Volume of Ellipse No idea how to do this

ruri
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Homework Statement



Rotating the ellipse x^2/a^2 + y^2/b^2 = 1 about the x-axis generates and ellipsoid. Compute its volume.

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The Attempt at a Solution

 
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You can do it several ways. One way to do it is to observe that if you rotate only the upper half of the ellipse you still get the same ellipsoid. Then slice it vertically. What is the positive value of y for each x? The rotation of each slice will be a disc. Integrate the volume of the discs to get the entire volume of the ellipsoid.
 
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...
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