elephant question in 109 workshop 1

The elephant question in 109 workshop 1 last week was definitely not everyone's favourite!! There are some key places people go wrong with this, so here are some tips to help you out...

So, you had to estimate the total volume of the African and Asian elephants.

First things first, notice the question wants the volume in SI units.  The SI unit for volume is m³ 
(not L, as many of you might expect).

For the Asian elephant, you are given various measurements in m, such as the head diameter and trunk length.  You are also given formulae for geometric shapes that roughly approximate the shapes of the various parts of an elephant (so, a sphere for the head and a cone for a trunk etc).

So, you had to use the formulae, with the measurements you are given, to calculate the volumes of the various body parts, which you could then add together to find the volume of the entire elephant.  Sounds simple....

Things to remember:

1. Remember to divide the diameters by 2 - you want the radius in the formulae
2. Remember an elephant has four legs!!!  Multiply your leg volume by 4.

But what about the African elephant, this case is a little more tricky.  You are given measurements for the African elephant in inches, which means before you do anything else, you have to convert these measurements to m (seeing as you want your volume to be in m³ ).

So, for the first measurement - the African elephants head has a diameter of 67 inches, and you want this in m.  I would do this conversion in two stages.  

Firstly, I know that there are 2.54 cm in 1 inch, so I would do 67 x 2.54 = 170.18 cm

Secondly, I know that there are 100 cm in 1 m, so I would do 170.18 / 100 = 1.7 m.

Once you have converted all of the measurements in inches to meters, you can then use the formulae in the same way that you did for the Asian elephant, to calculate the volumes of all the parts of the African elephant, and add these up to the volume of the entire African elephant....