A Mind is a Horrible Thing...

[ymarkov]

...to waste, and in general :-)

Saw this, and it reminded me of the science fair I attended recently at my daughter's Bais Yaakov. There were a lot of neat projects, but two stood out in my mind - not for content, but for conclusions.

For the first one, the author tested the hypothesis that acid rain is bad for plants. She planted two sets of beans and watered one with water and the other with sulfuric acid (a weak solution, but still way stronger than any acid rain). Expecting the latter set to grow weaker, she instead detected no difference in the growth of the two. Her conclusion was, nevertheless, that acid rain is bad (and it is - but not based on her experimental data).

For the other one the author hypothesized that organic plants are healthier and better. She, too, grew two sets of plants, with natural and artificial fertilizers. The latter set turned out visibly better, but the conclusion still ignored the data. (She did, however, supply a few possible explanations.)

But there were a couple of other projects where the hypothesis was disproved and the girl went with the results!

Comments

[ymarkov.livejournal.com]

I don't know enough about this. The girl didn't offer the most obvious explanation - that her chosen plants were unusually hardy and resistant to acid - and instead quoted an online source about harm caused by acid rain.