A cone has a height of 16cm and its base has a radius of 8cm. If the cone is horizontally cut into two segments 7cm from the base, what would the surface area of the bottom segment be?

1 Answer
Sep 17, 2017

As528.233cm2

Explanation:

By cutting off a segment of a cone parallel to the base, you create what is known as a frustum. There are four important pieces of information in a fustrum: The height(h), the larger radius (R1), the smaller radius (R2) and the slant (s). In the question asked we know two of these variables, h=7 and R1=8. The first thing we need to do is find R2.

By looking at the question, we see the original cone has a height of 16cm and a radius of 8cm. This means the relationship between the height and the radius is equal to 167. In the frustum, we have the height, but the smaller radius is unknown, which is equal to 7R2. Since the ratios of the cone have been unchanged while making it a fustrum, we can safely say that the height-radius ratio of the cone is the same in the fustrum, so
167=7R2
By cross multiplying, we find that

49=16R2

Finally we divide both sides by 16, to get

3.0625=R2

Now we have the value of h,R1andR2, all that is left is s. The formula for finding s is as follows:
s=(R1R2)2+h2
By looking at the image below, you should get an understanding of how this works using Pythagoras' Theorem.

www.ditutor.comwww.ditutor.com
http://www.ditutor.com/solid_gometry/frustum_cone.html

Now we simply plug in the values we have, to get
s=(83.0625)2+72
s=4.93752+49
s=73.37890625

Now we know s,h,R1 and R2. All that is left is to calculate the Surface Area, which we do using this formula:
As=π(s(R1+R2)+(R1)2+(R2)2). How one gets to this formula can be shown with this picture:
www.ditutor.comwww.ditutor.com
http://www.ditutor.com/solid_gometry/frustum_cone.html

Where the bottom circle has the larger radius, and the top circle has the smaller radius.

We have all the values needed to solve this question, so lets plug them in to get
As=π(73.37890625(8+3.0625)+82+3.06252)
As=π(94.763022+64+9.37890625)
As=π(168.14192825
As528.233
Therefor the surface area of the bottom segment of the cone is 528.233 cm2

I hope I helped!