Common Knowledge: Difference between revisions
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* In grade school, everyone learned that the vowels in the English language are A, E, I, O, U, and "sometimes Y". Truth be told, however, the "sometimes Y" part seemed to be related to the grammar rule that a word must have at least one vowel, and is overall inaccurate, and Y can act as a vowel in a word that has one or more of the five "regular" vowels. Technically, letters are ''not'' designated "vowel" or "consonant", those words refer to particular speech sounds: a ''vowel'' is one made with your mouth open and your tongue in the middle of your mouth not touching your teeth, lips, etc. (in other words, there's minimal manipulation of air flow while expelling a vowel sound); a consonant, on the other hand, is one (such as \p\, \d\, or \s\) that is made by partly or completely stopping the flow of air breathed out from the mouth with the tongue, teeth, lips, etc. Using that guideline, a Y is actually used as a vowel ''more'' often than it is as a consonant.
* “A tomato is not a vegetable, it is a fruit!” A comment often made by trolling [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All]] types. Often this same assumption is made with eggplants, cucumbers, and other well-known veggies. Truth be told, they are both. “Fruit” is indeed the scientific designation given to the edible part of a tomato plant, the fleshy part that contains seeds. However, “vegetable” is [[Square Peg, Round Trope|not a botanical definition at all]], being more a culinary term used to describe ''any'' edible part of a plant at all, including flowers, stems, seeds, leaves, roots, and tubers, as well as fruits.
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamite Dynamite] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT TNT] are the same thing, right? Actually, no, not at all. The only thing the two materials have in common is they're both explosives. Chemical composition aside, dynamite is most often used for civilian demolition and excavation projects; TNT (trinitrotoluene) on the other hand, is about twice as powerful (dynamite has 7.5 megajoules per kilogram, while the same amount of TNT has 14.5), would be far too expensive for such endeavors, and is actually used by the military to build munitions. The confusion stems from old theatrical cartoon shorts like ''[[Looney Tunes]]''. In those cartoons, pretty much anything that could explode, including dynamite sticks or kegs of gunpowder, were labeled TNT to indicate "bomb". The creators figured such an easily recognizable acronym could be better identified by the viewers (don't forget, not all viewers were literate in the 1940s) leading to the general perception that they were the same thing.
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