London:
A third of primary school children in the UK believe Albert Einstein is a reality TV star and one-fourth of them think Stephen Hawking is a hairdresser, a new study has found.
However, 68 percent were correctly able to identify Mark Zuckerberg as the founder of social networking site Facebook.
As many as 29 percent kids think they have recently seen Einstein, who died in 1955, on reality TV shows like
The X Factor and
Britain's Got Talent.
According to 22 percent of eight-year-olds, physicist Stephen Hawking is a hairdresser, the
Daily Mail reported.
More than a third of school kids aged 11 to 14 did not know that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, despite it featuring on their school curriculum.
Meanwhile, six percent thought
X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos created penicillin while a million children believe chart-topping rapper Professor Green is a real academic.
Furthermore, a confused 35 percent of five-year-olds think London Mayor Boris Johnson discovered gravity with one in five primary school children believing that England and Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney is a scientist.
Electric lightbulb inventor Thomas Edison was credited with creating Facebook by 22 percent of seven year olds. Despite spending an average of 17 hours and 34 minutes in front a TV each week, 45 percent did not know it was invented by John Logie Baird, the poll by a home appliances firm found.
"It is eye-opening to discover children of today are more aware of Mark Zuckerberg than men and women who made iconic discoveries and inventions that revolutionised the modern world," Jeff Moody, a company official, said.