situational vs universal truth

Question

INSTRUCTIONS:

Offer and explain at least one realistic counter-example – in other words, a real-world situation where the thought is not true, i.e., where the thought fails to match reality. Be sure to explain in detail how the thought is definitely not true (or at least highly likely to be not true) in that situation.  

Please note two things: First, the instruction is not for you to explain how the thought is always false; the issue we are exploring here isn’t true versus false. It’s always true versus sometimes true. (And the skill you’re practicing is learning to think of counter-examples rather than just agreeing with an assertion.) Second, since the purpose of your explanation is to convince me that you are correct, weak answers will earn less than full credit.

1. There are 24 hours in a day.

2. The Earth is round.

3. A mother is older than her daughter.

4. This claim has seven words in it.  

[The pronouns ‘this’ and ‘it’ refer to the sentence listed as # 4.]

Answer 1

1. This only applies to Earth. Other planets and astral bodies have days of varying hours. Who is to say why the only "day" that can be considered a "day" is Earth's day? A realistic counter to this would be Mercury, where days last over 1,000 hours!
2. The Earth is round, however it is not exactly round. Technically, the Earth is a oblate spheroid -- which means it bulges slightly at the equater--. Thie difference is small (21 kilomter difference), but it is not non-existant. Meaning that when very precise measurements need to be taken of the earth, you cannot say that it is strictly round. So for most instances, the earth is round.
3. This isn't strictly true as someone could be a step-mother to a daughter who is older than she is. If the husband has a daughter when he is releatively young (say 20), gets divorced shortly after, and then waits 25 years to get re-married to a young 20 year old woman, that daughters step-mother would be younger than her by 5 years.
4. The claim only has 7 words in it if you exclude the disclaimer at the end. If you insisted that the dislcaimer be counted, the claim would have more than 7 words (it would have 18-20 depending on if "#" and "4" count as words). Furthermore, it would only have 7 words if it was written in English, if the claim was made in French for example it would read as such: "Cette affirmation contient sept mots" which has 5 words in it.