Project: The Oil Tank

For our first project, you’ll work on the following task. You’ll have class time on Thursday, as
well as Mon/Tues (when you aren’t taking the quiz.) You’ll begin by working in groups on
Thursday, and then you’ll finish the project individually.
Due by ________ :
- A poster with your chart
- All calculations included (and explanations/diagrams)
- A graph of the gallons of oil as a function of the number of inches (use the coordinates
from your table)
- An explanation: ​Does the building have enough oil for the rest of the winter?

The heating oil in a building is stored in a right cylindrical tank represented by the following
diagram:

Guiding Question: ​The building manager takes a look at the tank in February. She knows the building
needs 7,000 gallons of oil to be able to use heat through the rest of the winter. She uses a stick dipped
through the fill tube and sees that she has 45 inches of oil in the tank. Is this enough?

Make a chart: begin with the tank having 5 inches of oil and go up by ten-inch increments. (Go
all the way up to 95 inches so you can make a graph of this data.)
Challenge: ​Find a function that calculates the volume of the tank when the depth of the oil is x
inches high. Keep in mind that the tank is 102 inches high.
Challenge #2: E​ xactly how many inches of oil would need to be in the tank to have exactly
7,000 gallons of oil?
*Important information you may need:
Area of a Triangle: A = 12 bh
θ
Sector of a Circle Area: s = 360
πr2

1 Gallon = 231 cubic inches