The Skeptical Teacher

Musings of a science teacher & skeptic in an age of woo.

Skeptical Homeopathy Homework Assignment

Posted by mattusmaximus on February 4, 2012

I found this image via a skeptical Facebook friend, and it just screams “skeptical teacher”!  I’m just jealous that I didn’t think of it first 🙂

Three words: FOR THE WIN!!!

Image source: Reddit

The solutions (pardon the pun) to these questions reveals one glaring fact: homeopathy, there’s nothing in it, except water.

**Update (2/5/12): For those interested, I have calculated the actual answers to these questions.  Contact me if you would like to see the math; here are the answers:

a) 3.46 x 10^21   or   3,460,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms

b) 3.46 x 10^15   or   3,460,000,000,000,000 atoms

c) 3.46 x 10^-39  or  0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 00346 atoms (a number so stupidly small we can safely say that there are effectively NO arsenic atoms remaining within the solution!)

6 Responses to “Skeptical Homeopathy Homework Assignment”

  1. Stupidly there will be kids who read such a problem and think it means that homeopathy works without any molecules, not that homeopathy couldn’t work because it doesn’t contain any molecules.

  2. Wrong. The answer is: science cannot find anything in it because it doesn’t have the means to observe anything smaller than the atom! Keep trying folks you’ll catch up to homeopathy one day! 🙂

    • mattusmaximus said

      Actually, modern physics has had the capability for decades to detect not only subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons, but the building blocks of those very subatomic particles, known as quarks. And that fact pretty much destroys your entire argument 🙂

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  4. starkeffect said

    That’s my homework problem. Glad you enjoyed it. Fighting the good fight.

  5. There is a youtuber named Miles Power that I think you would like, if you don’t already know about him. He does science related videos and has done a few on homeopathy. This one is a personal favorite of mine since it points out one key flaw of homeopathy that I have always thought about. Why don’t homeopaths save the world by using the ocean as their water source? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li1ErHfK1Zs

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