BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ.  Your phone vibrates as your friend sends yet another controversial topic to instigate the group chat into battle. 

In past years social media platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, have sparked viral arguments that awaken a nationwide response. WCHS students ingest this social media content and send it to their peers to see their opinions and spark playful controversy.  

Some popular topics include if water is wet and if a hot dog is a sandwich; the most recent debacle being if the world contains more wheels or doors. 

While all scenarios can be answered through opinion, there is also a scientific approach to finding the answer. Through thoughtful reasoning, a well developed claim and legitimate evidence anyone can win their argument. Here are three social media arguments that can finally be put to rest. 

Is Water wet?  

This debate originated from Instagram and is a silly debacle with a simple scientific and grammatical based answer.

Water is not wet. A solid object is what becomes wet from the substance water.  Water itself cannot be wet, yet can provide a wet feeling to a solid object. Things that can be wet also need to have the ability to be dry.  Water can not switch between states of dry and wet like a solid object can. The English word “wet” is a description of the solid object in which water touches. If being wet means something being covered in water, water itself can’t be covered by itself; a singular substance as it is would only have an increased volume of oneself. Wetness has a specific spectrum as well including, dry, moist, soaking, damp, and dripping.  The state of water is always the same and cannot be dry, damp or moist. The feeling of water stays the same.

Is a hot dog a sandwich? 

Specifically this question raised a lot of heads, as people are surprisingly passionate about sandwiches.

A hot dog is its own specific category as it does not meet the scientific criteria to be classified as a sandwich. According to Merriam-Webster, a sandwich is defined as “an item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with meat, cheese, or filling between them and horizontal orientation.”  At first thought this definition seems to accept a hotdog in all of its requirements. However, if one looks closely at the last part a hot dog does not meet the requirements to be a sandwich. Hot dogs have a cylindrically shaped bun as it surrounds the meat from the left, right, and bottom.  A sandwich definition has the requirement of bread on the bottom and top of it. Swerving from a scientific approach, a philosophical way of thinking may be that a hot dog is almost never under the sandwiches section on a restaurant menu which displays society’s views.

The most recent debacle from TikTok: are there more wheels in the world or doors? 

This debate is quite unique from the others as it can go either way on the sides of the argument and convince you more so on it as you look deeper and deeper.

For example, students at WCHS who believe there are more doors may count the cabinets in their classroom and also the doors in the hallways of the school.  Students who side with wheels may notice the office chairs with five wheels in each classroom along with the wheels that help those cabinets function.  Both sides ultimately realize that cars generally cancel each other’s sides to the argument out since there are four wheels and four doors per car.

Additionally, the wheels side of the debate may spark up that motorcycles have 2 wheels and no doors; doors continue to rebuttal to that by saying that ships have almost no wheels and lots of doors.  Each view can constantly cancel eachother out as there are endless amounts of things that use the creation or wheels and doors.  It is similar to how people’s brains can’t fully comprehend infinity; doors and wheels are a close thing to that in our physical world.  The question of wheels or doors is so broad that it can’t eliminate the possibilities of things like drawers counting as doors and wheels in push pull functions counting as real wheels. With a broad perspective here are some scenarios for each side that could help you win this new classic social media argument.  Many doors are present in houses, skyscrapers, cars, cities, hotels, and ships.  Wheels exist on cars, motorcycles, conveyor belts, inside drawers as push pull function, and doorknobs on each door have a wheel and axle which scientifically follows the requirements to be a wheel through its rotation. Doors versus wheels.  Ultimately, a pointless debate with endless reasoning.

Use the information above wisely as it guarantees the user to win group chat arguments, until a new debate emerges through the social media world.