The super kids

The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams and classroom discussions. Most were from 5th and 6th graders. They illustrate Mark Twain’s contention that the most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know.

• One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.
  
• Talc is found on rocks and babies.
  
• When people run around and around in circles, we say they are crazy. When planets do it, we say they are orbiting.
  
• Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.
  
• There is a tremendous weight pushing down at the centre of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up there these days.
  
• Vacuums are nothing. We only mention them to let them know we know they’re there.
  
• Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it’s brother against brother.
  
• I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.
  
• Thunder is a rich source of loudness.
  
• Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.
  
• It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places.
  

Software development cycle

• The programmer produces a code he believes is bug-free.
  
• The product is tested. 20 bugs are found.
  
• The programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the other 10 aren’t really bugs.
  
• The testing department finds that five of the fixes didn’t work and discovers 15 new bugs.
  
• Repeat thrice steps 3 and 4.
  
• Due to marketing pressure and an extremely premature product announcement based on overly-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.
  
• The users find 137 new bugs.
  
• The original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.
  
• The newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduces 456 new ones.
  
• The original programmer sends the underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji. The entire testing department quits.
  
• The company is bought in a hostile takeover by a competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.
  
• A new CEO is brought in by the board of directors. He hires a programmer to redo the program from scratch.
  
• The programmer produces a code he believes is bug-free.

Compiled by Usama Rasheed