Boys have a natural advantage at physics because their ability to ‘pee’ up walls helps then understand projectile motion, academics have controversially claimed.
So-called ‘playful urination practices’ gives them a head start over girls in grasping this crucial aspect of the secondary curriculum from a young age.
By the age of 14, they will have had the ‘opportunity’ to play with projectile motion around 10,000 times – based on urinating five times a day.
Being able to projectile ‘pee’ gives boys a head start in secondary physics education, three academics claimed, in an article published on TES
As a result, physics lessons should initially focus on topics such as energy conservation rather than Newton’s equations of motion to prevent girls from being disadvantaged.
The demands have been made by three academics – including Anna Wilson, a research fellow at Abertay University in Dundee – in an article penned for the Times Educational Supplement.
The claims were branded as ‘frankly ridiculous’ by education experts yesterday.
The researchers said there was ‘strong evidence’ for the ‘widespread nature of certain kinds of pee-based game-playing among young (and not-so-young) boys’.
They also analysed the types of physics exam questions that girls ‘generally do worse in’ than boys and discovered that projectile motion caused ‘the largest gaps in performance’.
Only around one-third of girls correctly answered some of these questions, compared to two-thirds of boys, they discovered.
The innate ability to ‘pee up walls gives boys an innate understanding of projectile motion that girls do not have access to (stock image)
It has previously been suggested that differences between boys’ and girls’ participation in physical sports is a factor in this performance gap.
But the academics argued that ‘playful urination practices – from seeing how high you can pee to games such as Peeball (where men compete using their urine to destroy a ball placed in a urinal) – may give boys an advantage over girls when it comes to physics’.
They said: ‘Boys are trained to pee into toilet bowls with floating targets, a huge variety of which can be bought on Amazon; Amsterdam Airport Schiphol famously cleaned up its urinals by encouraging men to hit flies etched next to the drain; and Peeball is now a worldwide phenomenon.
‘Meanwhile, YouTube videos explain how to write your name in the snow with your pee; and the post-match celebration peeing antics of sportsmen are widely reported in the media.
‘Indeed, the very notion of a p***ing contest – furthest, highest, most precisely aimed – is a deeply embedded part of some cultures.’
The authors – two of whom are the parents of sons – added: ‘This self-directed, hands-on, intrinsically (and sometimes extrinsically, and socially) rewarding activity must have a huge potential contribution to learning, resulting in a deep, embodied, material knowledge of projectile motion that’s simply not accessible to girls.
The academics argue that projectile motion be taken off the starting curriculum for secondary science, and replaced with other topics, such as energy conservation
‘Transfer of this understanding to typical contextualised questions in mechanics curricula is not likely to be difficult, either: as mentioned above, the favourite scenarios for projectile motion exercises are often aiming a ball or a cannon, and involve drawing a trajectory line that must recall those sparkling arcs of urine.’
Physics curriculums in secondary schools often use projectile motion as ‘the entry point to more sophisticated mechanics concepts such as force, energy and momentum’.
The researchers wrote: ‘However, we can make a change: it’s not necessary for physics curricula to begin with projectile motion.
‘Other topics, such as energy conservation, which is more central to physics, could be taught first instead.’
They acknowledged that ‘some people won’t take us seriously; indeed, we might even be accused of taking the p***’.
But they insisted they were making a ‘serious point’ as girls are ‘already at a cultural disadvantage in a traditionally male-dominated subject’.
Anna Wilson, who gained a PhD in education at the University of Stirling, is also an adjunct professor at the Australian National University.
Her colleagues are Dr Kate Wilson, a senior lecturer in the School of Engineering and Information Technology and the Learning and Teaching Group at University of New South Wales Canberra.
Dr David Low is an honorary lecturer in the School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences at University of New South Wales Canberra.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said yesterday: ‘The academics have put their finger on an important problem – there are too few women in the sciences and engineering.
‘But their explanation is frankly ridiculous. Where is the evidence?
‘Males are more attracted to the physical sciences, maths and engineering because on average they have higher spatial and numerical abilities than do females.’