counterintuitive examples in science

Now I wonder what my intuitions are about the meaning of the word counterintuitive, and what sort of information about the way the word is used might contradict those intuitions. I tend to think of intuitions as thoughts that pop into our heads as the result of conditioned reflexes, even if that conditioning is part of scientific training. Students can reverse the experiment starting with frozen cyclohexane and warming it in a beaker of hot water, recording temperatures until it returns to about 15oC. 3. Trigger freezing by stirring, or seeding with a small ice fragment. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Even tuberculosis, the disease that killed Frederic Chopin and Henry David Thoreau, is making a comeback, in part because some strains of the bacterium have developed multi-drug resistance. The English actor found the good side of being bad, Theres a little bit of The Dude in a lot of Jeff Bridges performances. But some microbes are evolving faster than we can find ways to fight them. 5. What to take? When thats your multiplier, you dont need much massa smidgen of plutonium is plentyto create enough energy to destroy a city. Even in the 21st century, its quite possible to die of consumption. Milgram famously did that with his obedience experiments. The Role of Counterintuitive Examples in Statistics Education . Early empirical studies including those . Counter Intuitive Thinking Examples . Laura Helmuth The definition of counterintuitive is something that goes against what you believe would be logical, or something that goes against common sense. I agree that exceptions to good goes with good are often interesting, but not necessarily because they are counterintuitive. How to use counterintuitive in a sentence. Concubines were sacrificed in China to be eternal companions; certain Indian sects required human sacrifices. For example, you probably wouldntsay that the double-slit experiment was counterintuitive; youdsay it falsified classical mechanics. Your Privacy Rights This person's common sense isn't off-base. The Bible gives a good general principle: Test all things; hold fast what is good (I Thessalonians 5:21). Invert the flask, so the thermometer bulb is in the hot water. The reality is not so simple. First of all, you need to understand what does counterintuitive mean. In a taste test, youre likely to have a strong preference for the first sample you tasteeven if all of the samples are identical. Please report trolls and incorrect/misleading comments. These ideas, be it physics or biology . The contradictory ideas might even have made their way into cultural wisdom like birds of a feather flock together versus opposites attract.. There's that Galileo who said heavy things don't fall faster than light things. | READ MORE. Steam pushes a piston upwards. It's not so unintuitive with topological arguments. Learn a new word every day. Does the replication debate have a diversityproblem? Things that taste good are bad for you. The second and third are a given. There are human values, which are reliant on soft skills. Here are ten of the biggest threats to our . But when the stock goes back down to $50, you only lose 33%. The counter-intuitive example that comes to mind for me deals with percents. Honestly, take a moment to consider what the natural environment and current technologies are capable of. Students are familiar with everyday examples of freezing, melting and boiling, but are likely to think temperature always falls during freezing and rises during melting or boiling. Both processes require energy, which comes from the immediate surroundings. Scientists, like other people, are tempted to fall into the trap of assumption and conformity to expectations. Likewise, a series of short arti-cles on counter intuitive problems can be found Ever since the late 19th century, physicists have known about a counterintuitive property of some electric circuits called negative resistance. Bond formation releases energy, counteracting the energy removed by the iced water. We have just begun to see the effects of human-induced climate change, and the predictions for whats to come range from dire to catastrophic. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. It's genuinely remarkable, and chances are you're only aware of a small portion of the fascinating and bizarre facts discovered by scientists thus far. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Welcome to Forum 2.1 the upgrade to Version 2.1.2 of SMF, Started by Turbonegro, September 28, 2011, 07:45:31 AM. Bad news that cult recovery group just might be a cult, Theres a little bit of The Dude in a lot of Jeff Bridges performances, The English actor found the good side of being bad. University of Chicago cosmologist Michael S. Turner ranks dark energy as the most profound mystery in all of science.. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. The initial boiling produces steam, flushing the air from the flask, which is then sealed. Student cognition in response to intuitive and counterintuitive stimuli in the school science curriculum is not well understood. Small things act like waves except for the times they don't. After all, we are the field that specializes in measuring and explaining peoples intuitions. How could something so obvious be wrong? It made Einstein furious. Simine Vazire has a great post contemplating how we should evaluate counterintuitive claims. Advanced students should also realise that solvation of the ions releases energy, but less than the input needed to break down the ice and salt lattices. And there's the first part of Newton's very first law: Bodies in motion remain in m. Also. The rest comes in two flavors of dark, or unknown stuff: dark matter, at 23 percent of the universe, anddark energy, at a whopping 73 percent: Scientists have some ideas about what dark matter might beexotic and still hypothetical particlesbut they have hardly a clue about dark energy. It takes honesty and courage to report findings that dont make sense or go against common knowledge.. Theyre also likely to suggest a liquids temperature drops while it solidifies. Since water expands when it freezes, bodies of water freeze from the top-down, not bottom-up, allowing for life to survive and flourish under the ice. The mass-independent pendulum's period of oscillation is a consequence of the same pull from the force of gravity to every object regardless of its mass. But on balance, human taste preferences evolved during times of scarcity, when it made sense for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to gorge on as much salt and fat and sugar as possible. and mturk didnt exist.) The gauge shift comes from the particle looping around a topological defect (the magnetic field threading the plane, effectively making the space into a punctured plane), in effect changes the topological quantum number (electric/magnetic charge) of the particle, since the punctured plane is not homotopically trivial. Accountable replications at Royal Society Open Science: A model for scientificpublishing, The replication price-drop in socialpsychology, Reflections on SIPS (guest post by Neil Lewis,Jr.), Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. The waters temperature is now above its new, lower boiling point, so it boils again. You can accomplish more if you work less and sleep more. Some of the effects seen with superfluid liquid helium, but particularly the way that it can climb up out of a cup and drain down the sides. The consequences are already apparent:glaciers are meltingfaster than ever, flowers are blooming earlier (just askHenry David Thoreau), and plants and animals are moving to more extreme latitudes and altitudes to keep cool. Attributing any disaster to a century-long trend is very hard to prove. Something that is counter-intuitive does not happen in the way you would expect it to: 2. All the good ones! Some temperature changes are counter-intuitive, as can be shown by simple investigations. The screen does not change. (Military) intelligence collected about enemy espionage. To freeze a liquid you must cool it down, but what happens to the temperature when the liquid solidifies? Some temperature changes are counter-intuitive, as can be shown by simple investigations. And besides, researchers are continuously learning new things. I prefer instead of valuing being counter-intuitive, to value counter-examples to the idea that all good things go together (or all bad things go together). 1. There again is the problem of unknowns, and of unknown unknowns. When the Coen Brothers needed someone to show The Dude how to really roll, they could turn to only one man: Hall of Fame professional bowler Barry Asher, Below you, an entire other world operates. So we have an extra source of intuitions the intuitions of people who are living the phenomena that we study. Be wary of scientific "facts" that are untrue (unlike the very real 34 on just this list). It's just something that's easy to observe in a real experiment because the enthalpy of fusion is much greater than the enthalpy of heating (for a lack of a better term). Special relativity, then, is a perfectly reasonable and elegent way to formalize this notion. How to help students develop their practical skills. If something is counterintuitive it means it's the opposite of intuitive in other words it's not easily understood in an instinctive, unconscious way. I think it's one of those funny little things about the universe that one of the most ubiquitous substancesso much so that you sort of ignore it and take it for granted.is actually in some way one of the most complicated and oddly-behaving substances we know of. But other human foiblesthe desire to be accepted, time pressure, conflicts of interest (e.g., expectations of funding sources), interfere and can compromise that ideal. Supercooled water can be found in clouds. 1. Whereas the exceptions tend to have a narrower list of plausible explanations. 1, The weight of a BPA is given by the BPAs of the other evidence.In Fig. The temperature drops as expected, but the water unexpectedly boils again for a while. 9. What if we talked about p-hacking the way we talk about experimentereffects? While intuition and misconceptions continue to be of great interest to mathematics and science educators, there has been little research, much less consensus or even internal consistency, in statistics curriculum development concerning the role of examples with counterintuitive . 5 Are counterintuitive findings more valuable? The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". 'Hiemal,' 'brumation,' & other rare wintry words. The most common example of Bernoulli's principle is that of a fluid flowing through a horizontal pipe, which narrows in the middle and then opens up again. 1. Mastodons may have been some of the earliest victims. Bobs never bought Christmas seals he told me he wouldnt know what to feed them, When the Coen Brothers needed someone to show The Dude how to really roll, they could turn to only one man: Hall of Fame professional bowler Barry Asher. The more often you see a person or an object, the more youll like it. Counterintuitive claim: Prices are determined by supply and demand. Every once in a while, a dolt drops a gem. undergraduate science education course with their teaching practice experience in local classrooms. The definition of counterintuitive is something that goes against what you believe would be logical, or something that goes against common sense. As humans moved from continent to continent, large animals that had thrived for millions of years began to disappearmastodons in North America, giant kangaroos in Australia, dwarf elephants in Europe. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection can be inspiring: perhaps youre awed by the vastness of geologic time or marvel at the variety of Earths creatures. Record the temperature. 2. After the previous experiment, students may predict that it rises. Frequency: The definition of counterintuitive is something that goes against what you believe would be logical, or something that goes against common sense. Send us feedback. Like everything you do just doesn't seem to work out? This might occur in instances where intuition changes with knowledge. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. When treating someone badly makes him like you more instead of less, this is an example of something that is counterintuitive. Advertising Notice Below you, an entire other world operates, Many interesting behind-the-scenes bits have happened during the 20 years of telling tales about our favorite trailer-park residents. Antibiotics and vaccines have saved millions of lives; without these wonders of modern medicine, many of us would have died in childhood of polio, mumps or smallpox. Science seems to always challenge our intuitive understanding of the world. It's like trying to plunge your hand into a (hypothetical) fluid in liquid state and one that is starting to freeze and get denser. If youre in a happy, optimistic, ambitious mood, check the weather. Melting sodium thiosulfate crystals, then cooling them to a state well below the melting point causes the supercooled liquid to freeze rapidly when a crystal of sodium thiosulfate is added, or the mixture is stirred. Thomas Jefferson saw mastodon bones from Kentucky, for example, and concluded that the giant animals must still be living somewhere in the interior of the continent. This is why it irritates me that we lie to undergrads about these things so much. Posts should be pertinent, meme-free, and generate a discussion about physics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGXqFOO8utA. However in the Kondo effect you see the opposite, the resistivity actually starting going up as you get colder. What is 'counterintuitive'? So true! Off the top of my head I'm going to guess that some of the energy the conducting electrons "receive" from the source will be dissipated to "heat up" the material. Part of the problem is the mismatch between scientific terms and their common use. If water didn't have this property, life on Earth as we know it probably wouldn't exist. The time between two objects colliding due to gravity is inversely proportional to the sum of the two masses. That seems pretty simple and counterintuitive. You don't say who you're target audience is, so it's hard to tell. Bell's theorem and general quantum weirdness. In this, they agree with a Prager U video (YouTube). Supercooling can be linked to the previous topic. Similarly, we understand boil the kettle to mean heat the water to boiling point, not turn it into steam. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. to ask them what their predictions would be about our main study in our 2008 paper (Vazire & Mehl, JPSP). This is easy to work out with Bernoulli's principle, but you also need to make use of the continuity equation to work it out, which states: A_1v_1= A_2v_2 A1v1 = A2v2. In order to enjoy things you always need to think about the negative side of them. Definition of Counterintuitive. Here are just a few of those craziest facts out there! 10. Beyond a certain threshold of intelligence and skill, the efficacy bottlenecks quickly become your ability to communicate, get along with others, prioritize, focus, structure your thinking in advance, manage your time well, etc. Perhaps the best example is quantum physics where many scientists believe that some quantum processes do not have any cause whatsoever. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". 5y. But if, after the experiment, you go back and erase the information about which slit each photon went through, then the interference pattern magically appears on the screen. (Very long termthe study is now enrolling the grandchildren of the original volunteers.) Normally things contract, which makes intuitive sense. Nature: The anus is a sophisticated organ. We dont always know what we think we know. Animal Testing Is Necessary. They can also reinforce enthalpy changes, and bond breaking or making, for ages 1618. The human genome (the genetic code in each human cell) contains 23 DNA molecules . Delivered to your inbox! Anyone can plainly see that the Sun and stars rise in the east, sweep across the sky and set in the west; the Earth feels stable and stationary. Newtonian mechanics implies that causal relationships are unconstrained by distance - at first glance this seems uncontroversial, but upon reflection its clear that this contradicts our folk notions of causality. And the hot water freezing faster than cold water isn't a real effect. Common sense does not always follow this route, and may include social biases, assumptions, and even a lack of facts. Typically, increasing the voltage in a circuit . For me, its got to be the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. More dangerous than defying common sense, though, was Galileos defiance of the Catholic Church. He asked Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out for them. Place a thermometer in a test tube of cyclohexane so that its scale remains visible from 0oC upwards. ARTICLES SCIENCE 16 FACTS THAT ARE JUST PLAIN COUNTERINTUITIVE 16 Facts That Are Just Plain Counterintuitive. Weve had more than 400 years to get used to the idea, but its still a little unsettling. The experiments below illustrate counter-intuitive temperature changes in interesting ways for 1416 year olds. When students compare their predictions with what actually happens to temperature in these scenarios, there will be lots to think about and discuss. In the stock market, if you buy and stock for $50 and it goes up to $75 you make 50%. Self-knowledge / self-deception is probably another one of those areas where the relationship between research findings and peoples intuitions has deeper, substantive significance. The drug is the first of its kind and replicates the signaling of two . It and subsequent ambitious and painstaking epidemiological studies have shown that ones risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, certain kinds of cancer and other health problems increases in a dose-dependent manner upon exposure to delicious food. Honestly, take a moment to consider what the natural environment and current technologies are capable of. This is your Brain on Psychology This is your Psychology on Brain (a guest post by RobChavez), Data analysis is thinking, data analysis istheorizing. Adding more salt will cause more melting, and the temperature will drop further. A couple of coins for the ferryman? The thermometer scale from about 20oC upwards must be visible above the bung, so a long thermometer may be better. Starting Early: The Benefits of Teaching Counterintuitive Concepts in Childhood. MiigPT 7 yr. ago. darkmighty 7 yr. ago. Im reminded of the description of Steven Levitt as a rogue economist, a characterization that seems inappropriate to me, given that he received his Ph.D. from MIT, holds the title of Alvin H. Baum Professor at the University of Chicago, and has served as editor of the completely mainstream Journal of Political Economy. Our ape ancestry conflicts with every cultures creation myth and isnt particularly intuitive, buteverything weve learnedsince thenin biology, geology, genetics, paleontology, even chemistry and physicssupports his great insight. The distinction between the two is clear (now). Here are ten of the biggest threats to our peace of mind. When it comes to QM, however, I agree completely. To call someone an asshole is really bragging him up.". Identify whether they are grounded in hearsay, assumption, intuition or groupthink. The Big Bang was a quantum event and the universe at one time was as tiny as a quantum particle. It is now salt water, which has a lower freezing point than fresh water. Without science education and discipline, most biological minds rely on belief systems to explain phenomena. But other human foiblesthe desire to be accepted, time pressure, conflicts of interest (e.g., expectations of funding sources), interfere and can compromise that ideal. For the past 151 years, sinceOn the Origin of Specieswas published, people have been arguing over evolution. Then you are doing classical field theory and are trying to find a first order equation and out pops spinors and the clifford algebra in a completely classical scenario. For example, let's say a company invested in IoT systems to gain an edge in data-driven insights. Heat the flask until the water boils and steam issues from the rubber tube. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced searchad free! Further rogue credentials revealed by Levitts online C.V. include an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a research fellowship with the American Bar Foundation, membership in the Harvard Society of Fellows, a fellowship at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a stint as a consultant for Corporate Decisions, Inc.. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. I guess that's kind of a counterintuitive thing in its own right, phase changes require a heck of a lot more energy than heating or cooling by a lot does, but in a properly controlled experiment, cold water will freeze faster than hot. Our personal epistemology (philosophy of knowledge) is often based on intuition, which can be mistaken. I've spoken before about my daily routines and how I like to exercise and meditate very day. Half fill a funnel with small ice cubes or crushed ice. It's Time for 20 Percent Talent. Somehow, gum made out of tree bark is still softer than Bazooka. Third year of physics, and the first time I heard that, it boggled my mind, still kinda does, but I'm more used to it now. There is enough DNA in the average person's body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back 17 times. Beyond the reach of formal theory, scientists develop educated guesses, hunches, and speculations based on their knowledge and experience. What is the most surprising and counterintuitive finding in science that you can think of? Kim Scott, once the head of Google's AdSense and . Edit: for more information check out Schwarz's Quantum Field Theory and Topology. It can be loosely stated that the particle that looped around and came back is not the "same particle" that left, since they have different topological character. This is a simple demonstration, but even post-16 students often struggle to explain the results. "If we want to know how the brain makes memory and uses memory, we need to make people do things like learn stuff and then remember it. Freud might have been wrong in the details, but one of his main ideasthat a lot of our behaviors and beliefs and emotions are driven by factors we are unaware ofturns out to be correct. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Removing energy from the surroundings causes cooling, so the temperature drops. In everyday language 'freezing' or 'melting' involves cooling or heating, but in science the term refers only to the changing physical . If something is counterintuitive it means it's the opposite of "intuitive" in other words, it's not easily understood in an instinctive, unconscious way. To address this issue, this study examines high school students . When it solidifies, bonds form between the Na+ and S2O32- ions, releasing energy, which raises the temperature. It's actually what inspired Galileo to make such an assertion about gravity. we of course used these results to show how counterintuitive our actual results were. For the general public that have not had the opportunity to be exposed to the process of science, one of the most counterintuitive things is this: Logic and Common Sense are not the same thing. Clamp the flask and insert the bung, ensuring that the clip is open. But big scientific discoveries are by nature counterintuitive and sometimes shocking. Introducing a delay function to our simple negative feedback loop will produce an unexpected oscillation (a counterintuitive behavior). A skilled writer can exploit the same mechanisms that lead to hindsight bias to set people up, andthen surprise! A look at a few examples of counter-intuitive conclusions will illustrate these problems. At room temperature, the thiosulfate is a supercooled liquid it is below its freezing point, but has remained liquid. Some flowers, maybe, or mementos of your loved ones? For me that brings up the question: what do we mean when we say something is counterintuitive?. But who would have thought that rain moves mountains? :). ( kantrntjutv) adj. Something we don't currently know could be unearthed tomorrow so that we can always broaden our horizons and our stock of random tidbits to amuse our friends. Part of the problem is the mismatch between scientific terms and their common use. Maybe; maybe not. The paper in the Journal of Dairy Science says that Research was supported by Dairy Management Inc. (Rosemont, IL) and asserts that The authors have not stated any conflicts of interest. What does that mean? For present purposes, suffice it to say that he believes some of the scientists pushing mandatory face masks overlooked some relevant factors. CEH has not analyzed the conclusions of Gnter Kampf in this Letter to PNAS. We should also revisit why we think counterintuitive is valuable. 2 What is another word for counterintuitive? You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. It has long been believed by the medical and scientific community that the gender identity of . I realize I'm preaching to the converted in this subreddit, but it's always worth remembering the difference to help understand others' view of science. Boyer originally did not precisely specify the number of expectation-violations that would render an idea maximally counterintuitive. The fascinating story behind many people's favori Can you handle the (barometric) pressure? Since these researchers are moyboys, readers should take that into account. The Aztecs slaughtered tens of thousands of people to inaugurate the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan; after sacredMayan ballgames, the losing team was sometimes sacrificed. But after doing some more research, we realized that sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction.

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counterintuitive examples in science