If "No, I didn't" then what was your purpose in writing that example? In any case, you wrote "If you think there are only 4 bases and then later find out that

If "No, I didn't" then what was your purpose in writing that example? In any case, you wrote "If you think there are only 4 bases and then later find out that there are others, the first reaction t that is to feel short-changed about your previous education and stupid about all the new stuff you have to absorb." Either you will feel short-changed about all of the other things the teachers didn't tell you - did they tell you that atoms were made of electrons and a nucleus without mentioning exotic atoms? Did they tell you that noble gases don't chemically react with other molecules without mentioning things like xenon hexafluoride? Did they tell you that the pH goes from 0 to 14? Did they teach you that "the key to healthy eating is to enjoy a variety of nutritious foods from each of the 5 food groups" but not mention that a meat and fish diet is another way to eat healthy? Did they teach you that thrown objects (without wind resistance) fall in a parabola, without explaining that it's actually an approximation to an ellipse, which is an approximation to general relativity? Did they teach you that velocities add without explaining that it's an approximation only valid for low velocities? Did they teach you that DNA is right-handed when it forms a double helix, without telling you about Z-DNA? Did you learn that different parts of the tongue have different taste receptors when that's not actually true? Did they teach you that black holes absorb everything and neglect to mention Hawking radiation? Did they teach you that microwave ovens work by being tuned to the resonant frequency of water? Or that there is an physical correlation between left-brain/right-brain and creativity/analytical tasks? If so, then by your definition your teachers short-changed you, and you no doubt feel pretty stupid right now. If not, then your education was exceptional. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ed083p1465 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ed083p1465, for example, is a paper from the Journal of Chemical Education titled "Negative pH Does Exist". It says: > The misconception that pH lies between 0 and 14 has been perpetuated in popular-science books (1–3), textbooks (4–8), revision guides (9), and reference books (10–16). I find it unlikely to the point of laughability that your elementary grade math class mentioned that you can ignore relativistic affects when adding the speed of an airline passenger to the ground speed of the plane to compute the ground speed of the passenger. When you finally learned about special relativity, you might have felt like quite a fool for having previously only been taught about Newtonian mechanics.