Silly Misconceptions, Part 1

This list is a non-exhaustive singling-out of misconceptions whose enduring presence in common knowledge, both by dim-witted and bright individuals, is irritating or frightening to me.

When I have more ideas in mind, more parts will be posted. Comment if you have a suggestion.

• Lincoln Town Car was not named because Americans think it's a suitable city car. This misconception is prevalent in Europe. This car was not named as a "town car" as a synonym for "city car," popular though it is to mention this nameplate as evidence that American vehicles are oversize and excessive. It comes from the historical term "town car," which described certain prewar cars with a halfway-closed cabin for the rear passengers only. We know that the full-size Lincoln is a big car; it's clearly not a "city car" as Europeans understand it.
• Corvette leaf springs are not hand-me-downs from trucks. This misconception is also prevalent in Europe. The Corvette's suspension does not use longitudinal leafs like a truck. It uses transverse leafs made of composite, which provide simple, tough, and communicative suspension which also functions as an anti-roll bar. It's not in place to save money or use off-shelf parts. It's bespoke for the car, and it's an effective solution.
• Vertigo is not the same as "fear of heights." The proper term for that condition is "acrophobia," while vertigo is actually a type of dizziness. Perhaps the Hitchcock film Vertigo plays a role, where the main character suffers from acrophobia, causes this misconception. Although the film itself is named Vertigo, the dialogue correctly identifies the sufferer's condition as acrophobia.
• Ulysses S. Grant was not a drunkard or corrupt as President. This oft-repeated accusation is bogus and it stems from attempts to smear his personality. To be fair, this was at a time in which his administration was filled with corrupt scoundrels and the old general was too naive to notice. Grant can be described as a very decent and honest man, brilliant as a single-minded wartime strategist, who was over his head in the nuances of national politics, but tried his very best nonetheless. He is also one of the most accomplished presidential authors, with his exciting posthumous memoir selling millions.
• Higher clock speeds do not equal a faster computer. This is also known as the "megahertz myth", which was tacitly approved in marketing of x86 processor-equipped machines (which usually had the highest clock speed) from the 1980s all the way to about 2004. In truth, clock speed is not a good indicator of the speed to complete tasks unless comparing different-clocked versions of the same architecture. Far more important indicators are how many clock cycles are needed for each instruction, and how long it takes to complete a given task. The death knell for this scheme came when Intel was unable to keep increasing the speed of its Pentium 4, hitting a practical barrier of 3.7 GHz before effective air cooling became impossible. In the same vein...
• ...multicore processors don't multiply the speed by how many cores are in the CPU. Even if the executed code is completely parallel, there will still be some overhead on scheduling tasks for each core. And in fact, most code is not parallel, since it is hard to manually achieve this, and we are not yet at a level of development where compilers can do it automatically. Of course, multicore processors do improve throughput substantially, but it is not a simple scaling factor.
• Driving a truck with tailgate down is not better for fuel economy; it's verifiably worse. The Mythbusters attacked this problem with solid science. In theory, the tailgate allows the bed to be enclosed on four sides and lets a pocket of slowly-swirling air to exist, and so the faster-moving air around the cab and the rest of the bodywork do not interfere and cause more wind resistance. In practice, the manufacturer's tailgate is always better up than down (or else they would do EPA tests with tailgate down, duh!), but the best solution is actually one of the very common mesh aftermarket tailgates, perhaps due to keeping some of the same aerodynamic effects, but lacking the weight of a heavy metal tailgate. In any event, manufacturers wouldn't self-install mesh tailgates since they assume you want that piece of steel in the back for holding loads in place, and relaxing and having fun atop it.
• Higher octane gas won't make your car run better unless it's needed in the first place. The only meaning of the octane rating is its resistance to "knock" (pre-detonation of fuel). If you put 95 in an 89-rated vehicle, it won't run any smoother or last any longer. Ask any chemical engineer. If your car requires premium gasoline, use it. If it doesn't require it, you're being a fool and wasting your money. In fact, most modern vehicles which require premium fuel will even run fine on regular, but with reduced power because the ECU has to retard ignition whenever detonation is detected. I have an ex with a turbocharged Volvo that clearly specified premium only, and it is still doing fine at 220,000 miles and has never once seen better than 89 octane gasoline in it. But I wouldn't recommend this. There have been cases of exotic turbocharged engines suffering damage without sufficiently high-octane fuel.
• Driving in Formula One may be more glamorous, but NASCAR is not any easier. Just ask Juan Pablo Montoya. He had seven F1 wins in six seasons (2001-2005, partial 2006, all during the Schumacher reign). But when he moved to NASCAR in 2006, where he has been ever since, competing in seven seasons has netted him just two wins. If you think oval tracks are easy, then I challenge you to drive it at 190 mph in a car with no driver aids whatsoever (not even a fuel gauge) and a carburetted V8 pushing out nearly 900 hp. At least two Americans who earlier did stock car racing went on to win races in Formula 1 (Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti, who also won the 1978 world championship), but the only emigrant from F1 to win at NASCAR is Montoya.
• High explosive doesn't mean something is "very explosive". It's a specific type of explosive whose speed of blast varies from 3-9 km/s. Yes, there is such a thing as "low explosive", as it refers to something which explodes more slowly, such as gunpowder.
• Inflammable does not mean "not flammable". These words have the same meaning, but due to linguistic differences both terms occasionally remain. If you see something marked either "flammable" or "inflammable," that means it can burn easily.
• George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree. Author Parson Weems invented this story for his 1800 biography The Life of Washington.
• The nuclear weapon was not a massive game-changer when it was deployed against Japan. General Curtis LeMay masterminded the strategic air campaign against Japan in 1945, and oversaw the near-destruction of 64 Japanese cities purely from large waves of low-altitude B-29s carrying incendiary munitions. In Tokyo, the firebombing of March 9-10 was the deadliest bombing of the entire war, worse than the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. In modern combat, nukes would clearly be superior, but during WWII the US achieved such aerial dominance over the skies of Japan that they could afford to sortie with hundreds of bombers at once, making the firebombing campaign just as effective. Actually, the use of the nuclear weapon in August 1945 was more effective than anything else at taming Stalin's potential aggression into Western Europe, as he was impressed by the power of the bomb. If the Soviets had decided to use their vast strength in 1945 against the Western allies, then the only way they would have been defeated is if the United States could quickly mass produce and deliver nuclear weapons at the tactical level.
• There is no handgun that does not appear on a metal detector. Don't believe Die Hard (or whatever movie it was). Even the so-called "plastic pistol" Glocks are mostly metal, with just a composite shell on the outside. You cannot really make a functional, reliable gun entirely out of plastic at our current technology. Actually, for those not keeping track, all-steel guns are getting rarer, and composite handguns have become the norm in the 21st century because they are cheaper and lighter. Still, in the year 2012, there is no security system except for a defective one that would fail to screen handguns either on a person's body or in baggage.
• The Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty were made of iron, not steel. The vast majority of all skycrapers and large towers ever built have used steel, but when the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower were constructed in 1886 and 1889, puddle iron was still a cost-effective alternative to steel before the Bessemer process came to be dominant. In the next decade, and certainly by the turn of the 20th century, steel became cheap enough that structural wrought iron was almost never called for. When iron was what was needed, it was still cheaper to convert Bessemer steel into iron using the Ashton process than to use the older puddling process.