Anna is bored and must be amused,
 

Dance little monkeys, dance for my amusement...

Everyone must post the weirdest fact they can think of. Stuff that sounds like it goes against common sense and what we all think we know.

Here's mine to start you off:

There's no such thing as Fish.

How so, you poor little chumpettes say? Well, Fish as a group of animals just doesn't make any sense, the animal that would be classed as Fish are so varied that mostly you can actually group many of them better with animals that are non-fish. For example, a salmon has more in common with a dolphin than it does a hagfish, so why isn't a dolphin a fish?

Fact is fish as a term makes no sense. There's no such thing as a Fish.

Ok, now your turn, amuse me with your counter-intuitive knowledge.

I was with you, Anna, until the "counterintuitive" part ... all lined up with this tidbit. So, I'll go ahead anyway.

My students often use the phrase "quantum leap" to describe a major advance, a big step, a tremendous innovation, a paradigm shift -- in other words, something HUGE.

But in physics, a quantum represents the minimum of something, namely, the minimum amount of a physical entity that may be involved in any given entity. So, this idea of quantum as BIG or HUGE is rather ridiculous.

I have begun a crusade at my university to expunge the English language of this phrase "quantum leap" used this way. People find it amusing that I'm doing so. Perhaps, since you are -- as we say in Boston -- "wicked smaht," you will find it amusing, too. ;)

i am ready to amuse. in a sexual way of course, fancy a cam to cam exchange?

Hmmm, I always saw the use of quantum leap to describe certain innovation as being thus: The most interesting thing about transition between energy states is, there is no intermediate. An electron will pass to a higher orbit without passing through any space between.

With technology, quantum leap generally refers to something entirely new, with no precursor, and no link to previous technology. So technology has advanced with no intervening transition. eg, invention of the steam engine, besicly people went from a horse walking in a circle, to steam engine, bam, quantum leap, it's just like boom steam engine, no intervening step there, it's not like the advance from the first low pressure engines to steam locomotives, where it's a long string of small improvements, it's just boom, whole new technology, it's gone from one thing to the other with nothing in between.

that's how I've always seen it anyway.

Your is a decidedly more accurate use of the word "quantum" than what I described. Were you one of my students, you would receive a star (and who knows what else? ;)).