This fallacy has even been featured -- and made fun of -- in an episode of The Simpsons, in which the family visits Australia.
George Eppig (freshman-science), a fan of the show, said that in the episode, "there is a machine hooked up to the toilet that reverses the flow of the water because it flows in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere."
Although this was just a joke, Fraser said many teachers have erroneously taught that the Coriolis effect causes water in sinks and toilets to drain counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
However, he said the Coriolis effect is too small to affect the direction of the flow of water, and furthermore, water does not actually drain differently according to which hemisphere it's in.
Fraser admits he enjoys The Simpsons for its use of satire, but "the fact The Simpsons got it wrong doesn't mean it is acceptable in the classroom."
Fraser said he created the "Bad Science" site in January 1995 in response to his students' belief in scientific fallacies that they were taught in high school and middle school.
"After years of teaching I realized that many students were arriving with misconceptions about different subjects we were studying in the classroom," he said.
Fraser said that at first he didn't think it would be a problem to re-educate his students about how the natural world works, but he soon found out otherwise.
Even after learning the correct answers, students still wanted to believe what their high school and middle school teachers had taught them, he said.
He said that students often believe so strongly in ideas they have already been taught that even logic cannot displace these ideas.
The Web site's message is aimed more at potential students and educators, rather than current Penn State students, he said.
"If you are going to teach, you have the obligation to get it right," Fraser said.
Fraser said he knows that teachers like to be able to simplify complex subjects, but he feels that if they can't simplify the material accurately, then they should just state the facts without offering an explanation, he said.
The Web site in a sense was created to make his job easier, he said.
Others have added their input to Fraser's Web site since its inception.
Kevin Lehmann, professor of chemistry at Princeton University and a relative of Fraser, created a "Bad Chemistry" section for the site, which includes such misconceptions about chemistry as the hydrophobic effect.
The hydrophobic effect refers to the fact that non-polar substances such as oil do not dissolve when they are mixed with a polar substance such as water, he said.
Lehmann said many teachers explain the phenomenon simply by saying that water and non-polar substances don't like to bond together, but this is inaccurate.
In actuality, when a drop of oil is released onto water, it flattens out because the non-polar oil is attracted to the polar water, but oil cannot break the bonds between the water molecules because the water bonds are stronger, he said.
"These aren't topics that are controversial but oversimplified to a point where they are incorrect," he said.
Lehmann said he agrees that typically, after students learn the correct reasoning behind a concept, they still maintain the false assumptions they have previously learned.
"It is harder to unlearn a mistake than to learn something right the first time," he said.
Both Lehmann and Fraser said the Web site has been very popular. Lehmann said he has been asked permission a couple of times to translate his page into other languages.
Fraser said he has been interviewed by The New York Times and referenced at least 3,000 times by other Web sites.
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