Few more exam howlers
HND exam question in a Timber Technology paper:
What is Dieldrin, what is it used for and why do Environmentalists object to its use?
One bright spark gave me the following answer:
"It is used to kill woodworm and environmentalists object to its use because of the suffering and death it causes the woodworm"
During a lull in the Year 7 Parents' Evening the other day I decided to mark some GCSE Statistics coursework. I was ploughing my way through scatter graphs, histograms and so on and then read the following:
Cumulative frequency graphs are excellent ways of comparing the data. I used them to compare whether sex had an affect on how much television a person watched.
Please be assured this pupil was trying to find out if there was any correlation between a person's gender and the amount of TV they watched.
A Level Physical Education Question: What reasons could be given for the lack Of Asian Representation at top level football in the UK? Answer: Asians cannot play football on religious grounds, they would have to remove their turbines.
Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and travelled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked 'Am I my brother's son?'
Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made themselves unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cynanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.
Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
The Greeks were a highly sculptured people and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.
Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
In the Olympic game, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits and threw the java.
Eventually the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.
Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ids of March murdered him because they though he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: 'Tee hee, Brutus'.
Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw. Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offence.
In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.
Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.
Queen Elizabeth was the 'Virgin Queen'. As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted 'hurrah'.
It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of the blood.
Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never mad much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet.
Writing at the same times as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
During the Renaissaance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Pinto, the Nina and the Santa Fe.
Later the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim's Progress.The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
One of the causes fo the Revolutionary war was the English put tacks in their tea. Also the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared ' A horse divided against itself cannot stand'. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14 1865, Lincoln went to the theatre and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.
Gravity was invented by Issaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practised on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large.
Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
The French revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was baroness, she couldn't have any children.
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.
Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practised virtue. Her death was the final event that ended her reign.
The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species, Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.
The First World War caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
Answer given by ICT GCSE student to a question about the Data Protection Act
Question: "Give one example of an illegal use someone could make of the data."
Answer:"You could use it to track someone down and devour their soul!"
Answer given in mock Biology exam:
Question: Give an example of movement in plants, and an animal that cannot move?
Answer: Tryphids & a dead cat.
Question. What is selective breeding?
Answer. You get your best cow. You get your other best cow. You get them to shag and you get a better cow.
Question. Is a brick a solid, liquid or gas?
Answer. Yes.
In Yr. 9 Physics Module test on Electricity:
Question. Give a description of a transformer.
Answer. It's a robot but is disguised as something else, like a car.
In a SATs paper a couple of years ago a child was presented with a few shapes - square, rectangle etc. The question asked the child to name the shapes so on the line the child wrote - Bill, James, Sarah etc - took the question rather literally!!
I've seen Newcastle United win silverware!
