Teaching Physics with the Physics Suite

Edward F. Redish

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Feeding the Cougar

When visiting the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota, with my young grandson, we encountered the sign shown at the right on the cage of the mountain lion.

The detailed numbers surprised me . The amount of food given to the cat was specified to the tenth of a gram and the average cat's weight was specified to within 10 grams -- about 1/3 of an ounce. This seemed to me overly precise. Can you figure out what they were trying to say and what a plausible accuracy might be for those two numbers, the amount of food given and for the average cat's weight?


Page last modified September 30, 2002: G01