1. Create a list of all possible ways you could calculate the volume of your fruit. Be creative!

Your ideas dont have to be mathematical in nature. Be sure to explain HOW each idea will result in your determining the volume of your piece of fruit*. a. Blender method Blend the pear. Measure the volume of the pear puree in a measuring cup. (Optionally, make into a smoothie.) b. Computer method Make a 3D scan of the pear. Use a computer to compute the volume. c. Rotating a function Find a function that roughly approximates the edge of the pear. Rotate the function about the x-axis. Find the volume using calculus magic. d. Archimedes Principle Submerge the pear in water. Measure the amount of water the pear displaces. e. Slicing method Slice the pear into evenly sliced pieces. Assume that each slice is a disc. Add up the volume of all the discs. f. Eyeball method Look at the pear. Roughly estimate the volume. g. Delicious method The average capacity of a human stomach is about 1 liter. Eat as many pears as anatomically possible. Divide the size of your stomach (1 liter) by the number of pears you ate. The result will be in liters per pear. h. Mold method Make a mold of the pear. Fill the mold with a substance. Measure the amount it takes to fill the mold. 4 i. Sphere method Mash the pear into a sphere shape. Use the formula = 3 3 to find the volume. j. Geometric method Fill the pear as closely as possible with basic geometric shapes. (E.g. spheres, prisms, etc.) Add up the volume of all the shapes. k. Volume-to-Weight Ratio method Take an apple corer (or similar device) and cut out a cylinder from the pear. Weigh the cylinder. Find the volume of the cylinder, using the formula = 2 . Insert the cylinder back into the pear. Find the weight of the pear. The ratio between the cylinder s weight and the total pear s weight will be the same as the ratio between the cylinder s volume and the total pear s volume. That is, = .

l. Ice Sculpture method Make an ice sculpture of the same size and shape as the pear. Let the ice pear melt, and measure the volume of the melted water. Note: Take into account that water expands by 9% when frozen. Simply multiply the volume of the measured water by 1.09 to find the actual volume of the original pear. 2. Determine the volume of your piece of fruit using at least two different methods from the list above. One method must use mathematical techniques for calculating volume that we have discussed in MTH 252 (think integral calculus). The other method should be empirical (that means a creative, non-calculus approach). Now we will approximate the volume of a pear using the idea of a Riemann Sum and rotation of a solid. We will do this by measuring the pear, graphing it, rotating it, slicing it up into disks and lastly by adding up the volumes of these disks. I.E:

() = ( )
=1

Where our function is the cross-sectional area of the pear, and our delta x is the thickness of each slice.

First we draw one half of a pear (sliced horizontally) on a graph. We will draw this to scale as accurately as possible.

x-axis: per cm.

y-axis: per cm.

Being that we want to find the total volume of our shape we will recreate the pear by rotating our drawing around the x-axis. This creates a 3-dimensional, measurable pear outline allowing us to calculate its total volume.

Next we will slice our shape into 1cm thick circular slices or disks. For each of these disks we can easily find their radii by measuring the distance from y = 0 to the outer edge above it. These measurements are located in the table to the right of the graph.

Our newly found slices are merely cylinders of radius r (y) with a thickness (h) of 1cm. we can easily calculate their area using the formula for a circle: 2 . After which we can multiply the area of each disk by our 1cm thickness (h); getting the volume of each slice. Here's what we calculated...

12

12 = 2 = (0)2 1 + (3.7)2 1 + (4.7)2 1 + + (2.3)2 1 + (1.9)2 1

= 0 + 28.27 + 43.008 + 69.4 + 78.54 + 69.4 + 52.81 + 40.72 + 34.21 + 28.27 + 21.24 + 16.62 + 11.34
=1

= 493.828 cm3

Pears Total Volume: 493.828 cubic centimeters

The second method we'll use to calculate the volume of our pear is using a trick I learned earlier this term in physics. It turns out that an ancient man named Archimedes discovered that if you submerge an object completely in water, the volume of the water displaced by the object is equal to the volume of the object itself! Knowing this, and that 1ml of water is roughly 1 cubic centimeter, we submerged our pear in a measuring cup and recorded the amount of water displaced.

There was roughly 525ml of water before we submerged the pear.

After submerging the pear the water rose to around 830ml.

As you can see from above the water was displaced by a total of 305ml. By Archimedes principle the volume of our pear is simply the volume of the water displaced! Thusly, we found our pears volume to be about 305 cubic centimeters! Our original summation may have been an overestimate, but without a proper function to integrate over, being exact using calculus methods is very difficult. In the end, Archimedes principle is a much easier and way more accurate method of estimating the volume of a pear. Now all we have to do is eat it...