Hide the (stupid) kids. Knowledge bomb incoming. You know that any common household magnet is super attracted to ferrous metals and alloys. You also know that yummy yum cereals like General Mills’ Whole Grain Total contain 100% of your daily value of iron. So what would you say if I asked you the following: “Would ground up Total stick to a magnet?”

Take your time and harbor a guess, I’m only a digital voice riding the ones and zeros of the internet ebb and flow, so I can wait thousands of years while your spongy, mucous laden body decomposes back into the Earth. Made up your mind? OK, you can continue now.

As it turns out, yes, the iron in your breakfast is the same as the iron in Tony Stark’s underoos. Gary King, professor of government and Director of The Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Hahvahd U asked this same question to a group of kindergartenators and a group of grad students. Only 3 in 23 kindergarten kiddies thought the cereal would stick, comparable in percentage to the number of graduate students who thought the same (5 in 44). While the point of his lesson was to stress the importance of control groups in casual inference studies (after testing the Total, he then had the students test this cereal sticking theory with Rice Krispies as well, a food very low in iron), it still proves the most important fact of all: learning is for nerds unless there is cereal involved.

For more info on King’s little experiment, check this out, NERD.

Update: Check out pics from our own version of the experiment.