Question

An oil tank has to be drained for maintenance. The tank is shaped like a cylinder that is 4.5 ft long with a diameter of 1.4 ft. Suppose oil is drained at a rate of

1.7 ft per minute. If the tank starts completely full, how many minutes will it take to empty the tank?

Answer 1

Hey there! I'm happy to help!

First, let's find the volume of the cylindrical tank.

To find the volume of a cylinder, take the area of the circle base and multiply it by the height of the cylinder.

To find the area of a circle, you square the radius and multiply it by pi (we will use 3.14).

The diameter is always twice the radius, so we divide by two to find the radius.

1.4/2=0.7

We square this.

0.7²=0.49

And we multiply by 3.14.

0.49×3.14=1.5386

Now that we have the area of the circle, we multiply by the height (length in our case since the cylinder is sideways).

1.5386×4.5=6.9237

Now, we see that we will be losing 1.7 feet every minute. To see how many times 1.7 feet goes into our cylinder, we just divide!

6.9237÷1.7= 4.07276470588

So we see that it will take just over 4 minutes for the tank to empty.

Have a wonderful day and keep on learning! :D