Did you know there was such a thing as the Ig Nobel Prize? This physicist won this prize by writing a study about whether cats are liquid or solid.
The Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prize is a satirical prize, awarded for fun but not serious scientific research. Even the name is funny: it sounds like the word “ignoble,” which means not honorable or noble.
Despite being a satirical prize, it is still a major accomplishment for a scientist to receive one for doing such completely silly work.
A physicist named Marc-Antoine Fardin won the prize for his study about cats and whether they could be classified as liquids or solids.
Cats are liquids
Many people had claimed before that cats are actually liquids, since they’re so flexible that they can change shape to fit any container they’re in. Whether it’s a cardboard box from a freshly delivered package, a sink bowl, or even a flower vase, cats will squeeze into it if they decide they want to.
As a result of his study, Fardin concluded that they are liquids because of this characteristic. He said:
“If we take cats as our example, the fact is that they can adapt their shape to their container if we give them enough time. Cats are thus liquid if we give them the time to become liquid.”
In addition to their ability to take the shape of any container, cats will also probably evaporate at too high of a temperature and turn into solids at too low of a temperature, another thing that all liquids do.
If they fit, they sit
It can be concluded from this that cats should be kept at a good temperature that is both comfortable for them and will also keep them at their liquid state, so they can enjoy their lives, fitting into any box or bed or bag that they want to sit in.
So now, not only do we have plenty of pictures of cats taking strange shapes to fit various containers, as well as many social media pages that post these pictures and claim that cats are liquids, we also have an officially un-official scientific study to prove it.
It may be a lot of fun and games, but it’s definitely an interesting question to think about. If the cat fits, it sits, and that makes it a liquid!
