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.
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2 comments:
I think I have seen cats drinking nearly 1/3 cup milk in one go... anyway, lovely blog and hope you post more often! If you are not keen on guarding it forever, may I know your identity? I am Sushama from TIFR.
Thank you Sushama, for the comment. Yes, you are right, My cat can also drink that much in one go.
More importanly, thanks for suggesting that I post often. I shall try to.
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