Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
A scientist has studied the question of whether cats are liquid.
Are Cats Actually Liquid? A physicist weighs in on the fluid feline meme.
On New Year’s Day about 15 years ago, we spent hours looking for our cat. The fireworks had frightened the poor animal so much that it had hidden somewhere. We searched all its favorite places without success. The feline seemed to have vanished. But at some point, we were amazed to see something black and fluffy crawl out of a long, narrow opening under our fireplace. Tigrou, our house cat, had hidden in a space seemingly too narrow for the creature to fit.
Many other people have made similar observations. Memes referring to cats as liquid have been circulating online for several years. And they caught the eye of physicist Marc-Antoine Fardin of the Jacques Monod Institute, now at Paris City University and the French National Center for Scientific Research. “I spend some time on the Internet,” he said in a 2019 TEDx talk, “for research purposes, of course.” In the spring of 2014, Fardin began to scientifically study the fluid behavior of cats—a pastime that allowed him to avoid his real work. “This procrastination actually led to some success,” he explained in his talk. “It won me the Ig Nobel Prize of Physics, which rewards research that makes you laugh as well as think.”
There is more than one way to think about states of matter, such as liquids and solids. For example, in school you may have learned that molecules within a solid are tightly packed together in fixed positions, whereas those in a liquid move more freely around one another.
But Fardin’s research is based on the science of fluid dynamics, or rheology. In this field, objects that have a constant volume and a fixed shape are solids. By contrast, the volume of liquid substances remains the same, but their shape can change. The latter criterion seems to apply to cats: despite a constant volume, they can bend as they please to fill a container such as a cardboard box or a sink. This means that cats should be classified as liquids, right?
The rest here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-actually-liquid/On New Year’s Day about 15 years ago, we spent hours looking for our cat. The fireworks had frightened the poor animal so much that it had hidden somewhere. We searched all its favorite places without success. The feline seemed to have vanished. But at some point, we were amazed to see something black and fluffy crawl out of a long, narrow opening under our fireplace. Tigrou, our house cat, had hidden in a space seemingly too narrow for the creature to fit.
Many other people have made similar observations. Memes referring to cats as liquid have been circulating online for several years. And they caught the eye of physicist Marc-Antoine Fardin of the Jacques Monod Institute, now at Paris City University and the French National Center for Scientific Research. “I spend some time on the Internet,” he said in a 2019 TEDx talk, “for research purposes, of course.” In the spring of 2014, Fardin began to scientifically study the fluid behavior of cats—a pastime that allowed him to avoid his real work. “This procrastination actually led to some success,” he explained in his talk. “It won me the Ig Nobel Prize of Physics, which rewards research that makes you laugh as well as think.”
There is more than one way to think about states of matter, such as liquids and solids. For example, in school you may have learned that molecules within a solid are tightly packed together in fixed positions, whereas those in a liquid move more freely around one another.
But Fardin’s research is based on the science of fluid dynamics, or rheology. In this field, objects that have a constant volume and a fixed shape are solids. By contrast, the volume of liquid substances remains the same, but their shape can change. The latter criterion seems to apply to cats: despite a constant volume, they can bend as they please to fill a container such as a cardboard box or a sink. This means that cats should be classified as liquids, right?
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
They're liquid, silly. Nice gig actually getting to study it, though!
