Myth Buster

I always thought peanuts were nuts because of its name, and when I got to know that they are not, I went on to research who named them peanuts. Sadly, I did not get an answer to the question I had, but I found a very weird name for it which people in UK usually use - monkey nut!!🐒  Despite the misleading name, peanuts are actually a type of legume. Though they're commonly served with nuts like walnuts and almonds, they are more closely related to clovers and chickpeas.

I always thought that the Sun 🌞 was yellow (even the emoji agrees with me!), because that's how I have seen it in my colouring books, textbooks, etc., and I think many people also believed that the Sun is yellow. I recently got to know that the Sun is actually white, so I thought this would be worth posting. According to the Stanford Solar Center, "it is a common misconception that the sun is yellow or orange or even red." In reality, "the sun is essentially all colors mixed together, which appear to our eyes as white." The reason we see the sun as yellow or orange most of the time is because those colored wavelengths, which are longer, are the only ones that make it to our eyes. The other short-wavelength colors—green, blue, and violet—become scattered by the atmosphere, which is what makes the sky look blue during the day!

I thought deserts were just a large area of land covered with sand. But, in Grade 7, I learnt that deserts are areas of extreme temperature . I believe many people think that deserts are just very big sandy areas, like the Sahara Desert and the Thar Desert, but don't now that there is something called a ' cold desert ' that also exists. Deserts are not defined by their temperatures, but by their lack of precipitation. And while most of the world's most famous deserts are indeed hot, there are some deserts that also experience brutal cold. Known as polar deserts, these arid areas can be found in Iran (called Dasht-e Lut) and Northern Greenland, for example.

I believe all of us have heard about the five-second-rule, and many of you must be following it as well. Here is a warning to those who do follow the five-second-rule, because, again, it is a MYTH. Don't adhere to the five-second rule and take your chances with food that's fallen on the floor. When researchers at Clemson University left bologna and bread on a surface contaminated with salmonella in a 2017 study, they found that "a substantial amount of bacteria transferred to the food within five seconds."

I have been learning that chameleons have the ability to change colours so that they could blend in with the surroundings and protect themselves from the predators. For everyone who is with me, you are wrong ❌ just like me, as you must have guessed. Yes, chameleons do have the ability to change colors, but the falsity here lies in why they do so. According to Wired, chameleons change colors to regulate their temperatures or communicate with other chameleons, not to camouflage themselves.

I used to believe that bananas 🍌grew on trees, until, I learnt about plants in detail in Class 6. And to those who don't know that bananas don't grow on trees, go ahead and continue reading!! We all know that money doesn't grow on trees, but many of us believe that bananas do. Sadly, we're mistaken again. Though they may look similar to trees, the Rainforest Alliance says that the plants bananas grow on are in fact "giant herbs related to lilies and orchids."

Many people believe that bats are blind🙈, but, again, it's not true. Contrary to popular belief—and the idiom "as blind as a bat"—these nocturnal creatures can absolutely see. In fact, as Rob Mies, former executive director for the Organization for Bat Conservation, told National Geographic, bats "can see three times better than humans." So joke's on us!

I have heard many people say that sugar causes children to be hyperactive, but, looks like it is another myth on the list!! Many parents will blame their children's rowdy behavior on an overabundance of sugar, but there's no actual evidence to support those claims. A definitive 1995 meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that sugar in children's diets does not affect their behavior.

My mother has been telling this to me since I was a kid that I shouldn't crack my knuckles because it is not good. I am pretty sure many of you reading his have also been told the same Knuckle crackers of the world can rest easy, at least on the arthritis front, because, according to Harvard Medical School, cracking your knuckles doesn't increase your risk of developing the painful joint condition. That cracking noise actually comes from collapsing gas bubbles. However, cracking too often may weaken the strength of your grip (not to mention aggravate the nerves of the people around you).

When I first heard this, I was like - there is no way I am carrying a coin with me when I go up there, after all, I don't want to kill anyone (I don't want to be behind bars😜). But.... what if I was walking under the building and someone accidentally dropped the coin on me?😲 Well, looks like there's no problem if you read the complete post!! According to Scientific American, a penny is too small and flat for it to gain enough natural momentum to make any kind of fatal impact. At most, if you were hit, it might feel like being flicked in the forehead "but not even very hard," Louis Bloomfield, a physicist at the University of Virginia, told Life's Little Mysteries via HuffPost.