Complete Lies You Were Taught About Science

#1 Men Are Sex-Obsessed

It's been floating around for decades that men think about sex every 7 seconds or more. Can you imagine that? They'd never accomplish anything. In a study performed by the Kinsey Institute, only 54% of men in the study only thought about sex several times a day. Which totally debunked the long-standing myth.

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#2 Men Are Sex-Obsessed

Further supporting the debunking of this somewhat insulting myth is a team of researchers at Ohio State University. Providing 283 college students with clickers, 120 males, and 163 females, the study had students press the clicker each time they thought about sex. At the end of the study, it was found that the average male student thought of sex 19 times a day, while females about 10. So, ladies, men are not as piggish as you may think!

#3 The Coriolis Force And Drains

Nobody is sure how this myth got started, but as children, a fun little rumor circulated that regions on the opposite end of the Earth's hemisphere experienced a reverse rotation of water going down the drain. It sounded plausible enough, especially when scientific terms like "Coriolis Effect" started to get thrown around. Science teachers even taught this in class during the 1950s and 60s.

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#4 The Coriolis Force And Drains

However, science soon discovered how this myth was started. The Coriolis Force, which is responsible for the deflection of objects to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern, has no bearing on what happens to water as it drains in the sink of your bathtub. The force is more responsible for altering the course of air masses and how winds and storms move, while the design of the toilet basin and force of the water determines the direction of drainage flow. So a toilet in Canada will drain when flushed the same as one in Australia would.

#5 A Full Moon Affects Behavior

So many people believe the moon is mystical and has some sort of power over humans. If it can turn a man into a wolf then it surely must be responsible for all the crazy people out on a full moon night. In 1985, psychologists James Rotten and Ivan Kelly combed through 37 different studies on the effects of lunar cycles and concluded that there is no correlation between a full moon and an increase in murders, suicides, or other drastic behaviors. Seven years later, an additional 20 studies were reviewed, this time focusing on suicide contemplation. Again, researchers found no link.

#6 Water Is A Natural Conductor

If you watch movies enough you'll believe that water is a conductor for electricity. You can kill someone by pushing them into a puddle that has a wire laying in it, or you can electrocute them by throwing a blow dryer into their bath. In fact, pure water is a much better insulator than conductor, but the movies are not entirely wrong about the issue. You see, it's not the water itself that conducts electricity so easily but the minerals and particles found in water that hasn't been purified. Since it's unlikely that you'll find puddles of completely pure water, that is, water completely free of charged ions, it's just much safer to assume that any body of water you encounter would be a fantastic conductor. In fact, drinking purified water is good for you.

#7 Antibiotics Are Great For Viral Infections

If you're suffering from any sort of viral infection and your doctor easily writes you a prescription for an antibiotic, it's probably time to think about getting a new doctor. Any medical professional should know that an antibiotic can only hinder recovery of a viral infection. It will not help at all and actually increases your resistance to viruses that your body would otherwise just fight off by itself.

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#8 Antibiotics Are Great For Viral Infections

Despite how whiny a patient gets for quick relief, treating a virus with an antibiotic is not going to provide any medical benefits. In fact, taking an antibiotic with no bacterial infection present can increase the chances of developing an infection that resists antibiotics. It can also increase the time you are actually sick and cause other symptoms besides the ones you went to the doctor for. So, the next time you're feeling a bit under the weather, don't demand antibiotics. They're not a cure-all for all illnesses.

#9 Lightning Never Strikes The Same Place Twice

This myth is pretty old and many people who have never been hit before still believe it is true. However, it most certainly does hit the same place more than once. In fact, if you keep a close watch on cloud-to-ground lightning in your area over a long period of time, chances are you'll find that lightning doesn't go out of its way to avoid somewhere it already struck. After the initial strike, no change is made to the storm or the area hit that would make a follow-up strike impossible.

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#10 Lightning Never Strikes The Same Place Twice

There have been spots hit as many as 50 times, such as the WVAH TV tower in West Virginia, or 10 times in one night, such as at the Sears Tower in Chicago. There are even people who have been struck more than once in a lifetime, sometimes being the cause of death. In the past, The Eiffel Tower used to get his two to three times every month until they placed up prohibitive conductors and now if it does get hit, it causes no damage or harm since it is grounded better. But be careful, lightning does strike the same place more than once.

#11 Blood Without Oxygen is Blue

If at any point you ever find out that your blood is blue-ish in color, it may be time to start tracing the lineage of your family. You may be part Smurf. The truth of the matter is, regardless of what myths you may have heard about the color of your blood, it is always red. Even when it's not heavily oxygenated, it's still a deep shade of red. What trips up people that believe their blood is blue is the color of their veins, which actually has to do with the penetration of blue and red light wavelengths. Though the blood that flows through your veins is red, the blue light travels quicker, giving the appearance of blue veins and blue blood.

#12 A Dark Side of the Moon

Since we only see one side of the moon here on Earth, it became a pretty popular notion that the side we don't see is engulfed in darkness year round. Science and reality disagree with this notion, however, and show that there isn't a constantly dark side of the moon. That side we don't see from Earth is commonly referred to as the "far side" and is actually sunlit for a portion of the month. Since the moon orbits Earth and Earth orbits the sun, different parts of the moon are engulfed in darkness at different parts of the month. The mystery behind the "Dark Side of the Moon" was revealed in 1959 with the USSR Luna 3 mission. And who doesn't love the song by Pink Floyd?

#13 We Only Use 10% of Our Brain

Seeing as how the brain is the most complex organ in the human body, it's strange to think that people still believe we only use 10% of it. In reality, we make use of virtually every part of the brain, which, at any given time, always shows some form of activity. From higher cognitive functions to the more basic routines our bodies go through, the brain uses up approximately 20% of our body's energy. To show just how active the brain is, neurologists like John Henley at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota used imaging technology to record brain activity over 24-hour periods. Findings pointed to the fact that, over the course of a day, 100% of the brain winds up being utilized.

#14 The Earth Is Flat

For years, it was believed that when Columbus sailed across the Atlantic from Spain, the people of that time thought the Earth was flat. Long before the Italian explorer sailed, however, writers like the Greco-Egyptian scribe Claudius Ptolemy, wrote about a rounded planet. Columbus even owned a copy of Ptolemy's "Geography," which stated as fact that the Earth was round. Considering it was known as early as the 6th century, it may come as a shock that people today still believe the Earth is flat.

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#15 The Earth Is Flat

Among several arguments for Flat Earth, there's the belief that satellite imagery of a rounded Earth is fake, the concept of an ice wall keeping the oceans from spilling over the "sides" of Earth, and a rather skewed theory that states the sun and moon are spherical objects moving in circles above the Earth's flattened plane. Throwing out decades of research and millennium of knowledge, flat Earthers hold true to the ultimate myth. There are a whole slew of these people online and they believe the earth is not round and that because they are letting people know the truth, they will be killed by the government. Conspiracy theory or not, they are serious and even include some celebrities.