A recent poll found that nearly one third of British children think that Albert Einstein is a judge on The X Factor and 45 percent don't know who invented the TV -- despite spending more than 17 hours a week sitting in front of it.

Only 45 percent of children were able to correctly identify Einstein but he was by no means the only significant name from the world of science and technology that children who took part in the poll by electrical appliances company Haier had problems naming.

The results, released this week, showed that nearly two thirds of respondents didn't know who Charles Darwin was, 75 percent couldn't identify Louis Pasteur and 62 percent failed to identify Sir Isaac Newton.

Meanwhile 22 percent of five-year-olds think that instead of the electric lightbulb, Edison actually invented Facebook, and the same percentage of eight-year-olds think that Professor Stephen Hawking is a hairdresser.

Other shocks in the poll of over 1,000 children aged between 5 and 16 included the fact that 35 percent of 11-to-14-year-olds didn't know that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, even though energy transfer and physical processes are part of their education curriculum, and that 35 percent of five-year-olds actually believe London mayor Boris Johnson is credited with its discovery.

And while 68 percent of all respondents were able to correctly identify Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 6 percent of respondents believed NDubs singer and reality TV show judge Tulisa Contostavlos created penicillin.

Of the results, Jeff Moody, from Haier, said: '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."