Quotes on Science Literacy

And I don't care what else anyone has ever told you, the Sun is white, not yellow. Human color perception is a complicated business, but if the Sun were yellow, like a yellow lightbulb, then white stuff such as snow would reflect this light and appear yellow-a snow condition confirmed to happen only near fire hydrants.

Last I checked, Bill Gates was worth $50 billion. If the average employed adult, who is walking in a hurry, will pick up a quarter from the sidewalk, but not a dime, then the corresponding amount of money given their relative wealth that Bill Gates would ignore if he saw it lying on the street is $25,000.

You can make a stack high enough to reach the moon and back, and only then will you have used your 100 billion hamburgers. This is terrifying news to cows.

I suppose I can live with missing decimals, missing floors to tall buildings, and floors that are named instead of numbered. A more serious problem is the limited capacity of the human mind to grasp the relative magnitudes of large numbers. Counting at the rate of one number per second...to count to a trillion takes 32,000 years, which is as much time as has elapsed since people first drew on cave walls.

People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment.

I didn't even know there were stars to look at to not see. If you don't know that they're there, you don't know that you're missing them.

For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling.