7 Times The Media Spectacularly Failed To Understand Science
6. The Charlie Charlie Game Breaks Gravity
Remember the "Charlie Charlie" game?
You balance one pencil on top of another, as pictured above, then say something along the line of "Charlie Charlie, are you here/are you evil/do you like biscuits?" and watch in horror as the spirit of Charlie moves the pencil to answer your question. You then shriek, cross yourself and post the video to the internet for dem sweet likes. It's like a super low-budget ouija board.
To their credit, the media didn't report that a ghost called Charlie was haunting the internet and instead offered up an explanation for what was going on. Very noble, but unfortunately the explanation offered by the press was that it was gravity that was moving the pencil. This had something to do with one end being heavier than the other and that the pencils would "always move" because that position isn't "natural" for them.
It was not gravity that was moving the pencil.
What the papers were forgetting was a dude called Isaac Newton, you might have heard of him, the gravity guy. Newton's first law states that an object will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force. As the pencil is at rest and, more importantly, balanced it will stay that way until you, I don't know, blow a load of air over it by asking it questions. The pencils wouldn't necessarily "always move", you could leave them in a locked safe for 100 years and, so long as no other forces acted on them, they would remain balanced.
So, thumbs up for not saying "it's ghosts", but Newton is spinning in his grave.