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Re: science myth



Abhishek Roy wrote:

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Tim O'Donnell wrote:

I am sure this is a complete science myth.
A duck's quack does not echo.
How can I verify/falsify this without getting a duck?

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_071.html


One of those "interesting facts" that gets put onto multiple lists that
are posted on web sites and passed to 100+ people at a time in annoying
emails. For those who care to find out which of these supposed facts
are true there are web sites devoted to such -
http://www.snopes2.com/spoons/fracture/fracture.htm - for example, but
then there's the old problem of who to believe. This site is good for
many of the classics such as "people only use 10% of their brain". My
favorite among the classics is that any piece of paper can be folded at
most 7 times. A person can reasonable try a test on this one, and it
will appear to be confirmed. Due to the exponential nature of folding
this is not bad as a first approximation for standard pieces of paper -
but the "any piece of paper" bit is certainly overstatement.

For what its worth, the site above does discuss the duck quack myth
http://www.snopes2.com/spoons/fracture/duckecho.htm and is particularly
rude about this one because it seems to be so prevalent on lists of
"facts". They suggest that its impossible to ever keep up with
debunking such lists because anybody at all can make up a new list
"Ostrich eggs have no yolks, and nobody knows why" and I would add that
there's no shortage of people who would gladly make them up as a kind of
sport to see which new myths survive.


\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\

Doug Craigen
http://www.dctech.com/physics/about_dc.html