Summer Assignment - resulting slick

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    Assignment Summer
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Homework Help Overview

The discussion revolves around a problem involving the calculation of the area of an oil slick resulting from a spill of 300 cubic meters of oil, with the assumption that the slick is one molecule thick. The original poster is uncertain about their approach and calculations, particularly regarding the formula used and the resulting large area.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Assumption checking

Approaches and Questions Raised

  • The original poster attempts to use the formula Area = Volume / Depth, converting units to find the area. They express doubt about the correctness of their answer and the implications of the large area calculated. Another participant suggests an alternative method of calculating the number of molecules in the oil to verify the area calculation.

Discussion Status

The conversation includes some validation of the original poster's approach, with one participant confirming that the calculations appear correct. However, there is no explicit consensus on the best method, and the discussion remains open to further exploration of the problem.

Contextual Notes

The original poster expresses confusion and uncertainty about the problem, indicating a lack of confidence in their understanding and approach. There is also mention of the challenge in finding the area formula initially.

Snead1
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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.
 
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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?
 
Looks right to me.

berkeman, I don't think that's an easier way ;)
 
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.
 

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