Assert Yourself!

I know there have been times when you’ve observed a teacher or another adult making a claim or explaining an answer that just sounded wrong. Did you speak out? Many of us do not!

Don’t be afraid to assert yourself if you suspect you’re getting wrong information. Recently a 13 year-old student from Germany suspected that NASA was wrong about a calculation about the chances of an asteroid hitting the earth, so he wrote a paper about it. As it turns out, the student was right!

Nico Marquardt calculated that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid would collide with Earth in the year 2029. NASA had estimated that the odds were 1 in 45,000. After reviewing the student’s work, the European Space Agency admitted that Marquardt was correct. He had considered a possibility that NASA had not: that the asteroid might hit a satellite and ricochet into a collision course.

Next time you’re listening to an argument or assertion and you don’t agree, go ahead and speak out, no matter who’s speaking! You might be seeing something they’ve overlooked.