counterintuitive examples in science counterintuitive examples in science

What is the life expectancy of a tea cup pig? First, let mesay what I thinkcounterintuitiveisnt. I can't remember the source, but paraphrasing it was something like "The Greeks couldn't have discovered special relativity, but I couldve convinced them it was true." So, the temperature stays constant. NTU Singapore scientists report that plastic bags could be eco-friendlier than paper and cotton bags in cities like Singapore (Nanyang Technological University). I'm not saying that we need to teach the undergrads QFT to make them understand, but you can give them a little, "if you take QFT you'll see how spin pops out of the classical theory of fields before you even make them quantum!" King Solomon, who could be considered an early scientist because of his powers of observation and analysis of natural phenomena like plants, beasts, birds, reptiles and fish (I Kings 4:33) and of geophysical cycles (Ecclesiastes 1:5-7), urged youth to gain knowledge, but to build it on the foundation of wisdom. It must be curtailed! Don't be surprised if none of them want the spotl One goose, two geese. The world is round but the universe is flat. Steak, salty French fries, eggs Benedict, triple-fudge brownies with whipped creamturns out theyre killers. There are human values, which are reliant on soft skills. (But its true in other sciences too, probably more than we appreciate .) Here are 16 pleasant yet perplexing reminders that you may not know as much as you believe. . And besides, researchers are continuously learning new things. Sometimes different people having different ideas; sometimes the same person having different ideas at different times. But our love affair comes at a cost. Although if you didn't enjoy science classes at school, it's difficult not to be astonished by scientific facts as an adult. Pouring over further portions of cold water causes repeated re-boiling while the temperature gradually drops to around 30oC, or even lower. Ask a student to pour a little cold water over the flask and read the resulting temperature. I've spoken before about my daily routines and how I like to exercise and meditate very day. Most students will correctly say that to freeze a liquid, you need to cool it. Using a temperature probe in place of a thermometer in these experiments allows continuous temperature monitoring, but may limit the experiments to demonstrations. Logic is generally used to reach a conclusion using the most accurate and testable route. Cookie Settings, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. Im not at all surprised you thought of this before I did. 1. As Simine points out, many people in psychology say that counterintuitive findings are more valuable so clearly there is an incentive to frame things that way. Natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires are often attributed by the media to global warming. Student cognition in response to intuitive and counterintuitive stimuli in the school science curriculum is not well understood. Clamp the flask and insert the bung, ensuring that the clip is open. Like everything you do just doesn't seem to work out? The reality is not so simple. It does not store any personal data. Viscosity of gases increases with increasing temperature. Protective effect of mandatory face masks in the publicrelevant variables with likely impact on outcome were not considered (PNAS). counter-intuitive meaning: 1. In 1948, the Framingham Heart Study enrolled more than 5,000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, to participate in a long-term study of risk factors for heart disease. but it can also be frightening and mind-boggling at times. If something is counterintuitive it means it's the opposite of intuitive in other words it's not easily understood in an instinctive, unconscious way. Stir gently, recording the temperature at known intervals until the temperature drops to near zero. In the liquid the atoms (or molecules) are all moving about, while in the solid, they are in nice neat rows. Sometimes it clearly is. Don't ever get too comfortable with the status quo, always be willing to blow it up and start . Somehow, gum made out of tree bark is still softer than Bazooka. Likewise, a series of short arti-cles on counter intuitive problems can be found While intuition and misconceptions continue to be of great interest to mathematics and science educators, there has been little research, much less consensus or even internal consistency, in statistics curriculum . Things can get worse before getting better, or vice versa. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. 1. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Science seems to always challenge our intuitive understanding of the world. What if we talked about p-hacking the way we talk about experimentereffects? I guess that's kind of a counterintuitive thing in its own right, phase changes require a heck of a lot more energy than heating or cooling by a lot does, but in a properly controlled experiment, cold water will freeze faster than hot. information, these science educators strategically resort to examples and problems designed to defy students' intuitive thinking. No one can explain why anything happens down there, and there might not be an answer. The research team found that the global warming potential of a single-use kraft paper bag was the highest, over 80 times that of reusable plastic bags. Upal [2] labelled this as the minimal counterintuitiveness effect or the MCI-effect. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. MiigPT 7 yr. ago. The reduced pressure below the piston allows the atmospheric pressure above it to push it back down. Scientific method involves proposing a theory, and then testing its validity by experiment. ARTICLES SCIENCE 16 FACTS THAT ARE JUST PLAIN COUNTERINTUITIVE 16 Facts That Are Just Plain Counterintuitive. And just generally weird stuff that you know of. adjective. There is enough DNA in the average person's body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back 17 times. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The mass-independent pendulum's period of oscillation is a consequence of the same pull from the force of gravity to every object regardless of its mass. Supercooling can be linked to the previous topic. The Earth is not the center of the universe. Today, according to many biologists, were in the midst of a sixth great extinction. What does it mean when your boyfriend takes long to reply? The temperature drops as expected, but the water unexpectedly boils again for a while. 3. 1. Cooling with cold water condenses the steam, lowering the pressure inside the flask. Sunny days make people happier and more helpful. Removal of dairy cows may reduce essential nutrient supply with little effect on greenhouse gas emissions (Phys.org). Thats what scientists (both professional and citizen scientists) ought to be doing. Without science education and discipline, most biological minds rely on belief systems to explain phenomena. For the general public that have not had the opportunity to be exposed to the process of science, one of the most counterintuitive things is this: Logic and Common Sense are not the same thing. Thinning and prescribed fire treatments reduce tree mortality (Phys.org). Removing energy from the surroundings causes cooling, so the temperature drops. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. 2.In Fig. In our day-to-day lives we often speak of cause and effect as if there was a distance constraint. 4) When you don't have time to exercise or meditate, is when you need to exercise and meditate the most. What importance does counterintuitive play in our real life? It has long been believed by the medical and scientific community that the gender identity of . Many interesting behind-the-scenes bits have happened during the 20 years of telling tales about our favorite trailer-park residents. Below you, an entire other world operates, Many interesting behind-the-scenes bits have happened during the 20 years of telling tales about our favorite trailer-park residents. Use an ice/salt bath to supercool purified water in a clean test tube containing a clean thermometer. Once recorded on the screen it is no longer in superposition. A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Making Complex Decisions. What?!? 10. Once all the liquid has frozen, no more energy is released, so continued cooling with iced water causes the temperature to start falling again. I don't think this is right. Student cognition in response to intuitive and counterintuitive stimuli in the school science curriculum is not well understood. Why, then, did scientists in Singapore come to the conclusion that plastic bags are better than paper and cloth bags? But in social and personality psychology we studyphenomena that regular peoplereflect on and speculate about too. Something that came up in another thread, the Mpemba effect i.e. Gender Identity Is More Nature Than Nurture. counter-intuitive definition: 1. If you detect which slit the photons go through, you dont get any interference pattern. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Environmental activists and vegans want to reduce the impact of beef production. Bad news that cult recovery group just might be a cult. Say youre about to die and are packing some supplies for the afterlife. We should also revisit why we think counterintuitive is valuable. Einsteins famous equation is certainly one of the most brilliant and beautiful scientific discoveriesbut its also one of the most disturbing. Ultimately, everything in the universe will drift farther and farther apart until the universe is uniformly cold and desolate. Our universe's spacetime is flat, not the universe itself. All the good ones! Our analysis reveals that student success in arriving at counter-intuitive . In a final example of counterintuitive findings, Live Science now claims that brain size didn't . 2 What is another word for counterintuitive? Our personal epistemology (philosophy of knowledge) is often based on intuition, which can be mistaken. In everyday language 'freezing' or 'melting' involves cooling or heating, but in science the term refers only to the changing physical . COPYRIGHT 2005-2023 Cracked is published by Literally media Ltd., How Hugh Grant Found New Life in Guy Ritchie Action-Comedies, Jeff Bridges Dude-est Roles That Arent The Dude, Best Retired South Park Characters And If They Should Return, 15 Riveting Items of Trivia That Fell Into Our Laps This Week, 34 COUNTERINTUITIVE FACTS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE, 15 Incredible Inventions That Were, Technically, Gigantic Failures, 5 Elaborate Mysterious Projects Carried Out Literally Underground, 15 Trivia Tidbits About Trailer Park Boys, 15 Bits Of Trivia So Powerful, They Would Have Instantly Vaporized Our Ancestors, Every Purposefully Corny Joke from Norm Macdonalds Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget, Ranked, I Was the Bowling Consultant on The Big Lebowski. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. I prefer instead of valuing being counter-intuitive, to value counter-examples to the idea that all good things go together (or all bad things go together). But being counterintuitive for counterintuitives sake? and mturk didnt exist.) In social and personality psychology that isthe majority of what we are studying. Intuitive version: If the good were free, consumers would want a lot, but producers wouldn't feel like making much. The Aztecs slaughtered tens of thousands of people to inaugurate the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan; after sacredMayan ballgames, the losing team was sometimes sacrificed. Very few scholars saw it as a real description of the universe.. Invert the flask, so the thermometer bulb is in the hot water. Half fill a funnel with small ice cubes or crushed ice. Heat the flask until the water boils and steam issues from the rubber tube. A heavier object does fall faster. Counterintuitive claim: Prices are determined by supply and demand. These ideas, be it physics or biology . For example, you probably wouldntsay that the double-slit experiment was counterintuitive; youdsay it falsified classical mechanics. And the water and land use required for beef contributes significantly to global warming, we are told. I know what I'd choose. Here are ten of the biggest threats to our . [Dark energy] has inspired us to ask, as if for the first time: What is this cosmos we call home? This counterintuitive approach applies also to minimalism. Testing hypotheses by experiment is supposed to be the hallmark of science. Third year of physics, and the first time I heard that, it boggled my mind, still kinda does, but I'm more used to it now. Here are 13 counterintuitive business truths I've come to know, even if I can't exactly explain why they make sense. This is experimentally shown. Test everything, and cling to what is good. Calling it a "remarkable orifice," author Mary Roach said, "No engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine-tuned as an anus. The Bible gives a good general principle: Test all things; hold fast what is good (I Thessalonians 5:21). Yet many psychological studies have reported findings that are absolutely counterintuitive and that seem illogical. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced searchad free! And there's the first part of Newton's very first law: Bodies in motion remain in m. We find two distinct sets of thermoelectric property (TEP) curves, where one set of TEPs has higher ZT curves over the whole operating temperature range, but its maximum conversion efficiency is smaller than that of the other set. Columbus' contemporaries didn't think the world was flat but he was still kind of crazy because he thought the Earth was a lot smaller than it really is (and basically lucked into finding the New World). It would take several generations to sink in. Mating decisions are based partly on smell. Here are just a few of those craziest facts out there! In this article, the author explores how tackling concepts from an . The Machiavellian adage that it's better . When treating someone badly makes him like you more instead of less, this is an example of something that is counterintuitive. Posts should be pertinent, meme-free, and generate a discussion about physics. It has been said that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. In this, they agree with a Prager U video (YouTube). Coke was originally supposed to make you smarter or something. If so, perhaps general physics would be a place to go. The gauge shift comes from the particle looping around a topological defect (the magnetic field threading the plane, effectively making the space into a punctured plane), in effect changes the topological quantum number (electric/magnetic charge) of the particle, since the punctured plane is not homotopically trivial. Laura Helmuth Animal Testing Is Necessary. This is easy to work out with Bernoulli's principle, but you also need to make use of the continuity equation to work it out, which states: A_1v_1= A_2v_2 A1v1 = A2v2. It can be loosely stated that the particle that looped around and came back is not the "same particle" that left, since they have different topological character. * What gives you instant joy is almost always harmful i. What are examples of counterintuitive? We spread salt on icy roads and paths to melt the ice. The other thing about counterintuitive is that it makes the idea seem more impressive. The interaction of salt and ice involves breaking the bonds that hold water molecules together in ice crystals, and separating the Na+ and Cl- ions in salt crystals. Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way. I recall a quote that expressed this idea quite nicely. Although if you didn't enjoy science classes at school, it's difficult not to be astonished by scientific facts as an adult. Mastodons may have been some of the earliest victims. The reality is not so simple. Attributing any disaster to a century-long trend is very hard to prove. Continue boiling for at least 30 seconds while a student confirms that the thermometer reads about 100oC as expected. Ground-breaking discovery finally proves rain really can move mountains (University of Bristol). Beyond the reach of formal theory, scientists develop educated guesses, hunches, and speculations based on their knowledge and experience. I guess I never really thought about the first one, but it is really weird. Trying to argue that the different numerals represent the same number is allowed, but you need a reason to make that argument beyond "It leads to a nice, counter-intuitive result" and that makes . When thats your multiplier, you dont need much massa smidgen of plutonium is plentyto create enough energy to destroy a city. There have been mass extinctions in the past, and were probably in one now. Send us feedback. What I suspect that means is that counterintuitive is often justa rhetorical strategyfor writing introduction sections and marketing our work. So let me get this straight: you're writing a report in which you are breaking the news to your clients that their goals have been wrong, and you wish to soften this news with some examples of how other people have been wrong? Antibiotics and vaccines have saved millions of lives; without these wonders of modern medicine, many of us would have died in childhood of polio, mumps or smallpox. The waters temperature is now above its new, lower boiling point, so it boils again. I would not claim thatthis describes all instances of counterintuitive, but I thinkit describes a lot of them. (Counterintuitive framing is also a great way to sell a lot of books.). It's just something that's easy to observe in a real experiment because the enthalpy of fusion is much greater than the enthalpy of heating (for a lack of a better term). Conclusion. But astronomers do know that, thanks to these dark parts, the universe is expanding. You need some fancy equipment, like a thing that makes a cohesive beam of photons and a thing that splits a cohesive beam of photons, but other than that its not impossible to do in your home lab. Exercise: Listen to some assertions in the media that claim to be scientific. This person's common sense isn't off-base. Record the temperature. The details require careful consideration, but basically, were surprising. Check out these facts that are just plain counterintuitive - you'll be surprised at some of the things people do every day! For example, let's say a company invested in IoT systems to gain an edge in data-driven insights. Press J to jump to the feed. Theyre also likely to suggest a liquids temperature drops while it solidifies. Every once in a while, a dolt drops a gem. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Even more disturbing is the fact that carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Our cognitive failings are legion: we take a few anecdotes and make incorrect generalizations, we misinterpret information to support our preconceptions, and were easily distracted or swayed by irrelevant details. A counterintuitive proposition is one that does not seem likely to be true when assessed using intuition or gut feelings.. Scientifically discovered, objective truths are often called counterintuitive when intuition, emotions, and other cognitive processes outside of deductive rationality interpret them to be wrong. Nevertheless, in their own worldview, the results should seem surprising. Learn something new, even if it's stressful. Are they just keeping silent about conflicts of interest? What to take? 1. The most common example of Bernoulli's principle is that of a fluid flowing through a horizontal pipe, which narrows in the middle and then opens up again. Another good example of a counterintuitive fact is the Banach-Tarski paradox stating that a ball can be decomposed in a finite number of pieces which can be glued together to build up two balls identical to the first one (I say that this is a paradox because the axiom of choice is clearly true:D). Then you are doing classical field theory and are trying to find a first order equation and out pops spinors and the clifford algebra in a completely classical scenario. What is the meaning of counterintuitive science? Can you take vitamins while fasting for autophagy? The effort to solve it has mobilized a generation of astronomers in a rethinking of physics and cosmology to rival and perhaps surpass the revolution Galileo inaugurated on an autumn evening in Padua. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Definition of Counterintuitive. To address this issue, this study examines high school students . Part of the problem is the mismatch between scientific terms and their common use. Cultures as diverse as the Babylonians, Han Dynasty China, and the Maya each developed sophisticated belief systems and mathematics to divine the purported influence of the planets and stars on people's personalities and events on Earth ( Boxer, 2020 ). Listed below are several particularly surprising findings from the field of psychology. . If the good cost trillions of dollars, producers would want to make a lot, but consumers wouldn't want to buy any. 2, the fused probability assignment for any proposition is obtained by multiplying the BPAs supporting that proposition by their weights and . Thomas Jefferson saw mastodon bones from Kentucky, for example, and concluded that the giant animals must still be living somewhere in the interior of the continent. (of an idea, proposal, etc) seemingly contrary to common sense. Introducing a delay function to our simple negative feedback loop will produce an unexpected oscillation (a counterintuitive behavior). A look at a few examples of counter-intuitive conclusions will illustrate these problems. There are no "machine values.". Scientists, like other people, are tempted to fall into the trap of assumption and conformity to expectations. The first truth actually relates to that very subject: the how and why of . This might occur in instances where intuition changes with knowledge. So the "intuitive" in counterintuitive could refer to the intuitions of experts. Scripture said that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy for saying otherwise. Something we don't currently know could be unearthed tomorrow so that we can always broaden our horizons and our stock of random tidbits to amuse our friends. How could something so obvious be wrong? Our feeble minds can barely scratch the surface of existence, the cosmos, and everything. 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. Beyond a certain threshold of intelligence and skill, the efficacy bottlenecks quickly become your ability to communicate, get along with others, prioritize, focus, structure your thinking in advance, manage your time well, etc. Cultures throughout history and around the world have engaged in ritual human sacrifice. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. If you were to drop another earth on itself it would appear to accelerate towards earth at 19.6 m/s2. Early empirical studies including those . Sprinkle a little salt over the ice, and watch the temperature. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. If you were an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, youd have your servants slaughtered and buried adjacent to your tomb. how we should evaluate counterintuitive claims. In the stock market, if you buy and stock for $50 and it goes up to $75 you make 50%. He asked Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out for them. This is correct for most substances, but due to the nature of the water molecule it is different and actually expands. Previously, she was a senior science editor at Smithsonian magazine. It's not so unintuitive with topological arguments. Is this theoretical or can one make an experiment to show this effect? Melting sodium thiosulfate crystals, then cooling them to a state well below the melting point causes the supercooled liquid to freeze rapidly when a crystal of sodium thiosulfate is added, or the mixture is stirred. In a taste test, youre likely to have a strong preference for the first sample you tasteeven if all of the samples are identical. One moose, two moose. Some people assume that if you release a ball while spinning your arm in a circle, the ball will continue to go in a circle. Ritual sacrifice is described in the Bible, Greek mythology and the Norse sagas, and the Romans accused many of the people they conquered of engaging in ritual sacrifice, but the evidence was thin. You 100% wouldn't do it unless parachutes existed but because they do.people go skydiving and accidents happen. In front of your students, half fill the flask with tap water. This is the so-called Simpson's . we of course used these results to show how counterintuitive our actual results were. Most people who haven't studied physics still don't appreciate this. Counterintuitive. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/counterintuitive. And new diseases keep jumping from animals to humansebola from apes, SARS from masked palm civets, hantavirus from rodents, bird flu from birds, swine flu from swine. Students who participated in the project reported that the access-on-demand online resource materials on counterintuitive demonstrations resulted in prolonged enquiry exploring science concepts, and were welcomed by participating classroom teachers. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. See more. If youre in a happy, optimistic, ambitious mood, check the weather. When treating someone badly makes him like you more instead of less, this is an example of something that is counterintuitive. I want to know how we imagine things . Im reminded of the description of Steven Levitt as a rogue economist, a characterization that seems inappropriate to me, given that he received his Ph.D. from MIT, holds the title of Alvin H. Baum Professor at the University of Chicago, and has served as editor of the completely mainstream Journal of Political Economy. Kim Scott, once the head of Google's AdSense and . The second and third are a given. undergraduate science education course with their teaching practice experience in local classrooms. Find 23 ways to say COUNTERINTUITIVE, along with antonyms, related words, and example sentences at Thesaurus.com, the world's most trusted free thesaurus. So, one year you make 50%, the next you lose 33% and you think you're . If I walk into it's solid, and I can't see through it. You're not alone! It's genuinely remarkable, and chances are you're only aware of a small portion of the fascinating and bizarre facts discovered by scientists thus far. An oldie but a goodie: the fact that a pendulum's period of oscillation is independent of the mass hanging from it. Self-knowledge / self-deception is probably another one of those areas where the relationship between research findings and peoples intuitions has deeper, substantive significance. Counterintuitive means contrary to what seems intuitively right or correct. Beyond the reach of formal theory, scientistsdevelop educated guesses, hunches, and speculations based on their knowledge and experience. It's the standout example from the study of risk factors(specifically risk compensation) and works mostly because the audience isn't looking at the whole meaning of the word 'skydiving'. The English actor found the good side of being bad, Theres a little bit of The Dude in a lot of Jeff Bridges performances. But after doing some more research, we realized that sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction. These ideas, be it physics or biology, can be considered counterintuitive in that they often present themselves in ways that are counter to ones intuitive notions1). Maybe not. Common sense does not always follow this route, and may include social biases, assumptions, and even a lack of facts. While 93% of scientists were in favor of animal research, merely 52% of the public agrees. This doesn't really belong in this thread with the hard science examples, but I think it's a nice little verbal/logic trick to drop on people at a dinner party. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Counter Intuitive Thinking Examples .