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Re: [Phys-l] Teachable moments in the popular press



Such teachable moments occur often in the press, and a collection of
them would be a helpful resource for teachers. Newspapers' fact
checkers probably don't have the physics background necessary to
correct problems that quite naturally arise when a nonscientist
writes a technical story.

Please contribute your own favorites. I will share mine later in the
discussion.

This sounds like fun! Here are a couple from my collection:

First, to whet your appetite, from the Sacramento Bee's "Sacramento File" sometime in the late 1980's:

"The Natural Resources Committee sent to between-sessions study a bill ... to require disposable diapers sold in California after 1994 to be biodegradable. The author said the law is needed to prevent state landfills from bursting at the seems. An estimated 4 million diapers are tossed away each year in California."

But one of my all time favorites has to have been an L.A. Times article from the same period about the Voyager spacecraft which read, in part:

"The Voyager is now nearly a million and a half miles beyond Neptune, speeding toward space at nearly 38,000 mph. Its speed is less now because it is fighting Neptune's gravity instead of being pulled by it as it heads off toward its first encounter with another star. It is due to pass within about 25 trillion miles of Bernard's [sic] Star in the year 8571."

--
John "Slo" Mallinckrodt

Professor of Physics, Cal Poly Pomona
<http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm>

and

Lead Guitarist, Out-Laws of Physics
<http://www.csupomona.edu/~hsleff/OoPs.html>