how much milk can a cat drink?

While helping my child with her maths homework, I came across this worked out example in the book:

"A vessel had 4 1/4 litres of milk. Out of it, a cat drank 3/8 litres. How much milk was left in the vessel?"

I do have a cat in my house now, and I realized suddenly that a cat cannot possibly drink 3/8 litres of milk - certainly not in one go. Perhaps over a whole day, it can drink about 1/2 a cup or about 1/10th of a litre.

What is the connection with science all around - do you ask?

Well, an important aspect of science is doing reasonable estimations, rough calculations that are close to what the final result is going to be. But the education system does not stress this at the primary/middle/high school level. If it did, class V math book would not have a cat drinking 3/8 litres of milk.

Perhaps, it could say 10 cats drank 3/8th litres. That would sound a little strange, would it not? But that is precisely the point - both formulation and solution of scientific problems have certain "reasonableness" to them, else it would be a life less unreal problem. Much as math is portrayed to be but which it does not have to be.

Shining Stars and Hans Bethe

Arthur Miller, in his autobiography, "Timebends," quoted the great physicist Hans Bethe - who discovered how stars shine - as saying, "Well, I come down in the morning and I take up a pencil and I try to think. ..."

Here is another quote from Bethe: "I am not a philosopher."

Perhaps it was a philosophical sense of wonder that made him pursue how stars shine and other mysteries of nature, but certainly it was the scientist that tried to find answers to these by taking up a pencil and trying to think......

Aren't we glad he did? And the great thing is so can each one of us, for

Science is Everywhere.

Does not matter if many of us do not turn out to be Bethe, the joy of trying to understand is reward enough ......