The rooster and the Sun

About this video

Every morning on a farm the rooster crows, and soon after the Sun comes up. A child who has watched it for years might think the crowing makes the Sun rise. The pattern is real, but it only shows that one thing comes after another, not that the first causes the second. A cause is something that makes another thing happen.

This short animation uses the easiest test there is: what happens without the first thing? On a morning when the rooster is ill and doesn't crow, the Sun comes up anyway, so the crowing isn't the cause. (Roosters crow before dawn because a clock inside their body tells them morning is coming: the morning causes the crowing, not the other way round.)

Then come two other explanations for things that happen together. Sam wore his blue socks and his team won, twice, so now they are his lucky socks. That is a coincidence: two things happening together by chance. And on days when a beach shop sells lots of ice cream, lots of people get sunburnt, not because ice cream causes sunburn but because hot, sunny weather causes both. So when two things go together, the first might cause the second, the second might cause the first, a third thing might cause both, or it might be chance. This video goes with the It Happened After, So It Was the Cause? lesson of Logic Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00The rooster crows, then the Sun comes up. Does the crowing cause it?
2. 0:04Test it. On the morning the rooster is ill, the Sun rises anyway.
3. 0:11Blue socks, two wins? That's a coincidence.
4. 0:17Ice cream and sunburn go up together. The sunny weather causes both.
5. 0:25After, or together, is not the same as because.