Long Problem. Show your work. No credit will be given for the answer without the correct accompanying work.
A spherical tank of radius 3 metres is half-full of water. It has a spout of length 1 metre sticking up from the top of the tank. Find the work required to pump all of the water in the tank out the spout. The density of water is 1000 kilograms per cubic metre. The acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 metres per second squared.
Spherical tank
Make sure you understand the problem fully: What is the question asking you to do? Are there specific conditions or constraints that you should take note of? How will you know if your answer is correct from your work only? Can you rephrase the question in your own words in a way that makes sense to you?
If you are stuck, check the hints below. Read the first one and consider it for a while. Does it give you a new idea on how to approach the problem? If so, try it! If after a while you are still stuck, go for the next hint.
Hint 1
Work is defined as acceleration () multiplied by displacement () multiplied by mass . Therefore the work required to move a mass is
Hint 2
For volumes, we can relate the mass () to its density () by
where is the small volume occupied by the small mass.
Hint 3
All the water at a given height forms a disk with a radius that depends on the height of the fluid. How can we use this to relate volume and height?
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Solution
Before beginning, note that all of the units are compatible with each other (i.e. metres go with cubic metres) and so we can just use numbers. However, in general, make sure you convert to the correct units before solving the problem.
First, if we describe the given situation on the graph, we get .
The formula for work is
with a small mass, the distance from the mass to where we want the water to go, and , the acceleration to move the mass.
Note that the mass of water and the distance from the water surface to the top of the tank are changed, as we pump the water. Thus, let’s introduce a variable which represents the depth of the water as measured from the bottom of the tank. (See the above picture). The goal then is to come up with an integral involving this variable (i.e. we want acceleration, distance out of the tank, and mass to be written in terms of ).
First, since the only force on the water we have to overcome is from gravity, the acceleration is constant and given by Earth's gravitational field, .
Next, since we're dealing with a fluid, it is often easier to use the density instead of mass directly, i.e. we can relate to the volume it takes up with the fluid density , via,
At a fixed depth, , it will be the same amount of work to remove a single drop as it will the whole disk of water at this depth. Denote the radius of the circle at depth by as in the picture. Then, satisfies
Therefore, the amount of volume we need to remove at depth is the small cylinder made from the disk of radius with a small amount of depth, ,
Finally, to setup the work, we need the height it takes to get the water out of the tank as a function of . This last step is important and often the most overlooked since at first glance it may seem like this height is the same as itself since they both measure distance. However, remember that is the depth measured from the bottom of the tank but we need to get the water out of the top of the tank. From the picture we see that the distance from the top of the tank to the bottom of the tank is 7. As the depth increases the distance to the top of the tank decreases as
Plugging everything together and using from the problem that ,
For the work required to pump all of the water in the tank, the range for is from 0 to 3, which implies
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