Question

A cylinder is full at 471 cm³ and has a radius of 5 cm. It currently contains 314 cm³ of water. What is the difference between the height of the water in the full cylinder and the height when 314 cm³ of water remains in the cylinder?” Use 3.14 to approximate pi.

Answer 1

The volume of a cylinder is modeled such that $V_{cyl}= \pi r^2h$, which you can think of as basically the area of a circle, with height to make it three-dimensional.

The radius in this scenario is constant. We know the volume, and we are solving for the height. Thus, we will write the height in terms of the volume and radius such that $h= \dfrac{V}{ \pi r^2}$. For the full cylinder, $h= \frac{471}{3.14(5)^2} = 6 \ cm$. For the partially full cylinder, $h= \frac{314}{3.14(5)^2} = 4 \ cm$. The difference is 2 cm.