Daryl Quiz--Oops, Time to Study

Well for starters, my score on this quiz was 11/25. Wow, I sure hope my students can do better than I did one day.

Many of the questions were tricky and I switched my answer back and forth, multiple times on many of them. I am an avid Reader's Digest fan and have actually read about several of the common misconceptions talked about in this quiz, so I was able to catch some of the tricky ones.

Hello, Darwin and Edison fans...ever heard of being a team player? Both of these answers surprised me. Growing up it is nailed into your brain that Darwinism, evolution, monkey theory (whatever we are calling it today) is the theory that humans are derivatives of apes. Since evolution verses religion is always a hot topic, I feel the is one of the reasons that the ape theory gets pushed so hard. People against evolution can skew what Darwin was trying to say (meaning that we can from some ancestor) making the theory sound more outlandish than it really is.

The answer regarding Thomas Edison was one of the questions I went back and forth on. Poor Mr. Swan, he has been all, but forgotten in our society. I think advances in sharing knowledge such as news papers and telegraphs are what make us lean towards giving all the credit to the later person. Communication was more improved by the time Edison rolled around which means more people new of his invention and more people heard about the lightbulb. This kind of goes along with what we were talking about in class regarding sharing your knowledge as a scientist.

Do not even get me started on Columbus! If you haven't already been able to tell, I am an anti Columbus fan. As we get more and more technology, it becomes more clear that Columbus was nothing more than a drunk who took advantage of indians and claimed what was not his. Now, he does deserve credit for being a wonderful explorer, but he was not the first, nor the best, and must certainly won't be the last. To me, Columbus is being more and more like an old child's fable like Paul Bunyan. A story that gives children a visual of what could of happened, but in reality most of the story is false.

Many of the other answers surprised me as well. What this quiz showed me is just how important it is to research information and not just go off what someone has told you. Science is about testing what has already been proven and in the result it is always changing. As a science teacher, it is important to take the extra time to research and teach children the facts. This would be a fun quiz to use at the beginning of a 5th or 6th grade class to get them thinking about what they really know.