counterintuitive examples in science

Thats what scientists (both professional and citizen scientists) ought to be doing. Something that is counter-intuitive does not happen in the way you would expect it to: 2. The power explained by the equation really rests in the c, or the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) times itself, which equals 34,700,983,524. But when the stock goes back down to $50, you only lose 33%. There's a whole lot about water we are still just learning now, and a lot of (fairly important) properties it has that are shared by only a few other substances in special circumstances. Attributing any disaster to a century-long trend is very hard to prove. Counterintuitive definition, counter to what intuition would lead one to expect: The direction we had to follow was counterintuitivewe had to go north first before we went south. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. but it can also be frightening and mind-boggling at times. What is the life expectancy of a tea cup pig? 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. To many people it appears counterintuitive that eating more meals can help trigger weight loss. But other human foiblesthe desire to be accepted, time pressure, conflicts of interest (e.g., expectations of funding sources), interfere and can compromise that ideal. Its kind of deflating, isnt it? Did the funder lean on the researchers to get a favorable result for dairy farmers? Likewise, a series of short arti-cles on counter intuitive problems can be found And when you are talking about something that (a)people reflect on and wonder about and (b) is not already well settled, then chances are pretty good that people have had multiple, potentially contradictory ideas about it. Beyond the reach of formal theory, scientists develop educated guesses, hunches, and speculations based on their knowledge and experience. Science seems to always challenge our intuitive understanding of the world. 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'. Both these theories have been debated for decades because the measurements required to prove them are so painstakingly complicated. Since water expands when it freezes, bodies of water freeze from the top-down, not bottom-up, allowing for life to survive and flourish under the ice. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Counter Intuitive Thinking Examples . A look at a few examples of counter-intuitive conclusions will illustrate these problems. Nature: The anus is a sophisticated organ. That contradicts a lot of your experience, doesn't it? As the liquid freezes, the temperature will rise. Special relativity, then, is a perfectly reasonable and elegent way to formalize this notion. This is why it irritates me that we lie to undergrads about these things so much. First, let mesay what I thinkcounterintuitiveisnt. I guess as the material increases in temperature there will be some point where the conducting electrons will begin colliding in such a manner as to increase the resistance of the material. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, citizens are understandably confused about the benefit of face masks. These questions make students aware of the inadequacies of their own thinking by exposing them to situations whose outcomes are inconsistent with what they would expect. At room temperature, the thiosulfate is a supercooled liquid it is below its freezing point, but has remained liquid. They are also found in reusable hand-warmers these use supercooling to store heat for later use. Science seems to always challenge our intuitive understanding of the world. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Source: Clari Massimiliano / Shutterstock.com. Was the double-slit experiment counterintuitive? It does not store any personal data. For example,when intuition systematically leads people to make consequentially bad decisionsit can be important to document that and understand why. But on balance, human taste preferences evolved during times of scarcity, when it made sense for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to gorge on as much salt and fat and sugar as possible. What if we talked about p-hacking the way we talk about experimentereffects? What importance does counterintuitive play in our real life? An oldie but a goodie: the fact that a pendulum's period of oscillation is independent of the mass hanging from it. Here's a 1974 example from the American Philosophical Quarterly in which "counterintuitive" describes a dubious situation: "The formulas offered by Day lead to results so counter-intuitive that they had best be called simply false.". "Parachutes make skydiving more dangerous.". A red light for "go" and a . At what point is the marginal product maximum? IE throughout learning undergraduate quantum mechanics you hear "spin is a completely quantum mechanical phenomenon that doesn't exist outside of quantum mechanics." counter-intuitive definition: 1. What prevents the temperature dropping further until the liquid is completely frozen? It's like trying to plunge your hand into a (hypothetical) fluid in liquid state and one that is starting to freeze and get denser. 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. Even in the 21st century, its quite possible to die of consumption. But astronomers do know that, thanks to these dark parts, the universe is expanding. When we heard that Barack Obama had chosen to sleep on his decision to authorize the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, we were pleasantly . Sometimes different people having different ideas; sometimes the same person having different ideas at different times. Example: "What do you eggheads mean this wall is mostly empty space at a molecular level. Truly brilliant examples from mathematics about why repeated confirmations don't constitute proofs: The Most Misleading Patterns in Mathematics youtu.be/kp1C0E8Za7k The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Simple, yet counterintuitive mathematics | Why numbers don't always mean what you think youtu.be/xHjQhliXUB0. Since QM and even the two items you mentioned seem to be beyond them, you could try the culinary route. Follow this guide to introduce and develop your students literacy skills in science, The sunlight-activated nanofilm putting an end to misty glasses and windows, Find out about the creative chemistry behind costume masks, Use a model, feedback, reapply loop to develop students practical skills, Use these principles to ensure your feedback is timely and helps your students succeed, Being prepared is the best way for learners to successfully do practicals, Behaviour management in the chemistry classroom, 14 ways to teach sustainability in chemistry, Preventing condensation with nanotechnology. 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). 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. 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. I've spoken before about my daily routines and how I like to exercise and meditate very day. How can I stop being frustrated while reading? Even though the temperature has dropped well below 0oC, the melted ice does not re-freeze. What possible sources of error can you identify? The universe is made of stuff we can barely begin to imagine. As humans moved from continent to continent, large animals that had thrived for millions of years began to disappearmastodons in North America, giant kangaroos in Australia, dwarf elephants in Europe. For me that brings up the question: what do we mean when we say something is counterintuitive?. But scientists have also believed rain can erode a landscape quickly enough to essentially suck the rocks out of the Earth, effectively pulling mountains up very quickly. 1. Cookie Policy Teaching science through counterintuitive events is an effective way of engaging students in exploring science; such events motivate and involve students in solving problems with a high degree of creativity and critical thinking. Then you should sit for an hour - Zen proverb. In front of your students, half fill the flask with tap water. Laura Helmuth is the science and health editor at Slate. What are the most surprising and counterintuitive findings in science? Although if you didn't enjoy science classes at school, it's difficult not to be astonished by scientific facts as an adult. Steam pushes a piston upwards. 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. The temperature drops as expected, but the water unexpectedly boils again for a while. But if, after the experiment, you go back and erase the information about which slit each photon went through, then the interference pattern magically appears on the screen. Stop heating and immediately close the clip. There is general agreement that it refers to a violation of previously held knowledge, but the precise definition seems to vary with every author and study. 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. There have been mass extinctions in the past, and were probably in one now. Seeing your assumptions of physical reactions are wrong by watching a golf ball hit a wall at 1000 frames per second and watching it compress and ripple is powerful. The human genome (the genetic code in each human cell) contains 23 DNA molecules . The paper in the Journal of Dairy Science says that Research was supported by Dairy Management Inc. (Rosemont, IL) and asserts that The authors have not stated any conflicts of interest. What does that mean? Better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Answer (1 of 13): The world is hardly what it appears to be. 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. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. But after doing some more research, we realized that sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction. Things can get worse before getting better, or vice versa. What?!? If you were to drop another earth on itself it would appear to accelerate towards earth at 19.6 m/s2. In the liquid the atoms (or molecules) are all moving about, while in the solid, they are in nice neat rows. Whenever you are doing physics and all the sudden some entirely new deep topic in mathematics is automatically spit out. Once recorded on the screen it is no longer in superposition. Like hot water freezing faster than cold. We spread salt on icy roads and paths to melt the ice. Sometimes it clearly is. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Counterintuitive behavior means that actions intended to produce a desired outcome may generate opposite results. Professor White added, Production of some essential nutrients, such as calcium and many vitamins, decreased under all reallocation scenarios that decreased greenhouse gas emissions, making the dairy removal scenarios suboptimal for feeding the US population.. 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." Is this theoretical or can one make an experiment to show this effect? These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. The article's counterintuitive tips for getting the partner of my dreams are techniques I never would have attempted. Its hard to tell fact from fiction when it comes to this particularly gruesome custom. Clamp the flask and insert the bung, ensuring that the clip is open. And the hot water freezing faster than cold water isn't a real effect. Science can be glorious; it can bring clarity to a chaotic world. In this, they agree with a Prager U video (YouTube). 5 Are counterintuitive findings more valuable? 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. 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. Wtf is going on down there!? Einsteins famous equation is certainly one of the most brilliant and beautiful scientific discoveriesbut its also one of the most disturbing. The screen does not change. The intuitive part points to the fact that when we label something counterintuitive, we are usually not talking about contradicting a formal, well-specified theory. When treating someone badly makes him like you more instead of less, this is an example of something that is counterintuitive. Concubines were sacrificed in China to be eternal companions; certain Indian sects required human sacrifices. Somehow, gum made out of tree bark is still softer than Bazooka. Part of the problem is the mismatch between scientific terms and their common use. 8. MiigPT 7 yr. ago. Anyone can plainly see that the Sun and stars rise in the east, sweep across the sky and set in the west; the Earth feels stable and stationary. But who would have thought that rain moves mountains? Are counterintuitive findings more valuable? An example that comes to mind is deviancy training, as it seems like we would want to encourage youth becoming closer to each other and maintaining close relationships, but if these relationships are with youths engaged in delinquency, maintaining connectedness may entail the youth engaging in more of these behaviors. Once all the liquid has frozen, no more energy is released, so continued cooling with iced water causes the temperature to start falling again. The definition of counterintuitive is something that goes against what you believe would be logical, or something that goes against common sense. How many (and whose) lives would you bet on yourtheory? 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!" In our day-to-day lives we often speak of cause and effect as if there was a distance constraint. (first sentence from the conclusion: the results from these studies show that contrary to the strong intuitions of most, people are not always their own best expert.). Ask a student to pour a little cold water over the flask and read the resulting temperature. 3. This is your Brain on Psychology This is your Psychology on Brain (a guest post by RobChavez), Data analysis is thinking, data analysis istheorizing. A connection to everyday lived experience is almost definitional to our field, whether you think it is something that we should actively pursue or just inevitably creeps in. It's actually what inspired Galileo to make such an assertion about gravity. It is because that 2-Points and 3-Points have different weights in the two players' stats, so a direct comparison cannot be made. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'counterintuitive.' The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". Students know that melting and boiling involve heating. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Information about your use of this website will be shared with Google and other third parties. The definition of counterintuitive is something that goes against what you believe would be logical or something that goes against common sense. This article and paper from the USDA Forest Service argues that wildfires and droughts have always been a part of California ecology, and that prescribed burns and forest thinning are best for preventing bark beetle damage that contributes to out-of-control fires. It's not so unintuitive with topological arguments. For present purposes, suffice it to say that he believes some of the scientists pushing mandatory face masks overlooked some relevant factors. The consequences are already apparent:glaciers are meltingfaster than ever, flowers are blooming earlier (just askHenry David Thoreau), and plants and animals are moving to more extreme latitudes and altitudes to keep cool. darkmighty 7 yr. ago. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Before repeating such claims, one should investigate funding sources. Now I wonder what my intuitions are about the meaning of the word counterintuitive, and what sort of information about the way the word is used might contradict those intuitions. I tend to think of intuitions as thoughts that pop into our heads as the result of conditioned reflexes, even if that conditioning is part of scientific training. Mastering a new skill means more stress now but more happiness later. If I walk into it's solid, and I can't see through it. Be wary of scientific "facts" that are untrue (unlike the very real 34 on just this list). The results of the study suggest that the removal of dairy cattle from US agriculture would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 0.7 percent and lower the available supply of essential nutrients for the human population. 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. the opposite of what makes sense. The drug is the first of its kind and replicates the signaling of two . Science can be glorious; it can bring clarity to a chaotic world. The meaning of COUNTERINTUITIVE is contrary to what one would intuitively expect. Some temperature changes are counter-intuitive, as can be shown by simple investigations. I recall a quote that expressed this idea quite nicely. What is the meaning of counterintuitive science? They can then test their ideas. The reality is not so simple. It has been said that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. I suppose this might still be categorized as trying to be counterintuitive, though I think it is more about striving for nuance. This is the so-called Simpson's . to ask them what their predictions would be about our main study in our 2008 paper (Vazire & Mehl, JPSP). Student cognition in response to intuitive and counterintuitive stimuli in the school science curriculum is not well understood. Thats what makes this discovery such an exciting breakthrough, as it strongly supports the notion that atmospheric and solid earth processes are intimately connected.. (Counterintuitive framing is also a great way to sell a lot of books.). Counterintuitive, right? There are millions of examples that pop into my mind about this theory. Exercise: Listen to some assertions in the media that claim to be scientific. And not only expanding, but expanding faster and faster. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection can be inspiring: perhaps youre awed by the vastness of geologic time or marvel at the variety of Earths creatures. In any science, though, you have areas of inquiry where there is not an existing theory that makes precise predictions. When it solidifies, bonds form between the Na+ and S2O32- ions, releasing energy, which raises the temperature. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. 3. Are they just keeping silent about conflicts of interest? More dangerous than defying common sense, though, was Galileos defiance of the Catholic Church. 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. To save this word, you'll need to log in. Brokers love to use this one to their advantage. One must not just take the word of a powerful consensus. One thing I have to explain is why, if my idea is so great, people didnt consider it earlier. And what we think of asmemories are merely storieswe tell ourselves anew each time we recall an event. Explanations may be beyond most at age 1114, but the experiments can still be fun. The more familiar I get with special relativity the less strange it seems; I'm not sure if quantum intuition is attainable, but grasping why relativity is true is, I think, possible. Definition of Counterintuitive. Don't ever get too comfortable with the status quo, always be willing to blow it up and start . The fascinating story behind many people's favori Can you handle the (barometric) pressure? Most people who haven't studied physics still don't appreciate this. The rest comes in two flavors of dark, or unknown stuff: dark matter, at 23 percent of the universe, anddark energy, at a whopping 73 percent: Scientists have some ideas about what dark matter might beexotic and still hypothetical particlesbut they have hardly a clue about dark energy. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Everything you probably think of when you think of the universeplanets, stars, galaxies, black holes, dustmakes up just 4 percent of whatever is out there. Bell's theorem and general quantum weirdness. This is how early steam engines worked. A good example is pedagogical use of discrepant events (Gonzlez-Espada et al 2010)counter-intuitive science demonstrations. Beyond the reach of formal theory, scientistsdevelop educated guesses, hunches, and speculations based on their knowledge and experience. When we were in school, we always thought that we were pretty smart kids. Press J to jump to the feed. Small things act like waves except for the times they don't. If something is counterintuitive it means its the opposite of intuitive in other words its not easily understood in an instinctive, unconscious way. In a final example of counterintuitive findings, Live Science now claims that brain size didn't . Most professors don't even seem to want to give a hint of the truth behind things. Removing energy from the surroundings causes cooling, so the temperature drops. It takes honesty and courage to report findings that dont make sense or go against common knowledge.. You have to act in the short amount of time after crossing the slit and before impacting the screen. Galileo got more grief for the idea than Copernicus did. However, their 25-year-old systems can't handle the massive amount of streaming data from IoT . information, these science educators strategically resort to examples and problems designed to defy students' intuitive thinking. Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way. No one can explain why anything happens down there, and there might not be an answer. 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). Clamp the tube in a beaker of ice and water. The distinction between the two is clear (now). A recent accumulation of archaeological findings from around the world shows that it was surprisingly common for people to ritually killand sometimes eatother people. (But its true in other sciences too, probably more than we appreciate.) 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. Viscosity of gases increases with increasing temperature. 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. Ask children about this and they will never believe it. Abstract. A counterintuitive proposition is one that does not seem likely to be true when assessed using intuition or gut feelings.

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counterintuitive examples in science

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