itsfullofstars,
The salt on snow/ice thing isn't a chemical reaction. There's no forming or breaking of chemical bonds, and there's no end products that are chemically different from the original ingredients.
exiguous,
Yes, 10 is correct. You can put cheese, chocolate, whatever else onto ice and it will melt, so long as it can dissolve into water. Salt is used due to it being inexpensive, readily available, and it will rust a hole in my Mazda faster than a can of barbasol will rust a hole in my bathroom sink.

firefly212

God created science.

Ehjaym: If I am in a moving bus, and I release a perfectly weighted balloon so that it suspends itself in mid-air, what will the balloon do? Will it move backward? If the bus stops suddenly, will the balloon move suddenly forward like I do?

assuming that you were performing this experiment in a vehicle that is moving at a constant velocity, the balloon will travel along with the bus. When you stop suddenly, the balloon will continue moving forward until it hits the front.

actually i think i know where No man was going. we tried this once w/ a helium ballon and a car but we couldn't get the experiment to work... the idea, anyway, is that when the bus hits the brakes, the air pressure increases in the front of the bus, and decreases in the back, hence the balloon moves backwards...

Yeah Super Sapien, spit it out... If that's a real t-shirt, I want one something fierce.

SpongeBlob_HairPants: God created science.

Which is a completely untestable, and thus unscientific statement.

Leave it at church.

12. I have two US coins totaling 55 cents. One is not a
nickel. What are the two coins?

a 50-cent piece and a nickel. The 50-cent piece ISN'T a nickel is it?

17. How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the
Ark?

0 - It was Noah, not Moses.

Really stupid quiz with random questions. High school graduates should instead understand the basic principles of biology, chemistry, and physics.

bbcrackmonkey: She also didn't think Einstein helped develop the nuclear bomb

I agree with her on this one - Einstein had little to do with the technical development of the nuclear bomb, although he was involved politically. My list would include names like Oppenheimer, Szilard, Frisch, Meitner, Fermi, Teller, etc. ahead of Einstein.

The "E=mc^2" observation in particular is not required to develop a bomb; it's enough to have observed that neutrons induce fission of uranium with the release of energy and additional neutrons. It's not that important that the final mass of the fission fragments is a little bit less than the mass of the original atom.

DaNightTripper: After getting the test returned with a grade of zero, I argued that "no" was the correct answer to the question since, indeed, I couldn't calculate the problem. Then I was sent to the dean of students.


I had a similar problem in Physics. If you place a 20gram piece of ice at 0C in 500ml of water at 10C how much of the ice will melt?

All of it??

I ended up with a degree in Pharmacy, so I guess I would have a real degree in chemistry, with a minor in biology and bullshiat.

allanhowls Which is a completely untestable, and thus unscientific statement.

Okay, I'll leave Big Bang Theory there too, but I don't think anyone will want it.

/not leaving anything anywhere - I still retain the freedom to speak my mind - for now.

Nevermind, found a link with the Jesus Horses design.

http://www.threadless.com/submission/61338/jesus_horses

SpongeBlob_HairPants: I still retain the freedom to speak my mind - for now.

No longer having a monopoly on public discourse and opinion != being presecuted, suppressed or whatever.

Lady, there's nothing more annoying than a Christian with a persecution complex. There are lots of you, you've been in charge for a long time now, but when you have to share the microphone, as it were, you cry that your rights are being trampled. How petulant.

allanhowls


Well, I feel there's nothing more annoying than someone who presents themselves to be tolerant, but is not in reality.

BTW, I was talking about everyone's right to speak freely, not just Christians. But hey - feel free to make whatever assumptions you please.

nothing more annoying than someone who presents themselves to be tolerant

Make that "themself"...my bad.

Holy shiat.

Honestly, I fear for the american educational system if this is the standards that are being applied.

How can a person go through life without understanding how the seasons work?

Here's an intelligence quiz. Do you think that everyone needs to know the same things and/or at the same time?


If you said, "yes", get busy with that rote memorization, because your ability to think is in the dirt.

You have the right to spout off anything you want, SpongeBlob, just don't try to get it taught in schools mmmmkay?

SpongeBlob_HairPants: Well, I feel there's nothing more annoying than someone who presents themselves to be tolerant, but is not in reality.

Did I say I was tolerant? When it comes to teaching religion in science's clothing, I have no tolerance. Go nuts with the phrenology, necromancy, and stacks of turtles all the way down, but let's not pretend it's science, mmkay?

BTW, I was talking about everyone's right to speak freely, not just Christians.

Sure you were, right after proclaiming that God made science. I'm sure you're horribly worried that all of us can speak our minds...for now. Are we all being silenced? Quit being coy.

Feel free to believe what you please in your own home and places of worship. Feel free to practice as you please and state your opinions, but making the same old, tired ID arguments in a thread about what high school kids should know about science is quite telling.

If the salt/ice thing isn't a chemical reaction, then why are there different results for different salts?

I've seen a bag of salt marketed for the purposes of melting ice that bragged on the label that it (magnesium chloride) worked at an even lower temperature than competing products composed of sodium or potassium chloride.

If it's just a matter of "adding molecules," why would using a different metal in the salt work any differently?

/Took lots of chemistry a long time ago, kind of ashamed I don't know the answer

allanhowls Did I say I was tolerant?

If nothing else, you're honest, so I'll give you that.

When it comes to teaching religion in science's clothing, I have no tolerance.

Then you must not subscribe to Evolution theory being taught in the classrooms, which is a religion in and of itself. One requires faith to look past the glaring holes in that dogma.

Sure you were, right after proclaiming that God made science. I'm sure you're horribly worried that all of us can speak our minds...for now. Are we all being silenced? Quit being coy.

Actually, the fact that people watching and distributing documentaries like 'Loose Change' are being investigated by the feds is extremely disturbing to me - even though I'm not American. In Canada - saying something contrary to the homosexual lifestyle without a Scripture reference can now send you to prison (so how are the non-Christians protected from the man for having an opinion contrary to the Hollywood "progressive" agenda) and it's only getting more and more restrictive.

Yes, I am concerned about the stripping of personal rights by the likes of Dubya and his fellow charlatans (and our own "tolerant" politicians up here as well) and what the implications will be for the rest of us, and you should be also.

now sure what level of "testing" you require, but explain the cosmic microwave background, which directly measureable, in a physical picture that does not include the big bang.

not sayign you can't, but part of the scientific method is discussing alternative theories and judging which most closely fits with observation, where the discrepancies are, and if/how the theory can be amended to describe the observations

so what's your alternate theory?

Then you must not subscribe to Evolution theory being taught in the classrooms, which is a religion in and of itself. One requires faith to look past the glaring holes in that dogma

Congats. You officially know shiat-all about evolution, and fail at the argument.

You're canadian? shiat, we are in trouble now.

When was the last time someone went to jail for saying something bad about gay people?

trancemission, it has to do with the fact that different salts form different numbers of ions in water(the article is wrong about the molecules thing. It's molecules and/or ions.). NaCl2(table salt) breaks down into three separate ions in water, per unit (salts aren't molecules, there is no discrete unit, they're just giant repeats). Ditto KCl2. MgCl only forms two per unit. Since it's the number of ions present, the same number of units of NaCl2 would work better than MgCl, because NaCl2 forms three ions to MgCl's two.

That said, I think possibly the ad saying MgCl works better has to do with the relative size of the units--so 1 gram of MgCl contains more individual ions than 1 gram of NaCl2, thus a scoop of MgCl would clear ice better than a similarly sized scoop of NaCl2. Or something.

/PoliSci Major
//can't remember this crap
///chem majors, help!

wjllope

Trust me, no one will give you one. ID proponents are not known for their adherance to the scientific method - this is a political battle, not a scientific one.

I think christianity finally realized that science was tearing away at its more superstitious parts, and decided to fight back. Of course it helped that in the US, politicians realized how they could manipulate the christian right in order to get votes, and thus made this whole thing a huge political issue.

EzraS You have the right to spout off anything you want, SpongeBlob, just don't try to get it taught in schools mmmmkay?

Actually, I choose to educate my kids at home, so it really matters not to me what the public system is espousing. My grade one student reads at a 3rd grade level and I don't have to worry about my children being force-fed whatever corporate-driven drivel is selling like hotcakes on the shelves of Sprawl-Mart.

SpongeBlob_Hairpants

Cool, I respect that. People can do whatever they want at home. But you've got to understand - many people with beliefs similar to yours are trying to get their/your beliefs taught in schools - which is what I have a problem with. So, just be prepared to be unintentionally lumped in with those people in threads such as these.

Man, I wonder how many threads a day on fark dont turn into some ridiculous flame war involving opposing religions, political parties ect.

nullportal: Because virtually all of Earth's atmosphere has a finite nonzero quantity of moisture in it, even if very arid, 100% is covered by water. If you mean water IN A SPECIFIC STATE OF MATTER, then say so.

Ignoring the fact that clouds are, in fact, liquid water, this isn't necessarily true. Water is, by many definitions, liquid. If it's not liquid, it's not water. If it's solid, it's ice; if gas, water vapor. It's not until the 6th definition at http://www.answers.com/water&r=67 that a non-liquid state is permissable.

They do only to a near approximation, and do this because we like to define time by cyclic events such as rotating around the sun or our own planet's axis. It's a human bias.

I would dispute that it's a human bias. I think it's likely that intelligent life on any planet that rotates around the sun as ours does would come up with the concept of a day. The division into 24 hours is, of course, arbitrary. I also think it likely that intelligent life on any planet that has a tilt to its axis -- and thus seasons -- would come up with the concept of a year, as that is the time period between the same season. 365 is an emperical measurement and varies.

Both a day and a year are natural measurements.

Staying in one place over the course of a year. If you instead moved about the globe in the proper fashion, the observation "seasons change" would not be made.

First, the season would still technically be changing where you are even if the *climate* isn't. Second, even in the climate changes sense, the seasons are still changing even if you don't observe them.

The Earth is an oblate spheroid, not round.

Um, "round" doesn't necessarily mean perfectly circular or spherical...

/You're welcome

MatrixOutsider: A man builds a house rectangular in shape.

As opposed to a rectangular house in what other respect? Why the 'in shape'?

allanhowls: GhostFish: Now, let's compile a list of 10 grammar questions every high school graduate should know the answers to...

Like not ending a sentence with a preposition? ;p

The rule that you shouldn't end sentences with a preposition has pretty much gone out the window, even in most formal writing.

No man: If I am in a moving bus, and I release a perfectly weighted balloon so that it suspends itself in mid-air, what will the balloon do? Will it move backward? If the bus stops suddenly, will the balloon move suddenly forward like I do?

This is a very complicated question, and I doubt there's a correct answer until you add in a lot more assumptions. For instance, if the bus is not accelerating and hasn't been for some time, there's no fan in the bus, and only the driver and myself who are attempting to be still, the air is probably somewhat stable. If all this is true, the balloon will remain relatively motionless until the bus stops, at which time it will float forward. It will slow down, but whether it will stop before it reaches the front of the bus is dependent on a lot of other questions. (How heavy is the balloon? How fast were you going when you stopped? What happens to the air?)

If you can't make the assumption that the air is in relative equalibrium, the balloon will follow air currents somewhat. When you stop, it will fly forward for a bit, then it goes back to being heavily dependent on the air currents.

wjllope: the idea, anyway, is that when the bus hits the brakes, the air pressure increases in the front of the bus, and decreases in the back, hence the balloon moves backwards...

Ah, but isn't this dependent on how fast your acceleration is and how heavy and big the balloon is? It's perfecetly conceivable that if it were heavy enough the increased air pressure wouldn't be enough to keep the balloon from moving forward.


If the point of the question is to come up with the air pressure idea, then I guess it's an okay qustion. (And I failed at it.) But if the point is to come up with the *right* answer, than it's completely insane; I bet you could take the qustion to any physicist or mathematician studying fluid mechanics and they'd have to add assumptions.

Vosh: Here's an intelligence quiz. Do you think that everyone needs to know the same things and/or at the same time?

No, but there's a base set of knowledge that I think almost everyone should know.

EzraS

The provisions to do so are on the books. That's the issue. I didn't say people were going to jail, I said they could be jailed.

I'm not getting into an Evolution vs. Creation flamewar. You want to comment on Creationist refutations of Evolution Theory? Check out Jack Chick's little tract on the matter. Wait...when you stop laughing, realize that though it might be easy to mock someone, it's hardly an effective expose of the holes in their presented arguments. If you're really interested in looking at the matter without bias, you'll consider the Creationist side with an open mind. If not, well, you must consider the motivation behind your denial of an alternate theory.

I didn't know the oldest fossil, or the sky being blue one. the rest--including extra credit, i got. 90%! an A!

oh! I love these, lets see...

1. 76% or so
2. neurotransmitters cascaded in waves between the ends of neurons, the electrochemical reaction is only INSIDE the cells
3. Beyond the fact that their evolution occured several hundred million years apart, nutritional requirements for highly developed cephalic structures hadn't evolved either. Can't have brains until you have grains.
4. Darwin postulated that while the "eden" theory was preposterous it was entirely likely that all species on the earth could be traced back to a single ancestor "creature" through paths in which small variations in form and structure allowed survival to occur DUE to mutations being more effective survival traits.
5. What a shiatty question. How about "why isn't the sky the same in summer as in winter?" Pretty simplistically put the number of hours is because they divide the day up nicely into fifteen degree segments of solar transit. The reason we have 365.25 day years is because that's how many 360 degree circumtransits occur. Interestingly enough one of these circumtransits occurs BECAUSE we're going around the sun. Precession completes one of our days for us, very slowly. I leave it to the reader to figure out why stars rise about 4 minutes earlier every night.
6. Sky is blue? Doesn't look like it. Too much dust, particulate suspension and nitrogen for it to ever be blue. The sky is actually slightly off towards the violet of blue. The primary color is caused by absorbtion spectra of the hydroxide molecules and trioxide compounds allowing the refracted blue light through while most other frequencies are absorbed. However if you look at "northern lights" the aurora provides an example of the colors that are produced through "neon" energetic (excited) emissions from the same material that we THINK of as blue. You'll notice that the air that looks blue during the day will emit all other colors BUT that blue when energized at night.
This is an abstract example of transmission/emission nebulae in excited and absorbing states.
7. A rainbow is caused by uniform water droplets suspended (or falling) in the atmosphere in a uniform size and in an organized structure. They can occur visibly around the moon and sun near zenith as well and simply require an incidental sheet of organized atmospheric moisture to be within a limited angle with the light source. The refraction occurs due to the speed of light and harmonic incedence of refraction inside the water droplet. Materials transmit waves at different speeds (still a sticking point in the "wave vs particle" arguments of light) and light is one of these waves, higher frequency waves refract more than lower ones and get turned around inside the droplet to a higher degree than the low red wavelengths. 660nm is a good example of red whereas 470 is of blue. Thus the moisture at one "side" of the rainbow will be aiming one color at you and the moisture droplets at the other side will be showing a different color to you.
8. My favorite example of a bacterial disease is lukemia. Certain types of bacteria excrete waste products that contain antibodies that destroy the cell walls of our white blood cells. This is why our white cells work off the englobement and digestion process, which doesn't work if they have to wiggle their way into little channels in the bones that are filled with lukemic antibodies that destroy them. The biggest trouble with viruses and bacteria are that they get into locations that cannot be directly reached by modern medicine and, for the most part, have the same sensitivities and immunities as our own celular structure. Most things that will kill viruses and bacteria will also kill our cells. Additionally there are very very few methods for attacking viral infections directly, viruses are replicated BY our cells and the only way to stop them is to teach our immune systems to attack the cells that are creating the virus replicants. The biggest issue with treating and irradicating virus and bacterial infections is the extremely dirty lives we live and the near continuous mutation of the target infection agents.
You have someone else's shiat on your hands, doesn't matter that you washed em.
9. How old are the oldest fossil on earth? Last number I heard was just about 800 million years old. They're tiny itsy bitsy little water-mite things. This is a dumb question though as geologic activity slowly erodes all traces of fossilizations.
10. Because we're stupid. Salt works well at lowering the freezing point of water, and really that's how it started; we used sea water to wash the ice off the docks and ships decks. Truth of the matter is that pepper also lowers the melting temperature as do several thousand other compounds we have access to today. What we had back then was salt, lots of salt in rock form. You know how they throw sand on roads now? The reason we're able to use sand instead of salt is that the sand adds a mechanical turbulent to the ice that creates a weakness in the surface, allowing the weight of our feet and vehicles to slowly pulverize the ice thus melting it and squeezing it off the road. Sand will work at temperatures WELL below those that salt is effective at though.

Extra credit question: Why do we have seasons?
heh, Remember that extra day provided by our circumnavigation of the sun each year?
Spring Summer Fall Winter
Morning Day Evening Night
The mechanics of the 28 angle of our polar alignment allows the earth to experience different levels of solar intensity depending on what "time" of year it is, but you will find that the planet's surface where you live still aims through all four of those season's directions. Think about it for a minute.

So ask yourself, did you pass my answers, or just the questions?

EzraS many people with beliefs similar to yours are trying to get their/your beliefs taught in schools - which is what I have a problem with.

I have no problem with Intelligent Design being taught in schools - as long as Evolution is being taught, all should be taught. If you're not going to teach all - then don't teach any - let the parents handle those matters and stick to subjects like Chemistry, Physics and Biology. Don't go into origins, because as I mentioned, all concepts are part of a belief system.

On another note, I'm aware that a large percentage of people who share my faith support the Bush Administration blindly in the name of Conservatism and if the Word of God is the measure of the Christian faith (which it is) than I'm positive God is just as grieved about that as you and I are.

/Christians are compelled to "test all things, hold fast that which is good" but are for whatever reason, being deceived into supporting an evil leader
//even Judas thought he was doing the right thing, but he was a tool of the devil

Taika_

Thanks - I consulted the all-knowing (google) just for shiats and grins, and it looks like the article is way over-simplifying.

There is indeed a chemical reation. The salts bond with the H2O molecules when they go into solution (which is apparently a reaction that can take place at slightly below-freezing levels). When they bond the H2O molecules, they prevent them from taking solid form (ice). This effectively lowers the freezing temperature by making it so it has to be colder than freezing (cold enough that the salts won't bond the H2O anymore) in order for ice to form.

I guess in a way you're "adding molecules," but those molecules need to be ones that are water-soluble to bond with the H2O keep it from freezing.

SpongeBlob_HairPants: If nothing else, you're honest, so I'll give you that.

Nice try. I never made any mention of tolerance whatsoever (pro or con) in any of my posts. You are dishonestly trying to put words in my mouth, then twisting it to make me sound like an oppressor.

Evolution theory being taught in the classrooms, which is a religion in and of itself. One requires faith to look past the glaring holes in that dogma.

That, of course is being thoroughly dishonest. Are you now going to fall back on the creationist lie that abiogenesis = evolution?

Actually, the fact that people watching and distributing documentaries like 'Loose Change' are being investigated by the feds is extremely disturbing to me

Got an article that shows that movie viewers are being investigated? Or is that just baseless allegation? Besides, what has any of that to do with a discussion of science? Or have they gotten into your mind with their microwaves, forcing you to wander off-topic?

OK, maybe the last one was a cheap shot, but c'mon...you're all over the map here.

evaned: I bet you could take the qustion to any physicist or mathematician studying fluid mechanics and they'd have to add assumptions.

of course - the idea behind gendankenexperiments like this one is to posit a specific 'pure' thought experiment and try to figure out what happens based on first principles....
in this case, we need to assume first and foremost that the bus is perfectly sealed. if air can escape, then of course all bets are off and this is not a good thought experiment.

simple questions like the bus one assume a priori that there are no hidden/unknown variables, like the hermiticity of the bus. they are fun and informative exercises nonetheless.

of course, if a thought experiment results in a remarkable or unexpected outcome, the next step, clearly, is confronting it with data from a direct measurement....
otherwise it's just nerdy bar-talk (well, i admit i like that too)... cheers

SpongeBlob_HairPants: Actually, I choose to educate my kids at home

Because ignorance of fact is even better the second time around.

I don't have to worry about my children being force-fed whatever corporate-driven drivel is selling like hotcakes on the shelves of Sprawl-Mart.

Ooh, and smug too! Corporatism = Wal-Mart = public school?
Up the dosage.

I have no problem with Intelligent Design being taught in schools - as long as Evolution is being taught, all should be taught.

You're using a Bevets argument?!?
One is science...the other isn't.
So if we don't teach astrology, we shouldn't teach astronomy?
If we don't teach Atlantis, we shouldn't teach any history at all?
Nonsense.

I had a similar problem in Physics. If you place a 20gram piece of ice at 0C in 500ml of water at 10C how much of the ice will melt?

All of it??

Yeah, unless you have the miraculous "Closed System Beaker". After all, your ambient environment will keep adding heat to the system until it comes into equilibrium. Even if you've got the system in a refrigerator set for 10C, eventually, it will come into equilibrium with the environment. Before it does that, the ice will melt. If you've got the system in a freezer set for 0C, of course, it will come to equilibrium by the whole thing freezing.

/Right answer, or did I just piss off the teacher?

SpongeBlob_HairPants: all concepts are part of a belief system.

if you call independent experiments directly verifying a scientific claim a 'belief system', that's fine i guess. the problem is that there are some things that cannot, by definition, be directly experimentally tested... lumping together those things with things that can and are experimentally testable stretches the meaning of the word 'belief' a bit too far IMHO... cheers

yeah, trancemission, makes sense. I knew there was something about more ions=good, in terms of melting, guess it has to do with how many are available to bond with the H2O. It's been a while since I learned it, and when do you use it in real life? I throw salt on my steps, the ice melts...good enough for me. Thanks for the info, though. :-)

prjindigo, your explanation of the sand on ice thing is missing a component. If you throw sand on ice, and stare at it for fifteen minutes, with no feet or tires or anything else going over it, the ice still melts. It's not just that the sand grinds it up. And you're a bit off with the 800 million years deal for fossils. I point you to the Archean rocks in Australia, with cyanobacteria fossils roughly 3.5 billion years old, or the stromatolites, with fossils dating to about 3 billion years. Granted, there's a margin of error, but I think it's less than 2 billion years.

/found the "did you pass my answers" comment just the tiniest bit arrogant--are your answers the only valid ones?

Got an article that shows that movie viewers are being investigated?

Right now, I don't. My husband read it and he is not here so I can't immediately get confimation of the source. Feel free to email me later and I'll send you something concrete.

I'm out - feel free to paint me into whatever you will. You'll see what's happening when it's too late. I'm not wasting anymore time on this.

Ishidan: /Right answer, or did I just piss off the teacher?

any teacher that would have been P.O'd by such an answer isn't worth the time of day. improperly posed questions deserve such responses.

famous story about someone who was asked in school how to determine how tall a building is using a barometer (who was it Pauli? i don't remember) - the answers were numerous and all basically correct and not at all what the teacher was looking for. IIRC they ranged from 'find the superintendant of the building and tell him you'll give him a nice barometer if he tells you the height' to 'drop the barometer off the roof and time how long it takes to smash into bits on the ground below' etc etc

cheers

One more: wjllope is that there are some things that cannot, by definition, be directly experimentally tested..

Therefore, you must BELIEVE that what you are being presented as fact is accurate.

Feron: Asteron.... leap year?

Fine technically I know the year is about 365.24225 days but since that wasnt my point I decided not to discuss it.

SpongeBlob_HairPants: Therefore, you must BELIEVE that what you are being presented as fact is accurate.

correct. i call those things religion.

i call science the arena where things are experimentally testable.

6. Sky is blue? Doesn't look like it.

You need to get out more.

/That photo was taken 30 seconds ago, by me, by sticking my camera out my window. Never mind what the sign on the building says, it was.
//So long, suckers!

Several days late and more than a dollar short, but for the record:

Knowing science is only an approximation of understanding the world, as scientific method/theory allows us to feel we do.

These questions no more quantitate one's understanding of the world (the "scientific parts" for you semantic types) than they judge one's ability to dissect the questions for their deeper meaning or their validity.

It's hard to read a thread this long and not give in to the "you're so wrong" or "I identify with you because we think the same" game.

I have no answers, only more questions to the answers. That is the sign of thinking, and just about everyone who has posted here has shown that.

Ishidan: 6. Sky is blue? Doesn't look like it.

since there seems to be a few scientists hanging around, here's how i play this little game...

the sky is blue becuase rayleigh scattering goes like 1/lambda^4. see J.D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, pretty much the bible for everyone that studies EM in graduate school. fine.

so, why isn't the sky violet?

i think i know the answer but i'd like to hear yours. this is how science works...

cheers

No man: Why do ice skates, skate?

Because the body weight of the person standing on them, concentrated into the narrow blade, melts the ice under the blade, allowing it to glide on the cushion of melted water.

What property about sails allow a sail boat to sail "against" the wind?

Not really sure what you're saying here, the "property" of the sail remains the same no matter which direction the boat is facing, said property is the ability to catch the wind.

"Tacking" is not actually sailing directly "into" the wind. It's setting a zigzag course across the direction the wind is blowing. The way one measures a tack is how many degrees, or points, one's direction of sail is, when compared to the wind one is sailing "against". Fixed mast ships generally couldn't sail any closer against the wind direction than 4 points. Modern yachts can generally sail as close as 3 points.

The only ships that can sail "directly" into the wind, aren't sail powered.