No, it isn't a quiz or a trivia game.
Lately, I've increased my reading of popular science books, and have been struck by some of the odd quirks in the history of science, such as Newton's Principia being the result of a dinner wager and Darwin's fascination with earthworms. I thought I'd start a thread where people could post any science oddities they've come across. Might be a bit of a giggle. Here's one I especially like:
Christiaan Huygens is generally regarded as one of the premier scientific minds of all time. He discovered Titan with a vastly improved telescope of his own design, propagated the wave theory of light, invented the pendulum clock, and (with help from Pascal) more or less invented probability theory.
Clever lad, and no mistake. But in his posthumously published Cosmotheoros, he produced a rather bizarre 'proof' for the existence of hemp plantations on Jupiter. It runs like this:
1. Earth's moon serves as a navigational aide for mariners.
2. Jupiter has four moons [all that were known in Huygens' time], so there must be whopping great number of mariners on Jupiter.
3. Mariners imply ships.
4. Ships imply sails.
5. Sails imply rope.
6. Ropes imply hemp.
7. With at least four times as many mariners on Jupiter as on Earth, hemp must be a large industry, requiring extensive plantations.
We all make mistakes...
Boru
Lately, I've increased my reading of popular science books, and have been struck by some of the odd quirks in the history of science, such as Newton's Principia being the result of a dinner wager and Darwin's fascination with earthworms. I thought I'd start a thread where people could post any science oddities they've come across. Might be a bit of a giggle. Here's one I especially like:
Christiaan Huygens is generally regarded as one of the premier scientific minds of all time. He discovered Titan with a vastly improved telescope of his own design, propagated the wave theory of light, invented the pendulum clock, and (with help from Pascal) more or less invented probability theory.
Clever lad, and no mistake. But in his posthumously published Cosmotheoros, he produced a rather bizarre 'proof' for the existence of hemp plantations on Jupiter. It runs like this:
1. Earth's moon serves as a navigational aide for mariners.
2. Jupiter has four moons [all that were known in Huygens' time], so there must be whopping great number of mariners on Jupiter.
3. Mariners imply ships.
4. Ships imply sails.
5. Sails imply rope.
6. Ropes imply hemp.
7. With at least four times as many mariners on Jupiter as on Earth, hemp must be a large industry, requiring extensive plantations.
We all make mistakes...
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
