1 in 5 Americans Confuse Astrology and Astronomy

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By Elizabeth Palermo

Do you understand the relationship between elevation and the boiling point of water? Do you know what property of a sound wave determines its loudness? If so, than you likely know more about science than most Americans, the majority of whom got these questions wrong on a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

The nonprofit organization recently polled a representative sample of 3,200 Americans of different ages, genders, ethnicities, races and levels of education and found that, though most of those surveyed understood basic scientific concepts, like the fact that a light-year measures distance (72 percent), far fewer participants knew the answers to more difficult scientific questions.

Some 22 percent of Americans misidentified the “study of how the positions of stars and planets can influence human behavior,” as astronomy rather than what is considered a pseudoscience, astrology.

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