Finding the volume of a sphere with a double integral

Sleepycoaster
Messages
17
Reaction score
0

Homework Statement



I know how to find the volume of a sphere just by adding the areas of circles, so I decided to do a double integral to find the same volume, just for fun.

Here's what I've set up. I put 8 out front and designed the integrals to find an eighth of a sphere that has its center at the origin. This piece of the sphere is what you would get if you cut a sphere in half three times, one from each of the three dimensions.

8∫010√(1-y2)√(1-x2-y2)dxdy

√(1-x2-y2) is the equation I used to measure the z-dimension of a point on the sphere given values for x and y.

Homework Equations


The Attempt at a Solution



Here's the integral I got for the inner integration, the one with respect to x:

0√(1-y2)√(1-x2-y2)dx

=[-2x/(2√(1-x2-y2))] with 0 on the bottom and √(1-y2) on the top.

As you can see, if I plug in √(1-y2) for x, the values cancel out so that there is only a zero in the denominator.

Is this simply a limitation in using multiple integration, or did I do something wrong? Any help is appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
And yes, everything in this proof refers to a sphere with radius 1.
 
Sleepycoaster said:

Homework Statement



I know how to find the volume of a sphere just by adding the areas of circles, so I decided to do a double integral to find the same volume, just for fun.

Here's what I've set up. I put 8 out front and designed the integrals to find an eighth of a sphere that has its center at the origin. This piece of the sphere is what you would get if you cut a sphere in half three times, from each of the three dimensions.

8∫010√(1-y2)√(1-x2-y2)dxdy

√(1-x2-y2) is the equation I used to measure the z-dimension of a point on the sphere given values for x and y.

Homework Equations





The Attempt at a Solution



Here's the integral I got for the inner integration, the one with respect to x:

0√(1-y2)√(1-x2-y2)dx

=[-2x/(2√(1-x2-y2))] with 0 on the bottom and √(1-y2) on the top.

That antiderivative doesn't look correct. Try changing your dxdy integral to polar coordinates. It will be much easier. Otherwise you will need to do a trig substitution.
 
  • Like
Likes 1 person
Oh hey, I see where I went wrong. I took the derivative when I should have taken the integral. Thank you!
 
There are two things I don't understand about this problem. First, when finding the nth root of a number, there should in theory be n solutions. However, the formula produces n+1 roots. Here is how. The first root is simply ##\left(r\right)^{\left(\frac{1}{n}\right)}##. Then you multiply this first root by n additional expressions given by the formula, as you go through k=0,1,...n-1. So you end up with n+1 roots, which cannot be correct. Let me illustrate what I mean. For this...
Back
Top