone help ASAP!!!

Yes, Pyramid cult leader appointed to reform our school curriculum. Oh my higgs! I never believe this would be happen until I see the news. Too many pseudoscience in my country now…

I feel like I want to get mad when I see ‘quantum medal’ sell on roadside, it help you nothing except wasting your money in case that you have too much money and want to throw it away somewhere.

Real scientist comment from http://en.khaosod.co.th/detail.php?newsid=1409494445&section=14

“If Dr. Art-ong, a believer in pseudoscience, has the role in reforming curriculum, he may use beliefs that are not based on credible science to affect his decisions about reforming the curriculum,” the petition reads. “It may lead to teaching false beliefs to Thai youth.”

Fortunately, A prominent scientist has started an online petition protesting the recent appointment of a cult leader and UFO believer to lead a national education reform panel in Thailand. Thanks for your petition!

Petition link here! I don’t want to see real science in my country die.

So, What is pseudoscience?

Look in dictionary first.

Pseudoscience (noun)

A collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.

(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pseudoscience)

Or with easier explanation – The word “pseudo” means fake. It’s fake science. It sound cool with many theory and technically words but absolutely not base on scientific method.

The best way to spot a fake is to know as much as possible about the real thing – in this case, about science itself. Knowing science does not mean simply knowing scientific facts. It means understanding the nature of science – seeking for evidence, design of meaningful experiments, weighing of possibility, the testing of hypotheses, the establishment of theories.

Better explanation by Scientific American:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-pseudoscience/

How to know what is science or pseudoscience?

Many pseudoscience theories are sound very nonsense for me. As particle physics freak who know a little bit about quantum mechanics, I found that many pseudoscientist use the word “quantum” in the wrong way. My recommend book “How to teach physics to your dog” have 1 full chapter that write about fake “quantum” theories and products!

This is pseudoscience ‘nonsense’ point

Pseudoscience displays an indifference to facts.
Instead of bothering to consult reference works or investigating directly, its advocates simply spout bogus “facts” where needed. These fictions are often central to the pseudoscientist’s argument and conclusions. Moreover, pseudoscientists rarely revise. The first edition of a pseudoscience book is almost always the last, even though the book remains in print for decades or even centuries. Even books with obvious mistakes, errors, and misprints on every page may be reprinted as is, over and over. Compare this to science textbooks that see a new edition every few years because of the rapid accumulation of new facts and insights.

Pseudoscience “research” is invariably sloppy.
Pseudoscientists clip newspaper reports, collect hearsay, cite other pseudoscience books, and pore over ancient religious or mythological works. They rarely or never make an independent investigation to check their sources.

Pseudoscience begins with a hypothesis—usually one which is appealing emotionally,
and spectacularly implausible—and then looks only for items which appear to support it.
Conflicting evidence is ignored. Generally speaking, the aim of pseudoscience is to rationalize strongly held beliefs, rather than to investigate or to test alternative possibilities. Pseudoscience specializes in jumping to “congenial conclusions,” grinding ideological axes, appealing to preconceived ideas and to widespread misunderstandings.

Pseudoscience is indifferent to criteria of valid evidence.
The emphasis is not on meaningful, controlled, repeatable scientific experiments. Instead it is on unverifiable eyewitness testimony, stories and tall tales, hearsay, rumor, and dubious anecdotes. Genuine scientific literature is either ignored or misinterpreted.

Pseudoscience relies heavily on subjective validation.
Joe Blow puts jello on his head and his headache goes away. To pseudoscience, this means jello cures headaches. To science this means nothing, since no experiment was done. Many things were going on when Joe Blow’s headache went away—the moon was full, a bird flew overhead, the window was open, Joe had on his red shirt, etc.—and his headache would have gone away eventually in any case, no matter what. A controlled experiment would put many people suffering from headaches in identical circumstances, except for the presence or absence of the remedy it is desired to test, and compare the results which would then have some chance of being meaningful. Many people think there must be something to astrology because a newspaper horoscope describes them perfectly. But close examination would reveal that the description is general enough to cover virtually everyone. This phenomenon, called subjective validation, is one of the foundations of popular support for pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience depends on arbitrary conventions of human
culture, rather than on unchanging regularities of nature.
For instance, the interpretations of astrology depend on the names of things, which are accidental and vary from culture to culture. If the ancients had given the name Mars to the planet we call Jupiter, and vice versa, astronomy could care less but astrology would be totally different, because it depends solely on the name and has nothing to do with the physical properties of the planet itself.

Pseudoscience always achieves a reduction to absurdity if pursued far enough.
Maybe dowsers can somehow sense the presence of water or minerals under a field, but almost all claim they can dowse equally well from a map! Maybe Uri Geller is “psychic,” but are his powers really beamed to him on a radio link with a flying saucer from the planet Hoova, as he has claimed? Maybe plants are “psychic,” but why does a bowl of mud respond in exactly the same way, in the same “experiment?”

Pseudoscience always avoids putting its claims to a meaningful test.
Pseudoscientists never carry out careful, methodical experiments themselves—and they also generally ignore results of those carried out by scientists. Pseudoscientists also never follow up. If one pseudoscientist claims to have done an experiment (such as the “lost” biorhythm studies of Hermann Swoboda that are alleged basis of the modern pseudoscience of biorhythms), no other pseudoscientist ever tries to duplicate it or to check him, even when the original results are missing or questionable! Further, where a pseudoscientist claims to have done an experiment with a remarkable result, he himself never repeats it to check his results and procedures. This is in extreme contrast with science, where crucial experiments are repeated by scientists all over the world with ever-increasing precision.

Pseudoscience often contradicts itself, even in its own terms.
Such logical contradictions are simply ignored or rationalized away. Thus, we should not be surprised when Chapter 1
of a book on dowsing says that dowsers use newly cut twigs, because only “live” wood can channel and focus the “earth-radiation” that makes dowsing possible, whereas Chapter 5 states that nearly all dowsers use metal or plastic rods.

Pseudoscience deliberately creates mystery where none
exists, by omitting crucial information and important details.
Anything can be made “mysterious” by omitting what is known about it or presenting completely imaginary details. The “Bermuda Triangle” books are classic examples of this tactic.

Pseudoscience does not progress.
There are fads, and a pseudoscientist may switch from one fad to another (from ghosts to ESP research, from flying saucers to psychic studies, from ESP research to looking for Bigfoot). But within a given topic, no progress is made. Little or no new information or uncovered. New theories are seldom proposed, and old concepts are rarely modified or discarded in light of new “discoveries,” since pseudoscience rarely makes new “discoveries.” The older the idea, the more respect it receives. No natural phenomena or processes previously unknown to science have ever been discovered by pseudoscientists. Indeed, pseudoscientists almost invariably deal with phenomena well known to scientists, but little known to the general public—so that the public will swallow whatever the pseudoscientist wants to claim. Examples include firewalking and “Kirlian” photography.

Pseudoscience attempts to persuade with rhetoric, propaganda, and
misrepresentation rather than valid evidence (which presumably does not exist).
Pseudoscience books offer examples of almost every kind of fallacy of logic and reason known to scholars and have invented some new ones of their own. A favorite device is the non sequitur. Pseudoscientists also love the “Galileo Argument.” This consists of the pseudoscientist comparing himself to Galileo, and saying that just as the pseudoscientist is believed to be wrong, so Galileo was thought wrong by his contemporaries therefore the pseudoscientist must be right too, just as Galileo was. Clearly the conclusion does not follow! Moreover, Galileo’s ideas were tested, verified, and accepted promptly by his scientific colleagues. The rejection came from the established religion which favored the pseudoscience that Galileo’s findings contradicted.

Pseudoscience argues from ignorance, an elementary fallacy.
Many pseudoscientists base their claims on incompleteness of information about nature, rather than on what is known at present. But no claim can possibly be supported by lack of information. The fact that people don’t recognize what they see in the sky means only that they don’t recognize what they saw. This fact is not evidence that flying saucers are from outer space. The statement “Science cannot explain” is common in pseudoscience literature. In many cases, science has no interest in the supposed phenomena because there is no evidence it exists; in other cases, the scientific explanation is well known and well established, but the pseudoscientist doesn’t know this or deliberately ignores it to create mystery.

Pseudoscience argues from alleged exceptions, errors, anomalies, strange events,
and suspect claims—rather than from well-established regularities of nature.
The experience of scientists over the past 400 years is that claims and reports that describe well-understood objects behaving in strange and incomprehensible ways tend to reduce upon investigation to deliberate frauds, honest mistakes, garbled accounts, misinterpretations, outright fabrications, and stupid blunders. It is not wise to accept such reports at face value, without checking them. Pseudoscientists always take such reports as literally true, without independent verification.

Pseudoscience appeals to false authority, to emotion,
sentiment, or distrust of established fact.
A high-school dropout is accepted as an expert on archaeology, though he has never made any study of it! A psychoanalyst is accepted as an expert on all of human history, not to mention physics, astronomy, and mythology, even though his claims are inconsistent with everything known in all four fields. A movie star swears it’s true, so it must be. A physicist says a “psychic” couldn’t possibly have fooled him with simple magic tricks, although the physicist knows nothing about magic and sleight of hand. Emotional appeals are common. (“If it makes you feel good, it must be true.” “In your heart you know it’s right.”) Pseudoscientists are fond of imaginary conspiracies. (“There’s plenty of evidence for flying saucers, but the government keeps it secret.”) And they argue from irrelevancies: When confronted by inconvenient facts, they simply reply, “Scientists don’t know everything!”

Pseudoscience makes extraordinary claims and advances fantastic
theories that contradict what is known about nature.
They not only provide no evidence that their claims are true. They also ignore all findings that contradict their conclusions. (“Flying saucers have to come from somewhere—so the earth is hollow, and they come from inside.” “This electric spark I’m making with this electrical apparatus is actually not a spark at all, but rather a supernatural manifestation of psycho-spiritual energy.” “Every human is surrounded by an impalpable aura of electromagnetic energy, the auric egg of the ancient Hindu seers, which mirrors the human’s every mood and condition.”)

Pseudoscientists invent their own vocabulary in which many terms lack
precise or unambiguous definitions, and some have no definition at all.
Listeners are often forced to interpret the statements according to their own preconceptions. What, for for example, is “biocosmic energy?” Or a “psychotronic amplification system?” Pseudoscientists often attempt to imitate the jargon of scientific and technical fields by spouting gibberish that sounds scientific and technical. Quack “healers” would be lost without the term “energy,” but their use of the term has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of energy used by physicists.

Pseudoscience appeals to the truth-criteria of scientific
methodology while simultaneously denying their validity.
Thus, a procedurally invalid experiment which seems to show that astrology works is advanced as “proof” that astrology is correct, while thousands of procedurally sound experiments that show it does not work are ignored. The fact that someone got away with simple magic tricks in one scientific lab is “proof” that he is a psychic superman, while the fact that he was caught cheating in several other labs is ignored.

Pseudoscience claims that the phenomena it studies are “jealous.”
The phenomena appear only under certain vaguely specified but vital conditions (such as when no doubters or skeptics are present; when no experts are present; when nobody is watching; when the “vibes” are right; or only once in human history.) Science holds that genuine phenomena must be capable of study by anyone with the proper equipment and that all procedurally valid studies must give consistent results. No genuine phenomenon is “jealous” in this way. There is no way to construct a TV set or a radio that will function only when no skeptics are present! A man who claims to be a concert-class violinist, but does not appear to have ever owned a violin and who refuses to play when anyone is around who might hear him, is most likely lying about his ability to play the violin.

Pseudoscientific “explanations” tend to be by scenario.
That is, we are told a story, but nothing else; we have no description of any possible physical process. For instance, Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) claimed that another planet passing near the earth caused the earth’s spin axis to flip upside down. This is all he said. He gave no mechanisms. But the mechanism is all-important, because the laws of physics rule out the process as impossible. That is, the approach of another planet cannot cause a planet’s spin axis to flip. If Velikovsky had discovered some way that a planet could flip another’s spin axis, he would presumably have described the mechanism by which it can happen. The bald statement itself, without the underlying mechanism, conveys no information at all. Velikovsky said that Venus was once a comet, and this comet was spewed out of a volcano on Jupiter. Since planets do not resemble comets (which are rock/ice snowball-like debris with connection whatsoever to volcanoes) and since Jupiter is not known to have volcanoes anyway (or even a solid surface!), no actual physical process could underlie Velikovsky’s assertions. He gave us words, related to one another within a sentence, but the relationships were alien to the universe we actually live in, and he gave no explanation for how these could exist. He provided stories, not genuine theories.

Pseudoscientists often appeal to the ancient human habit of magical thinking.
Magic, sorcery, witchcraft—these are based on spurious similarity, false analogy, false cause-and-effect connections, etc. That is, inexplicable influences and connections between things are assumed from the beginning—not found by investigation. (If you step on a crack in the sidewalk without saying a magic word, your mother will crack a bone in her body; eating heart-shaped leaves is good for heart ailments; shining red light on the body increases blood production; rams are aggressive so someone born in the sign of the ram is aggressive; fish are “brain food” because the meat of the fish resembles brain tissue, etc.)

Pseudoscience relies heavily on anachronistic thinking.
The older the idea, the more attractive it is to pseudoscience—it’s the wisdom of the ancients!—especially if the idea is transparently wrong and has long been discarded by science. Many journalists have trouble in comprehending this point. A typical reporter writing about astrology may think a thorough job can be done by interviewing six astrologers and one astronomer. The astronomer says it’s all bunk; the six astrologers say it’s great stuff and really works and for $50 they’ll be glad to cast anyone’s horoscope. (No doubt!) To many reporters, and apparently to many editors and their readers, this would confirm astrology six to one!

(http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html)

Many way to know what is science and pseudoscience but unfortunately, many people believe pseudoscience more than real science.

I don’t know why!