Summer Assignment - resulting slick

  • Thread starter Thread starter Snead1
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Assignment Summer
Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
3 replies · 5K views
Snead1
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Ive seen questions like this one done here before but I don't think I am understanding this well. The question is:

Suppose 300 cubic meters of oil is spilled into the ocean. Find the are of the resulting slick, assuming that it is one molecule thick, and each moelcule occupies a cube .50 um (micrometers) on a side.

I believe the proper formula for this situation is Area=Volume/Depth. So then I would do Area=300 meters cubed/.5 micrometers. Convert the micrometers to meters and get Area=300 meters cubed/.0000005 meters and have my answer being 600,000,000 meters squared.

Is that right though? For some reason I think its wrong, and I hadn't any idea what to do at all until i found the formula but it just seems like...I don't know, a bit too easy and like maybe I am missing something. It also appears that the answer is ridiculously large, but maybe its supposed to be like that? Any help on this would be appreciated, I would be shocked if what I did was correct.
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
Maybe an easier way (or just a double-check on your answer) would be to figure out how many molecules there are in 300m^3 of oil and do the area math. Do you know how to figure out how many molecules there are in 300m^3 of oil?
 
Im not sure what you mean by your way but, you say I actually did it right? Thanks for confirming what I did, I was having a lot of trouble on that problem and didn't even get as far as finding the area formula until I foudn this website, which is when I quit guessing what to do and trying to look it up because I was so confused.