Real-Life Math
Emergency room physicians need to be able to think and react quickly
when they are working on the emergency ward. This often means making simple
math calculations in order to figure out when someone was injured and how
to treat them.
"To get into medicine, you'll have taken a bachelor
of science, and that will require the knowledge of advanced math," says Linda
Soon, administrative secretary of emergency medicine. "[Y]ou
really only need basic math skills on the job to make calculations in your
head, either for medications or for sorting through a patient's story
and figuring out what happened."
You are an emergency room physician,
and a car accident victim is wheeled into the ward. A nurse is working to
stop the bleeding. She has made quick notes about the accident, and about
the victim. "He has lost about 1.4 L of blood," she says to you, the doctor.
You
need to make a quick calculation in your head. Remember that a human has 3.76
L of blood.
Question 1: How much blood is left in the patient?
The
patient also seems to be having trouble breathing, and you are concerned that
he may not be receiving enough oxygen. Generally, a human breathes about 11.3
cubic meters of air in a day. About 5 percent of this air is oxygen.
Question
2: How many cubic meters of oxygen does a person usually inhale in one day?