Test-Takers Come Up With Riot Answers

“When you breathe, you inspire. When you do not breathe, you expire.”, So true and, according to the answer the science teacher expected on the exam, so wrong. The quotation is one of many collected by Richard Lederer, who left a 27-year career as an English teacher at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., to write such books as “Anguished English” and “More Anguished English,” which are compilations of linguistic bloopers.

What follows are other gems in Lederer’s collection of science “classroom classics,” from students at the junior-high, high-school and college levels.

“When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide.”

“Nitrogen is not found in Ireland because it is not found in a free state.”

“Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillars.”

“Artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.”

“The tides are a fight between the earth and the moon. All water tends toward the moon, because there is no water in the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.”

“The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.”

“The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to.”

“The body consists of three parts - the brainium, the borax, and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs and the abominable cavity contains the vowels, of which there are five - a,e,i,o and u.”