A collection of four files I've received listing examples of funny answers that
kids have written to questions.
Date Received: Monday, November 10, 2003
Children's Science Exam Answers*
* These are real answers given by children.
Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.
Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.
Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.
Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water
tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and
nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.
Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.
Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.
Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.
Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
A: Premature death.
Q: What is artificial insemination?
A: When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow.
Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e.g., abdomen)
A: The body is consisted into three parts -- the brainium, the
borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax
contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five
bowels, A, E, I, O, and U.
Q: What is the fibula?
A: A small lie.
Q: What does "varicose" mean?
A: Nearby.
Q: Give the meaning of the term "Caesarian Section"
A: The Caesarian Section is a district in Rome.
Q: What does the word "benign" mean?
A: Benign is what you will be after you are eight.
Date Received: Unknown
From: Unknown
Never give up because life gets harder as you get older. After preschool the
road of life keeps getting bumpier and bumpier and bumpier.
-- Angela Martin, age 11
Never blow in a cat's ear because if you do, usually after three or four
times, they will bite your lips! And they don't let go for at least a minute.
-- Lisa Coburn, age 9
Don't think life is easy, because when you get older it is hard work. I used
to think life was easy, now I have to do the dishes every other day.
-- Nick Coleman 9
Take risks. I mean, if you like this person and you don't know if they like
you, ask them out and see what happens. I liked this girl and I asked her out.
She said no and she hates me now, but I took that risk.
-- Bruce Wagner, age 13
A realist is more correct about things in life than an optimist. But the
optimist seems to have more friends and much more fun.
-- Megan, age 14
Date Received: Fri, 2 Oct 1998
The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams,
and classroom discussions. Most were from 5th and 6th graders. They
illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the "most interesting Information comes
from children, for they tell all they know and then stop."
- A blizzard is when it snows sideways.
- A hurricane is a breeze of a bigly size.
- A monsoon is a French gentleman.
- A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go.
- Clouds are high flying fogs. I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.
- Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do.
- Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dogs tongue will kill the strongest man.
- Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you should.
- Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water.
- In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are twice as many H's as O's.
- In some rocks you can find the fossil footprints of fishes.
- Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.
- It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places.
- Lime is a green-tasting rock.
- Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.
- Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.
- Question: What is one horsepower? Answer: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.
- Rain is often known as soft water, oppositely known as hail.
- Rain is saved up in cloud banks.
- Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand.
- Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother.
- Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers.
- Someday we may discover how to make magnets that can point in any direction.
- South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage.
- Talc is found on rocks and on babies.
- The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down.
- The wind is like the air, only pushier.
- There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever.
- There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up there these days.
- Thunder is a rich source of loudness.
- To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up.
- Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.
- Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.
- Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is big enough to be called a drop, it does.
- We keep track of the humidity in the air so we won't drown when we breathe.
- We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on.
- When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting.
- When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.
- While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the sun, it is really only centrificating.
- You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind.
Date Received: Wed, 1 Apr 1998
Some grade school teachers must agree with that, because they keep journals
of amusing things their students have written in papers. Here are a few examples:
- (Define H2O and CO2.) H2O is hot water and CO2 is cold water.
- A census taker is man who goes from house to house increasing the population.
- A city purifies its water supply by filtering the water then forcing it through an aviator.
- A person should take a bath once in the summer, not so often in the winter.
- A scout obeys all to whom obedience is due and respects all duly constipated authorities.
- A virgin forest is a forest where the hand of man has never set foot.
- In spring, the salmon swim upstream to spoon.
- In the middle of the 18th century, all the morons moved to Utah.
- Iron was discovered because someone smelt it.
- Most of the houses in France are made of plaster of Paris.
- Oliver Cromwell had a large red nose, but under it were deeply religious feelings.
- One by-product of raising cattle is calves.
- One of the main causes of dust is janitors.
- Syntax is all the money collected at the church from sinners.
- The blood circulates through the body by flowing down one leg and up the other.
- The climate is hottest next to the Creator.
- The four seasons are salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
- The future of "I give" is "I take."
- The general direction of the Alps is straight up.
- The inhabitants of Moscow are called Mosquitoes.
- The parts of speech are lungs and air.
- The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 opossums.
- The spinal column is a long bunch of bones. The head sits on the top and you sit on the bottom.
- The word trousers is an uncommon noun because it is singular at the top and plural at the bottom.
- To prevent head colds, use an agonizer to spray into the nose until it drips into the throat.
- Water is composed of two gins. Oxygin and hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.
- We do not raise silk worms in the United States, because we get our silk from rayon. He is a larger worm and gives more silk.