We ’ve all hear stories about killers in the back seat and puppies that move around out to be puke , but hapless heroines are n’t the only ace who engender urban legends . There are a number of urban legends about famous scientists . Some are funny , some are simple inaccuracies , and some are about commit execution by chance event .
10 . Galileo Drops the Cannonballs
This makes the list because it is probably everyone ’s very first skill urban caption . Galileo , an acknowledged whiz during his life-time , go up to the top of the leaning tower of Pisa with two cannonballs of dissimilar weight unit . He dropped them over the side , and as they both touched the ground at the same prison term , he proved to everyone watch that heavy objects do not light quicker than light ones . It ’s a fun narration to teach untested kids , and it gets the point across . Unfortunately , Galileo ’s experiment were n’t as well-defined . He was in Pisa when he prove that gravitational acceleration is equal for heavy and loose objects , but perform a number of experiments . He stray balls down long wooden ramps , made pendulum of different weights , and yes , occasionally dropped objects . He just did n’t cast off them off the Leaning Tower , because as we ’ll see later on in this list , his genius was restrain to science , not public relations .
9 . Lilavati Is Science Eve
Lilavati was the girl of Bhaskara , a twelfth century Amerind mathematician and philosopher . Ever habituate zero ? If you have , you’re able to thank Bhaskara , who follow up with the symbolic representation , and wrote about its various mathematical properties . One of his Bible , in which he describe a dizzying amount of numerical , galactic , and geographic phenomenon , is address Lilavati . That was also the name of his daughter . When she was about to be hook up with , Bhaskara worked out via star divination ( hey , everyone has flaw ) that her bridegroom would die out young unless they married at a sure hour .
To help oneself her get the hr mighty , he gave her a water system clock — a loving cup with a small muddle in the bottom that would be site in a bowl of water . It slowly takes on piddle , and sinks after a set amount of prison term . He narrate her not to go near it , so of path Lilavati waited until he was out of the room and ran right up to it . A off-white from her nozzle ring fell into it and disturb it , causing the matrimony to take place at the ill-timed hour , and the groom to give-up the ghost young . If you ask me , it ’s Bhaskara ’s fault for not bothering to explicate the clock to his girl . Leave the estimate of pi out of your book and explain how a cup with a hole in it works , dude . That ca n’t take too long .
8 . Archimedes Was Deathly consecrated to Research
Archimedes has so many legends associated with him that it ’s hard to pick one . He bump upon a solvent to a problem while in the bathing tub and ladder around naked screeching , “ Eureka ! ” He invented a giant claw that destroy ships and a jumbo estrus ray that also destroyed ship . My preferred fable , though , have-to doe with his expiry . He was in Syracuse when it was conquered by General Marcus Claudius Marcellus . Marcellus ordered that Archimedes ’ life be spared .
From there there are two versions of the story . One has a soldier break into the Archimedes ’ home base and demanding to bed who he is , but Archimedes but tells him not to mess up up some calculations he ’d been making in the shit . The soldier kill him . The other history has the soldier telling him to come in converge Marcellus , and Archimedes telling him to go aside until after he has solved the problem he was puzzle out on . The soldier got mad and killed him . Either way , I empathise with the soldier . I ’m not taking attitude from a guy who has been lash out me with a last ray .
7 . Alfred Nobel Collects Two Legends
Alfred Nobel had a duo of caption swirling around him . The first is that he create the Nobel Prizes because he read his own untimely obituary . Nobel had invented dynamite , which he had hoped would be a safe excavation material , but actually became a weapon . When his onetime brother Ludvig died , the papers mistake him for Alfred , and bring out the famous line , “ The merchant of death is beat . ” Legend has it that Nobel saw this newspaper headline and in secret endue the pillage to exchange his legacy . This is unlikely , since he jibe with hoi polloi regarding the prizes for a farsighted time prior to his death . In fact , many say it was just his way of gain the sciences that interest him .
The 2d legend bear on the first prizes given out . Nobel specified that prizes be present for , “ physics , chemistry , medicine , lit , and public security . ” He did n’t include math , although much was being done with maths at the time of his dying . The legend goes that he intentionally snubbed mathematicians because one had an affair with his married woman . This is unlikely , as Nobel never married .
6 . NASA Scientists confirm the Old Testament
Sometime in the sixties , NASA scientist were doing calculation regarding the past and present motions of the satellite . They found their computing were off by one day . Puzzling . They went over everything again . Again , it appeared that one day just had n’t happened . It was miss from history . But how could that be ? One of their phone number then remembered the Bible , and in fussy Joshua 10:13 .
“ So the sun stand still , And the moon kibosh , Till the mass had revengeUpon their enemies . ”
Yup , accord to the Bible , the moon and planet did n’t move for one whole day . Once the scientists realized this , they could continue with their calculations . Of of course , scientists can only predict the succeeding movement of the planets , not check to see how they were moving in the past . There is no way they could have noticed a day was “ missing ” in the first station , so the story does n’t make sense .
5 . Einstein Failed His Fourth Grade Math Class
No . No he did n’t . Moving on .
4 . Jakob Ackeret Did n’t Prove a Bumblebee Should n’t be able-bodied to Fly
Jakob Ackeret was one of the most respected expert on aerodynamics of the 20th 100 . If you ’ve ever discover a pilot in the movie saying that they ’re going “ Mach 9 , ” you could thank Ackeret ; he come up up with the concept and the terminus . He was a legend , and he seems to have collide with yet another urban legend . multitude had hear the old canard about how physicist take the bumblebee and determined that it should n’t be able-bodied to fly .
Somehow , people start guess that the legend had rebound up as the upshot of a badly mangled interpretation of one of his composition . They stressed that he did n’t come to the conclusion , just that people who had take his workplace had twisted his parole . really , Ackeret should never have been involve , even in a legend about a caption . The real source of the bumblebee myth came from two scientist , Antoine Magnan and André Saint - Lagué , who did a straightaway calculation on a nappy that involved assuming the bumblebee ’s wings were rigid and that it could not change their slant with relation to its trunk . Neither they , nor anyone else , meant to take the idea severely , but masses like the conception and observe repeating it .
3 . Niels Bohr Deliberately fail a mental testing to Show Up the Testing Committee
A instructor gives a test to physics students that asks them how they would quantify the height of a construction using a barometer . One student says he would go to the top of the building tie a string to the barometer , lower it down , and measure the strand . The teacher fails him , but the student protests that it was a correct answer . A committee is assemble to re - judge the student . He shows up and gives many dissimilar ways to use the barometer ( disdainfully include the way the teacher was originally expect for ) , and finally says , “ Or you could go to the janitor and tell him that you ’ll give him a barometer if he tell you the height of the building . ” To be honest , I ’m kind of surprised this is mostly attributed to Bohr . It seems like the form of objectionable , show - off move that would be assign to Richard Feynman .
2 . Vesalius Dissected a Living Person
Andreas Vesalius became cognize as “ The Father of Anatomy ” for hack up corpses , and also became known as an accidental liquidator for hacking up a live individual . dissection were n’t vernacular in the 1500s , and so when he dissected the soundbox of a recently - accomplish felon in Basel , Switzerland , it raised a few brow . Vesalius did careful dissection , and impart detailed trope of the torso , including their skeletons , organ , muscular tissue , and nerves .
In 1564 , he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem , but his ship was wrecked and he croak before he could discover passage back to Europe . After he give-up the ghost , an ambassador named Hubert Languet , who evidently enjoy embellishing the truth , start a rumor that never entirely die away . He claim that Vesalius was cutting into the consistency of a Spanish blue blood , slowly peeling away skin and musculus , until he in the end descend to the heart … which was beating . The man had been sick , not dead . Vesalius had kill him and fled into exile .
1 . Galileo break Attitude to the Inquisition
Galileo Galilei bookend this leaning because he ’s the center of two urban legends — one regarding his scientific work and one regarding his character . He made the confutable call of include a caricature of the reigning Alexander Pope in his record book about the heliocentric nature of the solar organization . And calling that caricature what basically translates as “ Dummy . ”
Although his fame kept him from sense the full wrath of the Inquisition , his books were burn , he was put under mansion apprehension , and he was forced to publicly abjure his previous claims . As he sign the paper stating that the Earth is the firm center of the universe , he muttered to himself , “ And yet it move . ” It was one , terminal , peaceful - fast-growing finger to hoi polloi he found frustratingly stupid . Whether you ’re committed to integrity or to snarky backbiting , it ’s kind of badass . alas , it never materialise . The first account of such a command begin over a hundred year after Galileo ’s last , in a al-Qur’an called The Italian Library . It was such a good story that it was repeated , despite having no cornerstone in fact .
[ ViaPBS , Datatorch , NYU , Science News , NASA , Snopes ]
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